tweaking

[olympuse620]

Hi to all after some advice on how people tweak their photos. i.e what do you adjust first? what do you rarely touch? what should you be careful of? These are just some of my questions but I have got to start somewhere.

[WorkingClassHero]

The specifics depend a great deal on what format you're shooting (raw or .jpg) and what software you're using.

General rule is global adjustments first, so cropping, white balance, exposure, contrast. Then work on adjustments to specific parts of the image. Do noise reduction and sharpening last.

Everyone's workflow is slightly different, but you'll find that over time you develop a workflow that suits you. It does take time, but play around and have fun, see what you like and don't like, and don't get too carried away by the post processing. The best way to become a better photographer is to take as many shots as possible.

[JazzXP]

My lightroom flow is basically as it's laid out. Start with cropping at the top, then go through the sliders in order (maybe jumping back and forth a bit in the basic section), then down to sharpening/noise reduction. From there I go and grab the adjustment brush and adjust any individual sections I may need to (often I do this before sharpening and noise reduction though).

If I need to jump to Photoshop, I do that before sharpening.

May not give the absolute best image - sharpening should be done in photoshop after resizing, but for me, it's good enough.

[olympuse620]

Jazz do you sharpen raw files in photoshop or do you export from lightroom as a jpeg then sharpen ?

[Jeanette]

hi although new to the forum i was lucky enough to be taught the basics of photoshop by my nephew doing a year 12 project.. knowing i loved photography and always commenting on his work etc. he chose me to be his project :)
so even with my point and shoot i used photoshop to improve my photos and loved it .. but also found i needed to do more
with my lovely new Nikon DSLR i find now i do alot less.. most of the time some cropping/framing
mono. cloning out objects etc.. but very little on the photo. as it takes a much better quality photo..
also learning more i am not using photoshop to try and correct as many mistakes.. just to enhance if that makes sense..

[JazzXP]

Jazz do you sharpen raw files in photoshop or do you export from lightroom as a jpeg then sharpen ?

Usually I just drag the slider in lightroom unless I'm doing photoshop work on it. In that case I have an action that I use for sharpening (puts sharpening on a separate layer so I can just adjust the opacity of it to adjust the amount) before saving out the file.