Your Post Processing Procedure

[emiles]

Lots of P's up there, haha.

Ok, but in all seriousness, what are they few things that you always end up doing to your pictures?

I'm just beginning to process mine in paint.NET, and honestly have no idea where to even start on any of my pictures. So where would be a great place to start? And then move to once I get the hang of the first thing.

Eric

[GB1]

My normal process is as such:

- Rotations if the image is tilted. Subsequent crops to remove the black areas on the edges as needed
- Exposure adjustments
- Contrast adjustments
- Some clean up, to include removing things like beer cans laying in the foreground, etc
- Save as 'name of file'_Edit1.jpg so that I have the edited version and still have the original.
- Resize as desired
- Sharpening as needed
- Save the file as 'name'_Edit1_'size of file'.jpg

I also do more intensive stuff like cloning out telephone poles, adding vignettes, major cropping, etc, depending on the image.

GB

[EOSThree]

I use Lightroom now. I started with DPP, or what ever it was called 7 years ago, then I moved to Breeze Browser and Paint Shop Pro for the heavy hitting.

I moved on to Lightroom when it first came out, but still used BB and PSP, LR was kind of a sidelight. I was very familiar with BB for RAW processing so I was reluctant to move. LR became my primary editor, with PSP still doing the heavy hitting (layers, dust removal, cloning, etc.)

Then I moved to Mac. Neither Breeze Browser or Paint Shop Pro have a Mac version so I was forced to use LR as it was intended to be used: as a filing/database system, RAW converter, editor, print program, etc. Now that I've switched I am very happy with LR, each version has improved.

Workflow:
Plug in my card reader.
LR starts the import dialogue, I let LR change the files to .dng (adobe digital negative, like a RAW file, the information is lossless. It's truly a digital negative)
Choose the location to put the new files, cull any obvious bad files.
Import (I walk away and do some other tasks)
Cull and check files eliminating any other baddies
Choose the best, the ones I feel are worth processing, flag them

change white balance
apply rotation, cropping, dust removal, red eye, gradient
make tonal adjustments (EV, fill light, brightness, black level)
make contrast/color adjustments (clarity, vibrance, saturation)
if I am still not satisfied I'll adjust the tone curve manually further.
apply noise reduction
apply sharpening

At this point I'll have a pretty decent image, but it may require further editing, such as cloning out objects, selective sharpening, selective tonal adjustments, selective color adjustments, selective sharpening, dodging, burning.

Many times I may shoot with three exposures for the same image and combine them through Photomatix or HDR Efex Pro to create a photo with a larger dynamic range than the sensor can capture. I'll export the exposures to one of these programs then re import them back into LR for final editing like above. This may get more complicated with split toning or selective color editing.

How did I learn all of this? Basically trial and error, a lot of experimenting, a lot of making gross adjustments to see what the adjustment did then using that adjustment as needed, etc. And reading, reading reading. Tips, tricks, suggestions, other's techniques, tutorials, books, forums, etc.

[emiles]

Thanks guys for your input. Like I said, just starting to get into the post processing aspect and I really didn't have any idea where to begin. You advice will be use....a lot

Eric