There are many like it but this one is mine.
On Tit Patrol.
I spent my New Year's Day out at Whiskey Hill photographing
tits. Yes sir, I love
tits. And praise the Lord, I'm finding Texas is chock
full of great
tits!
Yes, sir... those are nice tits, aren't they?
And you know, I'm not just a tit man...
I saw some peckers out at the ranch, too, but as everyone knows I prefer tits to peckers. Maybe next time I'll shoot a few for all you pecker lovers.
Working with Aperture & Photoshop
My Aperture/Photoshop workflow is constantly evolving as I dig deeper into various post-processing techniques. There are doubtless hundreds of Photoshop books describing hundreds of suggested workflows; the one that makes the most sense for me is described in
Leslie Alsheimer's "Black and White in Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom", and my own system is adapted from that. Photoshop integration is different with Aperture than it is with Lightroom -- for one thing, Lightroom and Photoshop share the same Camera Raw engine, while Aperture uses it's own raw converter then round-trips to Photoshop as 16-bit TIFF/PSD files, thereby losing all adjustments done in the first part of the workflow. As non-destructive editing is the Holy Grail of post-processing this is not a small consideration; the non-destructivness of Lightroom in this process is a strong selling point for that software. Still, I prefer Aperture to Lightroom in many ways and have decided (for now) to stick with it instead of switching over to an all-Adobe system. I figure I'm cool as long as I take my time and get it right the first time at each step, from the actual camera, through Aperture, to Photoshop, and back into Aperture. So far I've had few regrets for picking Aperture over Lightroom.
Why bother with Photoshop at all? I've done OK with Aperture alone for quite a while, as long as the adjustments I make are
global adjustments (i.e.: applied to the entire image). For example, if I increase the contrast using slider in Aperture, the whole photo gets enhanced. Most of the time this is fine. However, there are times that I need to make some
selective adjustments to only certain areas which need to be sharpened (or brightened or darkened or desaturated or whatever); Photoshop is the unquestionably the best tool for this type of work.
Over time I've settled into a image processing workflow that can be broken down into 4 general steps.
- Rate, tag & straighten your images upon importing into Aperture.
- Perform initial global adjustments in Aperture.
- Take image to Photoshop for selective adjustments and heavy processing.
- Return to Aperture for b&w conversion and/or final tweaks.
I share my system with fellow Aperture users on the inter-web-tubes because I found little available in the way of a detailed Aperture-Photoshop workflow anywhere and was pretty much left to figure out all this stuff by myself. If this helps anyone, or at least gives others some ideas... well, that's great. (Disclaimer: I'm not Scott Kelby. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...)
1. Rate, Tag & StraightenObviously, it all starts at the camera. The most important step in the process is, get the exposure right. Or, at least close. Use the camera's histogram. This is the one step you can't repeat later, there are no do-overs. I keep my 40D set to automatically bracket my exposures +/- 1 stop and use rapid-fire shutter drive just in case I don't have the time to screw around with camera settings. The golden rule is, if you start with shit, you'll end up with shit.
After I import the raw files into Aperture, I rate the shots that have some promise as 1-star and tag them with copyright info, keywords, captions, and whatever other metadata is required. At this early stage I will also straighten the image if needed; I do not crop my images until the final steps, after most other adjustments are completed.
To serve as an example, behold my Up In Smoke BBQ photo, taken 23-Nov-2008; in this case, for Step 1 I added various copyright and keyword info to the IPTC metadata fields in Aperture, rated it one star, and set it aside for almost a month before coming back to it.
2. Aperture Global AdjustmentsI try to do as little tweaking as possible at this step -- primarily the basic White Balance-Exposure-Enhance-Levels thing, plus possibly some Shadow & Highlight work. Just work down the bricks in order, making small adjustments; if a big adjustment is needed, the photo is probably crap anyway. However, with a little care, images that might be slightly under- or overexposed might be salvaged into something useful, maybe even spectacular. Just remember, less is more at this stage. What I hope to end up with at the end of this step is a good base image for further adjustment work in Photoshop. This version gets a 3-star rating to show that I've completed the initial adjustments.
In this example, my Up In Smoke image already had a fairly balanced histogram so I left the Exposure alone. I warmed up the White Balance slightly, and in the Enhance brick I dialed in a little Definition (0.55), Saturation (1.10) and Vibrancy (0.45). That's it -- no Levels or Shadow/Highlight adjustments even though the image is pretty dark in the foreground. Whenever I dialed in some Shadow, the noise got pretty awful (this was shot at ISO 800). So I adjusted for the sky (the most striking feature of the photo) and left the shadowy regions for Photoshop. Selecting "Edit With Photoshop" from the Images menu duplicates & converts the image to PSD format and launches Photoshop.
