Oct 4, 2012, 21:03
While each of us may follow different workflows, this is something I am used to. For most part this is simple, because I personally hate to develop or edit or do whatever to an image inside photoshop for hours.While that may be good to achieve a perfect photograph, I find myself OK with the photos I produce by following this simple workflow, which in simple and quick.
1.Loading the image onto the photoshop interface. Duplicate the original image and save the file as a .psd. Leaving the background layer locked, work with the duplicated layer.
2.Straitening the horizons etc. if necessary
3.Cropping.Use clone tool to fill areas where necessary, after the initial crop.
4.Zoom in 100% and look for any dust spots. You can remove them by cloning
5.Remove any distracting elements, that are not part of the composition by cloning. You may alternatively use the healing brush.
6.Set Reference points at Luminance thresholds.
7.Set white point and black point.
8.Remove color casts in shadows and highlights.
9.Adjust contrast and the saturation.
10,Sharpen the image, use a filter. Selective sharpening often works well.
11.Adjust the exposure levels. Use selective adjustments if necessary. Using multiply and screen layer modes is a clever option.
12.Flatten the image.
13.Final crop and sharpening
While this is the typical workflow, I may introduce Gaussian blur filter to smoothen the skins etc.if its about portraits.And for portraits I might be brightening the eyes, and fixing slight skin imperfections.
There are plugins available, to ease your efforts and to automate the process.And of course there are photoshop actions, to add a further touch to your photograph.
While the professional workflow might be very complicated than this, for day to day usage I find this enough.
1.Loading the image onto the photoshop interface. Duplicate the original image and save the file as a .psd. Leaving the background layer locked, work with the duplicated layer.
2.Straitening the horizons etc. if necessary
3.Cropping.Use clone tool to fill areas where necessary, after the initial crop.
4.Zoom in 100% and look for any dust spots. You can remove them by cloning
5.Remove any distracting elements, that are not part of the composition by cloning. You may alternatively use the healing brush.
6.Set Reference points at Luminance thresholds.
7.Set white point and black point.
8.Remove color casts in shadows and highlights.
9.Adjust contrast and the saturation.
10,Sharpen the image, use a filter. Selective sharpening often works well.
11.Adjust the exposure levels. Use selective adjustments if necessary. Using multiply and screen layer modes is a clever option.
12.Flatten the image.
13.Final crop and sharpening
While this is the typical workflow, I may introduce Gaussian blur filter to smoothen the skins etc.if its about portraits.And for portraits I might be brightening the eyes, and fixing slight skin imperfections.
There are plugins available, to ease your efforts and to automate the process.And of course there are photoshop actions, to add a further touch to your photograph.
While the professional workflow might be very complicated than this, for day to day usage I find this enough.