Processing photos taken with our scopes (1 Viewer)

[JGobeil]

Our astro scopes bring special problems and needs when post processing photos. Lack of contrast is just one of these,

Most of us use Adobe LightRoom and we all have our workflows and special tricks. It might be good idea to share so that we can all benefit from each other.

Let's share !

 

[JGobeil]

My LightRoom workflow

Here is how I do it. It may not be the best way but it seems to work for me. Comments and suggestions will be most welcomed.

This is my basic workflow and I use it for 90% of my bird photos. Of course, the other 10% are problem ones and need special treatment in addition to this standard workflow. One important point: a RAW photo is needed; it is quite difficult to improve a JPEG image.

My LightRoom workflow:

1. Crop the photo first. Straighten the image by correcting the Angle and change the image format for a more appropriate Aspect if the photo needs it.
2. Do a rough estimate of the proper Exposure.
3. Adjust Clarity, Shadows, Highlights and Exposure. Toggle between the 4 because they are highly interactive. Clarity is important to correct the lack of contrast of our scopes. Do not overdo it; when you feel it is too much but you still need more, bring those 4 controls back to 0, increase the contrast up to a maximum of about 30, in steps of 10 units and start again adjusting Clarity, Shadows, Highlights and Exposure. I prefer Clarity to Contrast to correct the lack of contrast of photos taken with the scope; I will sometimes pump it up as far as 60. It is sometimes necessary to use both controls to correct a low contrast photo. You will need practice to get the feel of this operation but if becomes easy after a while. IMO, this is the most important operation in post-processing with LR. Time spend mastering it is time well spent.
4. Adjust Blacks and Whites if needed. I very rarely have to do it.
5. Correct Temp if needed. I always use Auto WB with my camera and this is rarely needed. However, I often like to make the image a little warmer, especially on cloudy days.
6. Correct Vibrance if needed. I increase it a little most of the time. It improves the color of the water and gives life to the sky. You can also play with Saturation but I seldom do it.
7. Crank up Sharpening Amount to about 40. If more is needed, I prefer to do it in PS but you can do it here if you like. I also like to adjust Radius using Control-Left Mouse button to improve the silhouette of the main features of the bird - try it, it is very effective. Set Masking to about 30 to reduce the noise in the BG.
8. Adjust Noise Reduction by cranking up Luminance to 25 as a starting point and increase it as needed to get rid of the noise. I will go as high as 35, seldom more. Click on the image to get a 1:1 picture and see more details, then use a mix of Luminance and Masking to eliminate BG noise.
9. While you have a 1:1 image, look for CA. My Skywatcher shows no or very little CA and it is easy to get rid of it. In Lens Correction - Color, clicking on "Remove Chromatic Aberration" is enough to solve the problem most of the time. If not, increase Magenta or Green Amount a little until it is gone.

This workflow takes less than 2 minutes and is enough for most photos. After it is done, I like to edit some more in PhotoShop:

1. I fine tune the image using Levels
2. I Clone and Heal minor disturbances
3. I sharpen with Pixel Genius Photokit Sharpener
4. I save the photo as a full size TIFF

In order to make sure photos will be rendered accurately on the Web, I think the following are important:

1. Calibrate you screen with a calibrator that takes ambiant light into consideration so that both color and luminance are calibrated.
2. Make sure your photo is converted to sRGB before posting it.

For what it is worth, this is how I do it. Please be indulgent as I am no LR expert... Comments, suggestions and corrections welcomed !

