Step two in the Workflow Process (RAW Development)

In this article I’ll be offering a more detailed explanation of step two in the three step digital workflow process as described in my introductory post. Step two will be split into two parts while a third article will cover the last step. Once again, I cannot stress enough the importance of having a calibrated monitor when doing your own image enhancement and printing.

As I do most of my photography using an Olympus E-1 DSLR, my examples in this article will come from the use of Olympus Studio and Adobe Photoshop CS2 software. I don’t claim the camera and software I use are the best available or the best solution nor do I wish to take up argument with anyone with opposing views. The combination works for me and I only wish to share what I’ve learned with others so that they may be better educated to make their own decisions on what works for them.

I’ve always captured my camera images in RAW format, bypassing the in-camera processing and converted them to Tiffs in the RAW development process instead of capturing them as Jpegs. This allows for increased dynamic range (the range of light between absolute black and absolute white) and the option of making white balance, contrast, sharpness, saturation and small exposure corrections after the image is taken.

Think of shooting Jpegs as analogous to shooting slide film and shooting in RAW as equivalent to shooting negative film. One has to be very careful to expose correctly when shooting slides or Jpegs as WYSIWYG. Some adjustments can be made to Jpegs in post processing though this usually results in degradation of the image.

With RAW format as in negative film, many options remain open for adjustment after the image is captured, one important adjustment being white balance. The auto white balance setting in most digital cameras at best makes a fairly good approximation of the white point and often times a poor one resulting in an undesired color cast while a daylight or overcast white balance setting doesn’t work in all cases. Unwanted color casts in color negative film could be corrected before a print was made by adjusting color filters in the enlarger head.

Olympus Studio - Browse window

After I’ve downloaded my RAW image files from my camera to my computer via Olympus Studio, I am presented with the screen above. From here I can view the images in browse mode with the in-camera settings — contrast -2, sharpening 0, saturation at default, white balance at either 5300K (daylight) or 6000K (cloudy).

The left side of the screen offers a directory structure where my images are stored while the right side presents a histogram of the image highlighted and its general and Exif data. From this screen I can get a good idea of the images I’ll consider for printing or for use on the web. I can choose to mark those I’m interested in by clicking on the red box (or yellow or blue) in the frame of the image.

Olympus Studio - View window

If I wish to get a larger view of the images I can go to the “view” screen shown above. Here the directory structure on the left side is replaced with thumbnail images in the open directory and the center of the screen becomes the enlarged image of the highlighted thumbnail.

Olympus Studio - Light Box window

If I have two or more images of the same or similar composition I can go to “light box” mode where I can do a side by side comparison. This is great for determining which image is the sharpest or has the depth of field I prefer.

Olympus Studio - Image Editing window

Once I have an image I want to print, I open the image editing window from within Studio. The only reason for this is to arrive at a fine tuned white balance setting.

From this window I am able to open up the RAW converter (second window from left) and play with the white balance setting and tint to arrive at the overall coolness or warmth that I would like the image to have. This is done with the help of the information window (lower left window) which gives an RGB readout of the group of pixels that the cursor is suspended over in the image. This tool can give me a good indication of the color balance in the whites, grays and blacks in the image. For example, if you have equal values of red, green and blue in the grays, then you have a neutral gray. If you have more red then green and blue, you have a warm gray and if more blue than red and green you have a cold gray.

There are other image enhancement features available in Olympus Studio though I choose to do those enhancements within Photoshop CS2. Once I am satisfied with my white balance setting I note the changes made, close the image editing window without saving and open up the RAW development window shown below.

Olympus Studio - RAW Development window

There are four different RAW converters available within Olympus Studio though for most of my work, I use the “High Function” engine as the details in the highlights seem to be better than what the other three can produce. Another highly recommended engine is “Advanced High Speed.”

As you can see I settled on a white balance of 5900K which warmed the image slightly and I removed a slight magenta cast by choosing a -1 step in the tint setting (a minus step takes magenta out or adds green while a plus step adds magenta or takes away green). I increased the exposure slightly by .1EV, left the contrast, sharpness and saturation at their default settings (I handle these adjustments in Photoshop) and chose the Adobe RGB color space as it has a wider color gamut than sRGB.

There has been quite a bit of discussion on whether to choose sRGB or Adobe RGB as a color workspace within Photoshop. I settled on aRGB as my print more closely resembles what I see on my monitor using this color space. This probably has to do with the fact that high quality photo inkjet printers can produce a wider color gamut than sRGB. If you have a professional service handle your printing than I would recommend saving your images in sRGB as pro labs predominately use this color space.

I then save the image as a 16 bit Tiff file with no compression. This gives better image quality than a Jpeg and allows for repeated changes and saves from within Photoshop without loss of quality.

In the next article in the series, Digital Workflow Explained – Part 1B, I’ll write about my use of Photoshop CS2 for image enhancement.

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