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Author Topic: Head Explosion, etc.  (Read 1775 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Head Explosion, etc.
« on: February 15, 2013, 03:51:51 pm »

... I could deconstruct this if Slobodan hasn't had enough coffee to stay in the discussion  ;)...

Ok, after my second coffee, I am back.

First, my apologies to David if my posts contributed to his decision to lock the thread.

Of course I understand what you guys are talking about, it is just that my mantra is the opposite: KISS (and for our French friend, that means Keep It Simple, Stupid ;))

I am aware there are many Photoshop gurus (and "gurus") out there, peddling their proprietary techniques, secrets, "silver bullets", the more complicated and convoluted, the better (how else would they differentiate themselves from the pack?). That often involves sprinkling magic pixel dust during post-processing, waiting for the right phase of moon, alignment of the stars, etc. Btw, none of this is in reference to Chris or David.

Ever since I practically abandoned Photoshop in favor or Lightroom, my approach is similar to Occam's razor principle: do not complicate what can be achieved with less.

90 to 99% of basic post-processing tasks can be achieved in Lightroom simpler, faster, non-destructively, and with less disk space.

Yes, I often catch myself going overboard with sliders and local adjustment in LR as well (I tend to favor strong post-processing). Then I step back and often start from scratch, this time having in mind the final effect I am after and asking myself: how can I achieve it with minimum adjustments? Do I really need this +2 or +5 left or right, every ND filter and brush? Do multiple changes cancel or multiply each other (eg, increasing contrast often increases saturation) and is that what I want?

My philosophy is to stay as close to the original, while, at the same time, satisfying my vision, which often requires aggressive manipulation. I know, sounds contradictory, but if in doubt, to do that extra step or not, I would ultimately rather resort to "not."

Trying to simplify the amount of adjustments and manipulations has an added benefit, as Jeff Schewe would tell you: it reduces the amount of strain LR puts on your system, and helps avoid slow-downs and freezes.

RSL

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2013, 03:59:57 pm »

Ever since I practically abandoned Photoshop in favor or Lightroom, my approach is similar to Occam's razor principle: do not complicate what can be achieved with less.

Exactly what I've been preaching ever since I came on here, Slobodan. I still use Photoshop because I've been using Photoshop since the beginning of time, but I almost never create a layer, all my Nik plugins are set up to manipulate the base object, and, as you know, I consider cropping and cloning to be extreme emergency procedures -- similar to defibrillation. Before I crop I always shout "clear" and make sure everybody's standing back.
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David Eckels

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2013, 04:08:22 pm »

Ok, after my second coffee, I am back.

Ever since I practically abandoned Photoshop in favor or Lightroom, my approach is similar to Occam's razor principle: do not complicate what can be achieved with less.

My philosophy is to stay as close to the original, while, at the same time, satisfying my vision, which often requires aggressive manipulation. I know, sounds contradictory, but if in doubt, to do that extra step or not, I would ultimately rather resort to "not."


I just thought we needed a return to neutral corners; no apology necessary.
I understand what you're saying re simplicity and Occam's razor. Which I think was part of what we were discussing in the previous post. At the risk of extending RG's excellent analogy  ;) a beautiful women can be complemented by her make up or end up looking like a whore. No moral judgement there ;) I must say I am more comfortable with Photoshop, from a technical standpoint, but I am slowly gaining familiarity with LR4; I still find it awkward. But as a tool for "minimalistic" intervention I like your idea, but it requires some finess I think, to recognize when you've gone too far. UNLESS that's what the image might call for ::)
SB-I appreciate you sharing your reasoning.

David Eckels

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2013, 04:09:44 pm »

Exactly what I've been preaching ever since I came on here, Slobodan. I still use Photoshop because I've been using Photoshop since the beginning of time, but I almost never create a layer, all my Nik plugins are set up to manipulate the base object, and, as you know, I consider cropping and cloning to be extreme emergency procedures -- similar to defibrillation. Before I crop I always shout "clear" and make sure everybody's standing back.

Thumbs up!

Chris Calohan

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2013, 05:09:02 pm »

Damn, and I thought there was some magic pixel dust to be had. I am rapidly getting to the point where I do about 80% of any PP in the Adobe Raw Editor. About all I do in CS6 in tweak the curve a bit and dink about with SEP. On occasion, like with Dave Eckles piece, I will employ a bit more tweaking using layer blends, but I really do those in nearly imperceptible does..enough to make a difference, not enough to fry an image into oversaturated oblivion.
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2013, 05:43:07 pm »

...Yes, I often catch myself going overboard with sliders and local adjustment in LR as well (I tend to favor strong post-processing). Then I step back and often start from scratch...

Layers man, you need to get back into using LAYERS!!!!  ::)

Seriously.

A long long time ago, when I worked in heavy engineering, we had a guy there who was given the nickname of Thor, not because he was a huge and mighty god like figure, he was not, but because he thought that every engineering maintenance problem could be quickly solved with a two pound hammer, even though it rarely proved to be the case, he carried on regardless. Some people use PS, LR and any or all of the other image filters available to us today, a bit like old Thor used his hammer - by knocking the crap out of everything in the hope it will be quickly and easily fixed.