 

[DanC.Licks]

Some people say to remove noise first, or at least just after rough exposure adjustment, and do the sharpening last. I think Adobe recommends doing the NR later to lighten up the load on the CPU, but I don't find that an issue with a good quad. Any thoughts on that?
On really difficult shots I will go into PS after getting the basic adjustments done, and do the NR and sharpening (Topaz De-noise and Detail) on a tiff copy, using separate layers and selectively removing the NR (eraser tool) where I want more detail and where noise is not an issue. But most of the time I can get as good or better results directly in LR5.3. The new adjustment brushes work very well for selective sharpening and NR. Be careful of the Auto Mask though! It can make raised shadows speckled and dirty looking. They still need to do some work on that.
The best jpg editor I have seen is ACDSee Pro. Very handy for making any final adjustments. Its 9 band "Light EQ" feature is great. I wish LR had something like that.

 

[Paul Corfield]

Since getting the Nikon D3300 my processing is very simple and short. Plugging the SD card into the tower automatically opens Nikon ViewNX2 and I tick all the photos I want to import. Then I export all the ones I like the look of as Tiff files.

1. I open the Tiffs in Photoshop.
2. Crop if needed.
3. Resize.
4. Adjust the levels.
5. Apply a little Smart Sharpen

Then I save two copies, one is a Tiff and for the one I post on here I choose 'Save for web'.

That's pretty much my standard procedure. Sometimes I will increase saturation in certain colours or over the whole image if needed. I leave white balance as shot and haven't had to alter it yet.

Paul.

 

[JGobeil]

Some people say to remove noise first, or at least just after rough exposure adjustment, and do the sharpening last. I think Adobe recommends doing the NR later to lighten up the load on the CPU, but I don't find that an issue with a good quad. Any thoughts on that?
On really difficult shots I will go into PS after getting the basic adjustments done, and do the NR and sharpening (Topaz De-noise and Detail) on a tiff copy, using separate layers and selectively removing the NR (eraser tool) where I want more detail and where noise is not an issue. But most of the time I can get as good or better results directly in LR5.3. The new adjustment brushes work very well for selective sharpening and NR. Be careful of the Auto Mask though! It can make raised shadows speckled and dirty looking. They still need to do some work on that.
The best jpg editor I have seen is ACDSee Pro. Very handy for making any final adjustments. Its 9 band "Light EQ" feature is great. I wish LR had something like that.

Dan,

In LR, I think it is better to take care of noise and sharpening together because they strongly interact.

Using Pixel Genius Photokit Sharpener in PS, there is a mode that allows me to work with layers and the Erasor tool like you describe. It is very effective.

I never use JPEG. I find it useless for serious PP.

regards
J

 

[JGobeil]

Here is my complete workflow. I never made the calculation but I would say I keep about 20% of the photos taken. 10% get some PP and 2% will be published on the Web, my Web site or BirdForum.

1. Upload the files to LR in RAW, adding copyright info and location.
2. Do a first pass and reject the bad ones.
3. Identify the bird species into keywords.
4. Make a backup of the originals to a separate disk
5. Identify the keepers to be processed, reject some more.
6. Process the keepers in LR
7. Process the keepers in PS and save as full size TIFF
8. Add a frame to those that will be shown on the Web, reduce size to 1400x1400 px and save as TIFF
9. Color code the originals, panoramas and HDRs in LR
10. Make a backup of RAW and TIFF files on a separate disk.

 

[DanC.Licks]

A jpeg editor can come in handy for light weight touch up work after the main work is done. You are right though. Editing jpegs is a waste of time if you want any quality. Never been able to understand how some so called serious photographers like Ken Rockwell preach jpeg and claim you can't see the difference between a processed raw file and a processed jpeg. Take a jpeg, and make a copy of it. Open it and make some tiny change and save it. Do it again and change it back. Do this a few times and then compare it to the original jpeg, and then tell me how great jpegs are.
One thing I always find troubling is how much gets lost by uploading jpegs to the web. I can have one look fine on the computer, and upload it without resizing or anything, and then look at it on line and wonder where all the detail has gone.... No way around it I suppose.

