Today we are finally going to take the RAW images that we converted during the last 3 tutorials and do some Photoshop work on them. I know this is probably starting to get more interesting then RAW conversion for most of you, but I urge you to read my last blog entry with the title Photoshop it Later.
The digital workflow is just as important as taking the photos. I have refined my workflow over and over again. Each photographer uses his/her own techniques and I urge you to develop your own. This tutorial will help you to get started on this. In this tutorial I will introduce you to some basic techniques to digitally enhance your photos. Until I write the next tutorial, I recommend you download the Photoshop Action (below) that combines everything in this tutorial into one clickable action (for automation) and modify it to your liking. It is just a rough framework.
One of the most important things is automation. Photos shown on this website area all run through automation scripts. I simply convert all RAW files to tiff (automatically) and then run an action on those to generate JPG files (no need to spend all this time on each image).
Often forgotten but one of the most crucial and important steps in this process is color proofing. Many people are not even aware of the process. It is a way to guarantee that the output from the photo lab really matches what you see on your screen. I will end this tutorial with an introduction to color proofing. (The picture is from my resent deserts trip that I will upload tomorrow).

Cleaning your image

After I opened my image, I noticed two dark spots. I guess I will have to review my other pictures to see if this is due to dust spots on the sensor. If so, I will have to clean my sensor again. For now I will have to remove the dots. Since they are on an evenly colored background, I can choose the spot healing brush (see picture above). Make sure you select the size of the brush to fully encircle the spot and click it a couple of times until it is gone. Those dots will be most disturbing on evenly colored backgrounds. Fortunately this makes them easy to remove too. More sophisticated retouching is not needed here.

Sharpening Images with Photoshop

Usually, the first thing I do after converting a RAW file is to sharpen my image. Due to the way your cameras sensor works, a certain amount of blur is always introduced (see. Bayer Filter if you care for technical details). Most workflow publications I have read will recommend you to perform the sharpening as the last step of your processing efforts. I have found that many of the color adjustments (e.g. enhancing saturation) will actually reduce sharpness for fine details (similar colors). This cannot be restored later. Through my testing I have found that it is often better to sharpen first (you are free to try both ways and choose for yourself). Lets open the Smart Sharpen Dialog in Photoshop CS2 (Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen ...). Smart Sharpen is not available in older versions of Photoshop (use Unsharp mask instead).

Click the image above to see a larger version (the effect is not visible very well due to the jpg compression I chose to keep the files small).
In the basic mode, you can adjust the Amount, Radius and Type of operation. Select Lens Blur as this will be the most accuraty for our kind of needs.
Sharpening will increase local contrast around edges (e.g. from the car to the sky is a very hard edge). The tool compares the pixel values and makes darker pixels slightly darker and brighter pixels brighter. This will make images appear sharper. The Amount slider will determine how much contrast boost you get. The value shown here is actually a bit too high for most cases. It will deliver very sharp looking results.
The Radius will determine the radius of a circle around each pixel to be evaluated. Each pixel within the circle will contribute to the decision making process.
Don't go overboard with either of the two. One of the effects you will often see is halos. Halos are especially visible around tree branches. They will manifest as bright halos around the branches. As usual its the balance that is important. Experiment with the Smart Sharpening to get a good feeling.
Images with more noise should have a lower Amount a higher Radius setting (maybe even use Noise Filters).
The tool also has an advanced mode. I don't use this very often, but its useful to know about.
Sharpening in uniform color areas (such as the sky) will usually just lead to more noise. There is nothing here to sharpen in the first place, but since the tool increase local contrast, it will amplify the noise that is contained in every digital picture. With the Advanced Tab, you can reduce the amount of sharpening that is applied to Shadows (dark foreground) and Highlights (Sky).
The Fade Amount determines how much less sharpening is applied in a certain area. The Tonal Width determines the range of shades which will have reduced sharpening. The higher the settings, the less you will restrict the range (allowing fading to happen in midtones).
The Radius determines how sharp the transition between fully sharpened and faded regions will be.

Enhancing Colors

When you adjust the color appearance it is very important to have a calibrated Monitor. One way to do this is described in this Spyder Review. If you don't make sure you really see what you will get from the photo lab, you might be surprised when the pictures come back.
If you have not already done so, you should switch your working color to the same color space your digital files are in. In my previous workflow tutorials I have told you to convert your RAW files into ProPhoto RGB color space. Some of you might be using Adobe RGB and some sRGB. I recommend ProPhoto RGB since it offers the widest gamut of all color spaces. We can thus make the images to really pop without fear of going out of gamut (basically this causes problems of posterization and looks really bad when printed). If you forgot the color space of your files, open your Adobe Bridge, switch the workspace to Metadata Focus and select the image. On the left it will show you the color space information.
In Photoshop go to Edit -> Color Settings and set up your color settings. The RGB Working Spaces is set to ProPhoto RGB since this is my primary working mode.