The best way to work on any image and with any editing software, is to apply a small tweak here and small tweak there, until the culmination of all those little tweaks builds up to a significant improvement across the whole image - that is the real "silver bullet"  :)

Dave
« Last Edit: February 15, 2013, 05:58:57 pm by Dave (Isle of Skye) »
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WalterEG

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2013, 05:54:57 pm »

Layers man, you need to get back into using LAYERS!!!!  ::)

Truer words were never spoken.  Crochet them into your pillow slips.

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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2013, 05:56:44 pm »

Layers man, you need to get back into using LAYERS!!!!  ::)...

I do. But only if I can not solve the problem in a simpler way.

Btw, my KISS approach applies regardless if you use LR or PS. in both cases, do minimum adjustments to get you where you want to be.

EDIT: I noticed that your advice on layers is linked to my quote in relation to "going overboard and then starting from scratch." Are you saying that layers are the answer for that problem?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2013, 05:59:40 pm by Slobodan Blagojevic »
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #8 on: February 15, 2013, 06:09:25 pm »

I do. But only if I can not solve the problem in a simpler way.

Btw, my KISS approach applies regardless if you use LR or PS. in both cases, do minimum adjustments to get you where you want to be.

EDIT: I noticed that your advice on layers is linked to my quote in relation to "going overboard and then starting from scratch." Are you saying that layers are the answer for that problem?

No, I am saying that I also go overboard on occasion, we all do it, it is to be human it seems, but because I am working on a layer, I can hit the del key to remove that layer if and when it goes bad, yet the rest of my tweaks (in the layers below) are still in tact - if it wasn't for layers, I would definitley get more into LR4, but for me layers are a hands down winner that I just could not live without.

Dave
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nemo295

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #9 on: February 15, 2013, 06:24:39 pm »

I do. But only if I can not solve the problem in a simpler way.

Btw, my KISS approach applies regardless if you use LR or PS. in both cases, do minimum adjustments to get you where you want to be.

Amen.
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Tony Jay

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #10 on: February 15, 2013, 06:54:17 pm »

The exact workflow in Lightroom is different from Photoshop but the flexibility of Lightroom cannot be achieved in Photoshop.
Dave, the exact issues that you refer to are the reasons why I prefer Lightroom to Photoshop.
The ability to cycle through the adjustment history as required, using virtual copies to follow several different develop paths as required (without the bloat involved to need to duplicate the images), even to do as Slobodan likes to do - scratch everything and start over, all this and more makes Lightroom the foundation for digital workflow in my (humble) opinion.

Do I use Photoshop? Sure, but only when I need to. Far less than 10% of images require the kind of processing limited to Photoshop. Some third-party applications can do any one of these processing tasks better than Photoshop but none can do all of them as well as Photoshop can collectively.

I don't believe that I would be doing violence to Jeff Schewe, an absolute master of the technique and art of Photoshop workflow if there ever has been, by saying that now that Lightroom is available, he spends relatively little time in Photoshop preferring the KISS approach as postulated by Slobodan. It does seem that he does use Photoshop when needed but based on both the recent tutorials and his book he has continually been able to develop techniques in Lightroom that make Photoshop progressively more redundant.
I also don't believe that Photoshop will ever become redundant in the absolute sense and I don't think that Lightroom should evolve to that point.

So skills in both Lightroom and Photoshop are still important but Lightroom (or equivalent) remains fundamental in digital workflow (in this context the Develop module is only a bit player).

Tony Jay
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #11 on: February 15, 2013, 06:56:21 pm »

No, I am saying that I also go overboard on occasion, we all do it, it is to be human it seems, but because I am working on a layer, I can hit the del key to remove that layer if and when it goes bad, yet the rest of my tweaks (in the layers below) are still in tact - if it wasn't for layers, I would definitley get more into LR4, but for me layers are a hands down winner that I just could not live without.

Dave

I think we are having a basic misunderstanding here. We are also revisiting the same discussion we had before, ie, LR vs PS.

I do not restart from scratch because I have to or because I am not using layers. Everything in LR is fully or partially reversible. I do it because I want to see how much faster and simpler I can get to the similar result I had when I overcomplicated things.

I also do not intend to persuade anybody to abandon the method which works for them and they are comfortable with.

Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #12 on: February 15, 2013, 07:05:09 pm »

I think we are having a basic misunderstanding here. We are also revisiting the same discussion we had before, ie, LR vs PS.

I do not restart from scratch because I have to or because I am not using layers. Everything in LR is fully or partially reversible. I do it because I want to see how much faster and simpler I can get to the similar result I had when I overcomplicated things.

I also do not intend to persuade anybody to abandon the method which works for them and they are comfortable with.

Fair doos Slobodan and yes we have trodden this path before and yes it has become weary and yes you can scroll back infinitely with LR (my mistake, I thought you meant you had to start afresh, which of course you don't with LR4), which is an amazing feature that I dearly wish could be incorporated into PS. As I say, I do fiddle with LR4 from time to time and I admit it is quite good for noise reduction and quite a few other things.

Dave
« Last Edit: February 15, 2013, 07:11:33 pm by Dave (Isle of Skye) »
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Head Explosion, etc.
« Reply #13 on: February 15, 2013, 08:09:55 pm »

I'm in complete agreement with Slobodan and Russ. And I have now vowed never to use the defibrillation slider more than is absolutely necessary for a particular image.  ;)
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