I captured some images this afternoon. I thought it would be nice to give my Nikon 105mm f/2.8 Micro VR a workout as I haven’t used it much since I bought it a few months ago. Image harvesting was tough because most of the larger scenes had too wide of an intensity range to get the kind of image I want to work with these days. And it was a bit too cold and blustery to go and get the tripod to play with putting multiple exposures together. But there was a bucket in the shade with these leaves soaking in rainwater on top. Since I think the image is a nice representation of what I’ve been trying to acheive over the last few days, I thought it would be worthwhile to document the post processing workflow.
Since I still can’t use Aperture, the RAW files are copied into a reference folder on the image hard drive. I’m browsing in Capture NX, which is a bad idea, but I don’t want to open Bridge as yet another program. Capture NX just shows the embedded JPEGs and takes a few seconds to render the NEF into a full resolution image on screen. So I’m selecting promising images and and opening the NEFs to evaluate focus. I picked this one out of the series because of the composition, reflection of the sky and the grid-like pattern at the center.
Here’s the out of camera conversion, Picture Control: Vivid
Once I’ve selected one to work on, I modify overall exposure, white and black points and color cast with Capture NX as I believe that these manipulations are best done on the full 14 bit RAW file. I also use the U-Point color point adjusments to create the right relative values in the image. If the problem is uneven lighting on one side of the image or the other I’ll fix it with a gradient, like using a graduated filter. Capture NX’s control of gradients is very nice- easier than in Photoshop for me.
Here’s the image after adjustment with Capture NX:
After saving the image as a 16 bit TIFF, I open it in Photoshop. My first step is to optimize tonality using George DeWolfe’s method of desaturating and creating a curve that places the values so that they create a good monochrome image. Color gets in the way, so you desaturate, adjust the color, then add it back in.
And with the color added back in by hiding the desaturated version:
This was frequently where I stopped processing in the past, but as you can see from the image at the top, I’ve done more selective control of tone and saturation using techniques I’ve been picking up from Vincent Versace’s book, now including some of the Nik Color Efex filters.
Hi James,
I’m interested in George DeWolfe’s method of desaturating and creating a curve. Could you explain? Do you use desat with gray scale or under hue saturation? And then apply the curve to build the value structure? I couldn’t find anything under a google search. Thanks! Love this image ;->}
Jolene
George didn’t describe it in his book, but CS2 or CS3 added the monochrome layer. That’s the easiest one click way to get to monochrome. Alternatively, and maybe a bit more true to the spirit of the technique is with a hue/saturation layer and just move the saturation all the way to the left. I think that in the book, he copied the layer and then used Image>Adjustments>Desaturate. One can easily create an action that will take the desaturate step.
The idea is the same though. You get rid of the color information which interferes with your brain’s ability to just brightness. The curve is to make the best possible black and white image. When you turn in off, the color comes back in, often with some dramatic effects that one never would have reached adjusting the curve with the color information visible.
I’ve moved away from this technique in the last few months because I’m using more region specific approaches to adjusting values with multiple layers and masks or with Capture NX U-Points.