Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: steveyates on November 15, 2022, 08:43:53 am
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Hi, sorry it sounds like a basic question, I've been a member for at least 10 years but never used the site!
I am actually a professional photographer of 30 years standing, but always been working, ie shooting weddings dogs and babies. I have now taken early retirement, (54 yayyy) and can now shoot entirely for myself. I shoot landscapes off the coast of scotland and england from the deck of a small sailing boat using xt1's and am looking for the best ways to process these images to get the best from them.
I am sure the approach must be very different from what did for wedding images, where I was looking for efficiency and consistency in 600-800 images, and then cropping dodging and burning in photoshop, exactly as i used to in a darkroom; now I look at a cull of perhaps 50 images from a week long trip, and know nothing of the techniques available.
So while I am vastly experienced on one hand, I am totally ignorant on the other :)
I use C1 20, photoshop cs 6, (still on desktop) and an old version of silvereffex fo my landscapes.
Any advice and pointers to good sources of information much appreciated.
Thanks.
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Switch to shooting Raw (you were probably shooting jpgs).
Subscribe to the Adobe Photo package giving to access to the most recent Lightroom Classic and Photoshop (not the CC versions) which are vastly superior to CS6.
Look around for some land/seascape editing tutorials (for LRC/PS) (many are free and many paid, so look for good reviews)
Here are a couple;
https://photoshopcafe.com/
https://jkost.com/blog/
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Fwiw here’s my 4 penneth.
By all means look around at examples, there are examples in the threads here. Just reading or looking at tutorials can get you all sorts of conventions: golden hour, leading lines, rule of thirds, don’t have the horizon across the middle of your image, etc, etc. The only one that really matters to me is a horizon must be horizontal. If I don’t have a horizon I have much more freedom.
Go out and make images; you will know when you have a keeper, though sometimes it may require a period of putting an image aside and then coming back to it. It’s the old saying, ‘The more I practice, the luckier I get.’
Don’t slavishly copy, develop your own style and have fun. I will never stop learning and refining what I do.
No doubt other contributors will have their own views; we are all different.
Enjoy coming out of your comfort zone.
Jonathan
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I shoot landscapes off the coast of scotland and england from the deck of a small sailing boat using xt1's and am looking for the best ways to process these images to get the best from them.
I think figuring out your optimal processing option probably depends to a large extent on your intended output medium. If you're going to be displaying your images online, you may simply want keep using the software you're comfortable with, although personally I find the desktop version of Lightroom a very versatile tool which allows me for the most part to maintain an exclusively raw workflow;* these days, especially since the introduction of Lightroom's new masking functions, I only occasionally feel the need to render the image for further processing in a pixel editor. (When I do, I use the current rev of Photoshop.)
However, if you're planning to make prints of detailed landscape images with a Fuji X-T1 for wall display (e.g., A3 or larger), you're probably going to need to eke all the image quality possible from the 16 Mpx sensor. I use two programs that sometimes produce better fine detail than Lightroom: Iridient X-Transformer (https://www.iridientdigital.com/products/xtransformer.html) and DxO PureRAW (https://shop.dxo.com/en/dxo-pureraw-2.html). Other possibilities, if you're inclined to invest in new equipment, would be the Fuji X-T5 (40 Mpx) or older X-T4 and X-T3 (26 Mpx)—all of which would give you more detail for printing large. You mention that you're going to be shooting from a small boat; all three of these more recent X-T models have better weather sealing than your X-T1s.
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* I can't overstate how important I consider this. Working from raw image-sensor captures allows you to take advantage of new capabilities as they are introduced by the software manufacturers. Given the rapid advances in computational image processing, I think that's something you may well want to be positioned to exploit.
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Thanks, I have looked at dxo before and liked it, maybe time to revisit.
Definitely found capture one infinitely faster than lightroom, and as I already have it, dont see any point in going back to LR.
Good point about the newer models, I run my cameras into the ground as I want the best return on investment in my business usually, but now the 5 has been brought out the price of 3’s and 4’s might fall and be excellent bargains.
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I have tried a few and the best resource I have found for just about everything is Karl Taylor.
https://karltayloreducation.com
Go through and just look through the courses on the menu.
A once a year fee or monthly gives you everything
Enjoy.
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I recently found this guy on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/@ian_worth He has really turned my head around about buying an XT5.