Next you should make a copy of the image in a new layer. Open the Layers Palette (Window -> Layers). Right click on where it says Background and select Duplicate Layer.
Doing all adjustments in a new layer will let us keep the original image, so we can quickly switch back and fourth. We can also select the strenght of our adjustments with this.
Enhancing colors is another important step. I don't recommend to use the Hue / Saturation / Lightness sliders in Photoshop. Changing one slider will usually affect the other two settings.
A good method to modify colors without adverse affects on Hue or Lightness is through the use of LAB color. Lab color is just a different mode to represent colors.
Transform your picture by selecting Image -> Mode -> Lab Color. You might see an error message asking you to Flatten the image. Select "Don't Flatten".
Now go to:
Image -> Adjustments -> Curves
and adjust your A and B channels. Make sure that both channels are exactly the same. Also don't go overboard. Adjustments in the LAB channel can have dramatic results.
Adjust the A and B channel to have a slight S-shaped curve. S-curves will increase contrast (in this case color contrast = saturation). We are not going to touch the Lightness Channel (L) and therefore we are not changing the brightness or sharpness of the picture.
A subtle adjustment like this will make your colors really pop (see results below).
Now lets convert the image back into RGB color space (Image -> Mode -> RGB) and again don't Flatten the image. Usually I make some minor adjustments to the colors in RGB mode (enhancing saturation for each channel individually). You can check out the Action for details on this.

You will probably have noticed that your color looks way too saturated now. Go to your layers windows and adjust the opacity of your top layer. As you turn the opacity down, you can fade the adjustments (0% makes the layer invisible and lets you see the original image). Select a opacity that you like.
Everything so far is contained within the basic processor action (except the opacity adjustment).

Cleaning up

The final steps are contained within the second part of the action (prepare output).
The first thing we need to do is flatten the image:
Layer -> Flatten Image
This will combine the layers according to their opacity settings.
Then we need to convert the image into sRGB color space.
Edit -> Convert to Profile ...

It will bring up the following dialog. Make sure you match all the settings in this dialog. It is important to keep the same settings, since we want to keep the appearance of the Image. We need to convert the image in order to map it to the appropriate colorspace for Web Publishing or for the Photo Lab. Most monitors and all printers cannot even reproduce the colors in any other colorspace (we use ProPhoto RGB only for processing purposes, not because it looks cool).
Convert the Image into 8-bit by slecting: Image -> Mode -> 8bits/Channel.

Color Proof

This is one of the most overlooked and yet most important steps of the whole process. If your goal is to have photos that can be printed by a photo lab, you absolutely should use this to make sure the lab can print your pictures. Make sure to check out the Spyder Review. If you don't plan to invest into a colorimeter, you should at least order a test image from your lab of choice and calibrate your monitor until the image on your screen looks the same (I highly recommend a colorimeter).
In order for us to be able to color proof our images, we need to find a photo lab that offers color profiles.
Ezprints offers an ICC profile as well as a test image. You can get both here.
EZprints offers affordable prints at hiqh quality. Unfortunately they don't like to deal with smaller companies or individuals for publishing purposes, so I am selling my images through Smugmug, who also use EZprints. They are pretty laid back and nice to work with, offer unlimited Bandwidth and Storage ...:
FREE Trial of SmugMug.
I can thus easily use the EZPrints profile and sell through Smugmug and feel confident that my pictures will look good when printed.

After you downloaded the color profile, right click it and select Install Profile.
You will probably have to restart Photoshop in order for it to see the Profile.
Now go to View -> Proof Setup -> Custom ...
This will bring up the following dialog:

Select the EZPrints profile here (or whichever you have downloaded). And select the same options I have.

Now if you go to View -> Proof Colors, you can switch back and forth between the color proof and the image on your screen. The color proof will show you exactly how the print looks like (provided you have calibrated your screen).
You can also select View -> Gamut Warning. If you see any areas on your screen that turn grey, Photoshop indicates that you have out of gamut colors. This means the EZprints will not be able to reproduce the colors in that area. The only thing you can do is to either reduce saturation (the opacity slider we talked about before), or you can try to locally reduce saturation (more about this later).

Keep in mind. If you enhance your colors and plan to print the picture, Soft Proof It on a calibrated monitor !!!


This is the original Image as it would appear when processed in the camera (JPG setting)


This is the image our action produces (Opacity 72%). Its too unnatural and I recommend using lower opacity settings. However it nicely demonstrates what the action does.


This is the final image one of my own actions produces. Recently I use something like this or similar for web publishing. It is more pleasing than the original.

Download the Photoshop Action.
Unzip the file and put it into your Photoshop Actions Folder.
On my system this is:
D:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets\Photoshop Actions

In Photoshop open the Actions Window (Window -> Actions)
Then click on the little triangle icon in the upper right corner and select "Load Actions" from the Pulldown Menu.
Load the action and play around.
You can modify it or do whatever you please (incorporate into your own actions).

I hope you enjoyed todays tutorial. In my next one. I have many more advanced techniques I would like to share with you, so make sure you come back for more.