 

[PM01]

A jpeg editor can come in handy for light weight touch up work after the main work is done. You are right though. Editing jpegs is a waste of time if you want any quality. Never been able to understand how some so called serious photographers like Ken Rockwell preach jpeg and claim you can't see the difference between a processed raw file and a processed jpeg. Take a jpeg, and make a copy of it. Open it and make some tiny change and save it. Do it again and change it back. Do this a few times and then compare it to the original jpeg, and then tell me how great jpegs are.
One thing I always find troubling is how much gets lost by uploading jpegs to the web. I can have one look fine on the computer, and upload it without resizing or anything, and then look at it on line and wonder where all the detail has gone.... No way around it I suppose.

Dan,

Have had other famous astrophotographers do the same thing. I suggested to him to use the RAW and go from there, but no, he adamantly claims that sRGB / jpeg is more than sufficient to capture the "limited dynamic range" of astronomy. I'll PM you the name.

 

[DanC.Licks]

I didn't think any astro guy in his right mind would use jpg/sRGB, unless maybe he is stacking a few hundred frames.

 

[JGobeil]

A jpeg editor can come in handy for light weight touch up work after the main work is done. You are right though. Editing jpegs is a waste of time if you want any quality. Never been able to understand how some so called serious photographers like Ken Rockwell preach jpeg and claim you can't see the difference between a processed raw file and a processed jpeg. Take a jpeg, and make a copy of it. Open it and make some tiny change and save it. Do it again and change it back. Do this a few times and then compare it to the original jpeg, and then tell me how great jpegs are.
One thing I always find troubling is how much gets lost by uploading jpegs to the web. I can have one look fine on the computer, and upload it without resizing or anything, and then look at it on line and wonder where all the detail has gone.... No way around it I suppose.

Hi Dan,

Some photographers never push the shutter button unless they know the photo will be perfect. JPEG can be ok if no processing needs to be done except very minor tweaks.

Being a compressed format, each time you save a JPEG file, it gets compressed some more up to a point there is nothing good left.

When exporting from RAW to JPEG for Web use, one has to make sure the image will be converted to sRGB and that some sharpening optimized for the Web will be added. LR Export does a great job. Here are my settings:

File Settings:
- Image Format: JPEG
- Quality: 76
- Color Space: sRGB
Image Sizing:
- Resize to fit: Width & Height
- W: 880
- H: 768
- Resolution: 240
Output Sharpening
- Sharpen for: Screen
- Amount: Standard

Regards
Jules

 

[Paul Corfield]

When exporting from RAW to JPEG for Web use, one has to make sure the image will be converted to sRGB and that some sharpening optimized for the Web will be added. LR Export does a great job. Here are my settings:

File Settings:
- Image Format: JPEG
- Quality: 76
- Color Space: sRGB
Image Sizing:
- Resize to fit: Width & Height
- W: 880
- H: 768
- Resolution: 240
Output Sharpening
- Sharpen for: Screen
- Amount: Standard

Regards
Jules

Just tried those settings and they work very well Jules. The only difference I made was to save with long edge at 1024 as I always post at that width. I used to export straight from Lightroom to Photoshop, apply 'smart sharpen' and then choose 'save for web'. Doing a comparison I could see hardly any difference and the Lightroom one was half the file size.

Paul.

 

[JGobeil]

Just tried those settings and they work very well Jules. The only difference I made was to save with long edge at 1024 as I always post at that width. I used to export straight from Lightroom to Photoshop, apply 'smart sharpen' and then choose 'save for web'. Doing a comparison I could see hardly any difference and the Lightroom one was half the file size.

Paul.

What Ilike about LR is that it is extremely quick. I saved my settings to a preset and I only have to select all the photos I want, select Export, select the preset and ok.

Note that there are many elements to set that I didn't include because they don't affect the image. IMO, they are quite useful.

 

[Tord]

My modest contribution to this thread on top of all the useful hints and recommendations.