3. Photoshop Selective and Creative AdjustmentsHere's where things aren't quite locked down yet, as I'm still working out this part of my method. Alsheimer suggests converting to black & white at this point, but I don't know if that works for me unless I know for sure I want the finished product to be monochromatic. Also, despite being a Photoshop user since version 1.5, I'm still learning how to use the software. So with a stack of books by my side, Photoshop is a new adventure every time I dig in.
For this photo, I ran the image through Noise Ninja to knock out as much of the ISO noise (using the tailgate of the black pickup as reference). Then I did a Color Range Select on the shadows, Feathered at 10 pixels, and applied a Curves Adjustment Layer to the selection, brightening the foreground just enough to keep the noise from popping back up. I selected the Up In Smoke sign and boosted the saturation a wee bit, then saved and returned to Aperture. This version gets a 4-star rating to show that it's been Photoshopped. Since it was converted to PSD format in the previous step, I am able to return to it later and have all of my layers intact. For the next step, however, I work on a duplicate version rather than add my final Aperture adjustments to this version.
4. Aperture Final AdjustmentsNow we're almost home... The Photoshop output is close, but I want more dramatic and vibrant skies so I pump up the Highlights (28.0) and High Tonal Width (70.0) and add a little more Vibrancy (0.30). Some Shadow (9.0) and Low Tonal Width (14.0) bring the foregound out a little more, and finally some Vignette (Type: Gamma, Amount: 0.44, Size: 0.76) to finish it off. Rate this 5-star to mark it as finished, and voila... instant Velvia!
But wait, there's more. Duplicate this version and convert to Monochrome (Red 35%, Green 35%, Blue 0%). Re-tweak Shadows (29.0), and Low Tonal Width (28.0), dial in some Mid Contrast (4.0), go even heavier with the Vignette (Amount: 0.7, Size: 1.5), and finish it off with Sepia Tone (0.5).
This is also the stage where I will crop the image if necessary, although this particular shot is one of those rare occasions that cropping is not needed. If I cropped earlier in the workflow before the Photoshop round-trip, I wouldn't be able to change the crop later without having to repeat all of the adjustments in Steps 3 and 4. Again, the destructive editing beast rears it's hideous head.
Back to the black & white thing -- I choose to convert to monochrome in Step 4 (Aperture) rather than Step 3 (Photoshop) because I still like the simpler Monochrome Mixer in Aperture better than any of the several ways of handling monochrome in Photoshop. Maybe I just don't have a handle on the Photoshop B&W adjustmet tool yet, but I just seem to get better results with Aperture -- with the added bonus that, by doing the conversion in Step 4 I'm able to use the same Photoshop-tweaked version for both color and black & white final versions.
I keep separate versions for each step along the way, so for every final image I have (at least) 4 versions (or 5, if I have color and b&w final versions). This way, if I want to go back at a later date and re-tweak or try out a new technique or whatever, I can jump in at any point.
Silos
Canon EOS 40D | EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 (@ 10mm) | 1/80 @ f/13 (+1.0ev) ISO 100
(Unprocessed image here)
Canon EOS 40D | EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 (@ 10mm) | 1/80 @ f/13 (+1.0ev) ISO 100
(Unprocessed image here)Interesting clouds accompanied a cold front that moved in earlier today. While Linda and I were out and about I noticed the increasingly neat sky and went looking for something to put in the foreground. The silos on CR 319 in Beemerville performed this task admirably.
Raw images from the 40D came out of the camera with a 3650 K white balance, even though the camera was set to 4000 K. Still not sure about WB on the 40D in RAW mode, but it's a moot point since RAW allows white balance adjustment in post. I sent the original images to Aperture and Lightroom to continue my comparison tests. I'm still on the fence - Lightroom has a few tools that work better than their counterparts in Aperture, but I still like the way Aperture works better. Since I can (and do) use Photoshop for any serious adjustments, the scale is increasingly tipping in favor of Aperture. The above images are the result of Aperture - Photoshop round-trip processing.
About Paul Lannuier
But wait, there's more. Duplicate this version and convert to Monochrome (Red 35%, Green 35%, Blue 0%). Re-tweak Shadows (29.0), and Low Tonal Width (28.0), dial in some Mid Contrast (4.0), go even heavier with the Vignette (Amount: 0.7, Size: 1.5), and finish it off with Sepia Tone (0.5).
This is also the stage where I will crop the image if necessary, although this particular shot is one of those rare occasions that cropping is not needed. If I cropped earlier in the workflow before the Photoshop round-trip, I wouldn't be able to change the crop later without having to repeat all of the adjustments in Steps 3 and 4. Again, the destructive editing beast rears it's hideous head.
