Post processing

Right from the outset, 12 years ago, post processing became an integral part of my photographic experience. I haven't counted, but I expect I have spent much more time processing images than I have spent capturing them.

I enjoy post processing, learning how to do it better, experimenting with different techniques and products, discussing it with others. I can't imagine simply using images straight out of the camera. 

I am convinced that post processing can make a big difference to the look of images and can usually (for my images, and my visual preferences) improve them compared to what comes out of the camera.

I hope that my post processing has improved over time. One of the things I did while preparing these posts was to reprocess some images with my current processing products and workflow to see how they compare to how I processed them four to five years ago in 2014. Two were captured with a Panasonic FZ200 small sensor bridge camera, two with a micro four thirds Panasonic G3 and two with an APS-C Canon 70D. All six are small aperture shots with image quality dominated by the softening effects of diffraction (the first five used apertures equivalent to around f/45 on full frame, the last one an aperture equivalent to around f/26 on full frame). I believe diffraction-softened images like this are particularly susceptible to improvement in perceieved sharpness/detail from effective post processing.

Click on an image to see a larger version

Comparison 1: Panasonic FZ200, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, flash

Comparison 2, Panasonic FZ200, f/8, 1/640 sec, ISO 100, flash

Comparison 3: Panasonic G5, f/22, 1/160 sec, ISO 160, flash

Comparison 4, Panasonic G5, f/22, 1/160 sec, ISO 160, flash

Comparison 5, Canon 70D, f/32, 1/250 sec, ISO 800, flash

Comparison 6, Canon 70D, f/16, 1/80 sec, ISO 1600, available light
(I made a mistake in processing this one and included the extra sharpening in Silkypix that I normally use only for invertebrates. The fine crystalline structure of the petals is therefore probably a little overdone.)

I know, because people have told me, that my post processing looks to be complicated and time-consuming. That is not how I see it. I deal with large numbers of images and over the years I have deveoped a workflow that lets me deal with these large sets of images quite quickly and with much less effort than might appear from a description of the process. This involves using several pieces of software, using each for what it is particularly good at, and using batch processing to get images into a state where they are easy to handle before I start making any adjustments to individual images.

I currently use between two and six software products while processing a set of images. Depending on the circumstances this may include some or all of the following:

• Fast Picture Viewer, for an initial, very rapid trawl of the images to get rid of the obviously unusable ones. Fast Picture Viewer uses the small JPEG images embedded in raw files rather the raw files themselves as used by Fast Raw Viewer, but for my purposes the embedded JPEGs are good enough and Fast Picture Viewer has a macro facility which I use to file the selected (actually, the non-rejected) images by ISO, which makes DXO processing much easier.
• Either DXO PhotoLab (for stills) or Helicon Focus (for stacks) for the first stage of the processing, using PhotoLab for noise reduction of noisy small sensor raw files and using Helicon Focus for botanical subject stacking and associated retouching to cure or at least hide stacking problems.
• Sometimes, Silkypix to add extra sharpening/revealing of fine detail for invertebrates and/or rescuing colours from very bright areas, especially for flowers.
• Always, Lightroom, to apply image-specific adjustments such as cropping, adjusting tonality or localised sharpening or noise reduction, and select the images I want to keep.
• Very occasionally, Photoshop to do some additional processing that I can't do in Lightroom, for example complicated cloning.
• Quite often, XNView to review the processed images as output by Lightroom and see if I still want to keep them or not, or see if they need some additional processing.
• Always, Faststone Image Viewer to deal with the bureaucracy of renaming images, deciding what order to display them in and make backup copies locally and on line.

I use batch processing when using PhotoLab and/or Silkypix. In the case of PhotoLab the presets I use are specific to a camera and ISO. The PhotoLab batch processing can be very time-consuming, but it only takes a very small amount of time to set it up and the rest of the time I can leave it to cook and do other things.