-------------- Exposure -----------------
In the past I used DXO Optics Pro, my detailed knowledge of LR is still not in parity with how to take advantage of DXO. Anyway, some features that I liked with DXO is that has several "Auto" presets each working with different strategies, great tools for getting good results by adjusting exposure, contrast, micro-contrast (called presence in LR) before fine tuning whites, highlights, shadows and blacks.

Essentially DXO has the following presets:
- Centre weighted: this is what you will use on pictures that pose little challenges from exposure point of view and where subject of interest is centred. Corresponds to the Auto in LR.
- Smart Lightning: Used for more challenging situations. Alters the local lighting in terms of brightness and contrast, increasing or reducing the contrast only where needed. Several degrees exist, from slight to heavy. You can achieve similar results by in LR tuning exposure, contrast and presence. For instance lowering contrast and increasing presence will increase the detail and enhance texture on birds against bright sky.
- Highlight Priority: As name suggests, the priority is to recover washed out highlights. To achieve this in LR you need to turn down exposure and highlights, balancing the effects, until the severely over-exposed areas are no longer rendered white. Then adjust black point and finally shadows.

----------- Other --------------
A quite useful feature in LR is the "Virtual Copy", I am using it more and more in order to easier compare the results from different developing settings. Open the exported files in editor, do side-by-side comparison or toggle between windows is much easier and faster than in LR. Just need to keep track of file names, which one is which.

------------ Tagging -----------
(has little to do with image processing as such, but still useful)
Time permitting, I tag exported JPEGs that survived through various screening processes. I do that in a dedicated tagging SW (iTag) that I think does a decent job and which database is quite fast when returning files that meet search criteria. When doing so, in addition to tagging with e.g. spieces name, location name, peopl, event name etc I also add the name of the source RAW file to ease source reference at a later stage, since files sometimes are moved across file systems and between computers and servers.

 

[JGobeil]

My modest contribution to this thread on top of all the useful hints and recommendations.

-------------- Exposure -----------------
In the past I used DXO Optics Pro, my detailed knowledge of LR is still not in parity with how to take advantage of DXO. Anyway, some features that I liked with DXO is that has several "Auto" presets each working with different strategies, great tools for getting good results by adjusting exposure, contrast, micro-contrast (called presence in LR) before fine tuning whites, highlights, shadows and blacks.

Essentially DXO has the following presets:
- Centre weighted: this is what you will use on pictures that pose little challenges from exposure point of view and where subject of interest is centred. Corresponds to the Auto in LR.
- Smart Lightning: Used for more challenging situations. Alters the local lighting in terms of brightness and contrast, increasing or reducing the contrast only where needed. Several degrees exist, from slight to heavy. You can achieve similar results by in LR tuning exposure, contrast and presence. For instance lowering contrast and increasing presence will increase the detail and enhance texture on birds against bright sky.
- Highlight Priority: As name suggests, the priority is to recover washed out highlights. To achieve this in LR you need to turn down exposure and highlights, balancing the effects, until the severely over-exposed areas are no longer rendered white. Then adjust black point and finally shadows.

----------- Other --------------
A quite useful feature in LR is the "Virtual Copy", I am using it more and more in order to easier compare the results from different developing settings. Open the exported files in editor, do side-by-side comparison or toggle between windows is much easier and faster than in LR. Just need to keep track of file names, which one is which.

------------ Tagging -----------
(has little to do with image processing as such, but still useful)
Time permitting, I tag exported JPEGs that survived through various screening processes. I do that in a dedicated tagging SW (iTag) that I think does a decent job and which database is quite fast when returning files that meet search criteria. When doing so, in addition to tagging with e.g. spieces name, location name, peopl, event name etc I also add the name of the source RAW file to ease source reference at a later stage, since files sometimes are moved across file systems and between computers and servers.

Hey, I don't know DXO but it looks nice.

As you probably know there are also a lot of presets in LR. I don't know much about them because I prefer to tweak the controls myself.

I made a few presets, one for renaming and another one to insert IPTC metadata when importing. I also made one for exporting photos.

Regards
Jules