Can't get me Head round this RAW lark!!...

jcoutts

jcoutts

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Name
Justin
Edit My Images
No
Guys,

Can't get me head round this, Yes RAW gives great versatility and recovery options. However, are there some standard things you can process the whole lot of images that you take? e.g. Batch process with general settings... as a start point. Certainly almost always they all need sharpening? So I've heard.

Otherwise it seems to me that because obvioulsy each individual image is different you have to process each one individually, one by one. If you do a shoot of any description say 150-200+ images. Thats a lot of processing time.

Is there a better way and what steps do you "RAW" expert folks take and in what order pls... I'm a novice...!!

I love the changes you can do to raw images to get them up looking fantastic beyond what jpeg give, but am very frustrated at having to do it for each image.

Can't see that if you had an action or script (not sure if you can run these on raws anyway???) If you would gain since i feel that some it would make better some worse!!!...

e.g. I have 50 images, some are O.K some could do with a sharpen, some colour adjustment...etc. If I were to apply a batch process the ones that were O.K are surely going to now look Noisy.. the ones that didn't need colour adjustment are going to look, too red, green or Blue...

Get the picture!!!.. :lol: Can't see a better way????

Can I have some guidance please?

Would love to learn and undertsand this....

Thanks all.
 
There things you can do "on mass"

I use Canon DPP and you can copy and paste recipe to single or a group of images.

So for example, I've been out and shot all with the wrong white balance. IN DPP edit the first image and set the correct white balance and add a bit of sharpening, maybe you like to add saturation to all you photos then do that too.

Now go back from the edit window to the group window and on the photo you have just edited right click and Copy Recipe. Now select all the other photos and Paste recipe. There you go all done. If it's something you do to every photo every time you can Save a recipe for the next batch of photos.

So you could have several recipes for different things i.e.:

Mono
Mono, contrast +2
Daylight,Landscape,sharpen+4
 
Great, Just had a play with that. Forgot I had it.

Like it!!! Thanks for that.

That could save a lot of time... Nice one.
 
Something else I just noticed, even if I did do a "Paste to all" going back into edit and selecting "As shot" again put it back to original. - Marvellous.

I don;t think I can go wrong.

Thanks again.
 
I shoot RAW almost exclusively, but I'm a hobbyist, and I like working with the images in PSE 6. Time is not a big concern for me. But...when pressed for time, if you have several shots of a subject or related subjects, with similar light, etc. You can open them all simultaneously and apply various changes to all at the same time (e.g., sharpening, white balance, etc.) That saves a bunch of time. But you can't really do batch processing with widely different shots...at least I've not figured out how.
 
If you have a lot of images you need to work on then I would suggest you look at Lightroom. It enables you to make changes to groups of images at one time. It's quick and easy to work with. OK it's £200 but it can save you a whole lot of time.

Have a look at some of the tutorials that are around on the web, an if you like what you see then try the 30 day trial from the Adobe web site.
 
I'll second that on Lightroom, it definitely makes things easier than say using DPP. You can copy and paste settings if you've got, say a few that need the same basic pp or you can save a a preset that you can then apply. You don't need to do this in layers like PS or PSE as the RAW file is never touched so that is quicker too. Plus you can print straight from Lightroom. I rarely use my Photoshop Elements unless I have some serious editing and I hardly ever touch DPP.

I find the Library function really good too, I just need to use it to it's full potential.

As a previous poster has mentioned, there is a 30 day trial and plenty of tutorials available on the web.

I'm just a hobbyist too, in my first year with a DLSR, but the less time I have to spend at a computer the better - leaves time for all the other things I want (more like need) to do :)
 
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