Bart, if you don't mind, could you share your initial workflow after setting the Linear response?
Thanks!
Hi,
This may be very much camera dependent, and workflow dependent.
In my default Style, I select the appropriate Camera Profile, and a Linear Response Curve.
I select a Contrast boost of +5, but that, of course, depends on the type of images you shoot. If you shoot studio scenes you'll have control over the scene dynamics, so you could set the contrast to spread the histogram to cover a larger range or leave it some wiggling room at the extremes or do it all with the lighting setup.
Brightness is left at 0, but one could opt for some mid tone brightening. I prefer to use Exposure to brighten the overall image, but if shadows and highlights are already near clipping, and the image still looks a bit too dark for the intended mood, some midtone brightness might help.
I tend to boost the Saturation by +5 (which, with positive adjustments functions a bit more like a Vibrance control). Of course, whether this is needed depends on the selected profile as well. I find the generic profile that comes with my camera reasonably good, but I then prefer slightly more saturation than what the profile gives. When using a custom profile, then Saturation is kept at zero by default but may change when doing postprocessing.
I reduce all noise reductions to 0, except for the Color noise which gets the lowest setting of 1. I do not mind the small amount of noise I get at low ISO settings. For High ISO shots, I prefer using dedicated noise reduction applications.
Depending on average lens quality and camera used (AA-filter or not) one may want to add some (in the order of 5-10) default Clarity and or Structure.
I set Diffraction correction to On, and Hide Distorted areas to Off.
I have a very modest Luma S-Curve set, but I usually change it further depending on the shape of the histogram after the other settings have been done.
I use a default sharpening setting adjusted for my most used aperture settings but only use it to get a better impression of how well I nailed the focus. In my output recipe, I usually have sharpening switched off in the recipe if I'm going to post-process in Photoshop, where I use my preferred Clarity and Sharpening. If I use an output recipe to produce direct output without further post-processing, then it is usually downsampled, in which case the output sharpening proofing is more important than full-size sharpening anyway, so I then manually set the overall Sharpening amount to zero. An amount of 100, Radius of 0.7 or 0.8, and a threshold of 0.1 is my default style.
The Style can be chosen for a specific import operation or set as a Default. Many tools can also have defaults, but doing it with Styles is more flexible if different cameras or shooting setups are used.
After the import, I then have most settings done that I would otherwise almost always have to do to files anyway. Then I run through the various controls for each individual image (after setting White balance for multiple files at once) and may tweak only small amounts for the default settings. After setting the Exposure level, the High Dynamic Range controls are only used to open up too dark shadows or tone down Highlights if needed. I may also use them selectively on Adjustment Layers, e.g. with a bit of negative exposure and some Highlight adjustment for overly bright highlights. The Highlight control tends to darken the highlights, but also reduce their contrasts, so local adjustments with negative exposure may work better to keep highlight contrast. I usually prefer sparkeling highlights.
Cheers,
Bart