Instant images have never been easier to obtain than now. There is a seemingly unending plethora of cameras on the market that will do everything for you. However, if you read the specifications before you buy, you may notice that many of the lower cost cameras save their still images as JPEGs only. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” I hear you ask. Well, on the face of it, absolutely nothing. These cameras will give you a reasonably acceptable image that you can print out immediately without any requirement to process it. However, there are inherent problems. JPEGs are small files and that small size is achieved because the JPEG format is “lossy”. This means that enormous amounts of image information are actually thrown away during saving by use of an algorithm that compares colour information in adjacent pixels and discards nearly identical information. Taken to extreme, this can result in images with noticeable little blocks in them. Even JPEGs saved at the best setting your camera offers will have little flecks in them that are visible when the image is viewed at higher magnification. This may not matter so much if you only want to print the image as a 4 x 6 inch print but if you want print the image as an A3 print or larger, or if you want to crop the image and only print a portion of it, you may be unhappy with the results.
So, what is the solution? Well, if your camera also can save images in RAW format (many premium compact and all DSLR cameras can), then switch that option on and read on. RAW format is precisely what it says. Just the image data – the camera has not made any permanent decisions for you on settings such as white balance, exposure (within certain generous limits), saturation etc. It has also saved ALL of the pixel information. Yes, you can’t fit as many RAW files on your memory card as you can JPEGS, but memory cards are relatively inexpensive.
What about image processing? The good news is that if your camera has the RAW image option, then your camera manufacturer will have provided you with free software so that you can process the images. Alternatively, third party software, such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Paintshop Pro, also process RAW images with ease. Let’s look at how you do this in Photoshop.
You will have already thoroughly vetted your images so that only images with genuine promise are still around to process (See Be Ruthless for more on this subject). Open the file using Adobe Camera Raw, either by launching Photoshop or directly from Adobe Bridge. My example today is a macro shot of some Australian native daisies taken with my “handbag” camera, a Canon Powershot S95 compact camera. This camera is tiny but has excellent image quality and also saves images in RAW format (the reason I bought it). Quick disclaimer – I am not affiliated with Canon but I genuinely like the products.
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| Golden Daisies (really, really flat) - © Red Rose Digital Art - Rosanne E. Casu |
OK, this definitely does not look like the world’s best image. It was just about to rain so the light was low and flat. If I had saved this as a JPEG, I doubt very much that it could have been salvaged and it certainly would have been full of artefacts, but I shot it in RAW format so there was a good chance here.
Click now on Camera Calibration (the little “camera”) and choose the camera profile that you like best. I nearly always choose Camera Standard but there can be good reasons for checking the others out. The image still looks flat.
Next choose Lens Corrections (the sixth tab from the left). This is immensely useful. Every camera lens will have inherent distortion problems, especially zoom lenses, which will be manifested in the image as either barrel or pincushion distortion i.e. straight lines in the image will look either bowed out or in. In addition, lens all have varying amounts of chromatic aberrations which can be seen as solid colour lines on high contrast margins. Needless to say, the cheaper the lens or the bigger the zoom, the worse the distortion. These issues can be counteracted either partially or completely by locating the correct lens profile for your camera or lens. I chose the Canon Powershot S95 lens profile and a slight inherent barrel distortion was corrected. Yes, the image still looks flat.
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| Golden Daisies (still really flat) - © Red Rose Digital Art - Rosanne E. Casu |
Next choose Detail (the third tab from the left). Here you can deal with any noise in your image and can also sharpen it. I prefer to deal with both noise and sharpening in Photoshop. So I drag the sharpening and noise reduction sliders all the way to left and set them to 0. The image still looks flat – mind you, you have spent less than one minute so far on the image to get it to this point.
Now click on Basic (the first tab from the left). Now you can get busy with non-destructively improving the image, ensuring a good range of tones and suitable contrast and colour. With this image, I applied the following settings:
- White Balance: I left the setting at “As Shot” which meant that the Temperature was 5200K and the Tint at +9. This is a fairly standard Daylight White Balance.
- Exposure: I left this at 0 since there was already a full tonal range, slightly clipped for blue in extreme shadows (not enough to worry about).
- Recovery: I set this at 43 to compress the Highlights in order to improve the spread of tones.
- Fill Light: I set this at 8 – no point trying to correct the saturated blues in the shadows.
- Blacks: I also left the Blacks at 5 (the default).
- Brightness: This is now where the great improvements start to happen. I shifted the Brightness up to +50. This made the mid-tones lighter rather than just the highlights which is what would have happened if I had increased the value for the Exposure. The image is now much brighter but still flat.
- Contrast: This was set at +25.
- Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation: Clarity and Vibrance were both set to +10 to improve local contrast and the saturation of the less saturated colours, respectively. Saturation was left at 0 since the yellows were already quite strong.
At this point, the image has been improved quite considerably and is now ready for one more tweak.
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| Golden Daisies (much better now) - © Red Rose Digital Art - Rosanne E. Casu |
Click on Tone Curve (the second tab from the left). Here we can tweak the Highlights, Lights, Darks and Shadows individually to improve the image further. I chose the following settings by sliding the sliders around until I was happy with the results:
- Highlights: +24
- Lights: +9
- Darks: -21
- Shadows:-14
This resulted in a stronger, vibrant image with no artefacts even at high magnification, ready for further minor edits and printing in Photoshop.
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| Golden Daisies (nearly finished) - © Red Rose Digital Art - Rosanne E. Casu |
The final image: I opened it in Photoshop, applied a very small amount of noise reduction using Topaz DeNoise 5 and gave the image a little more punch using Topaz Adjust 4 (both from Topaz Labs – again, I just like the products). This image is now vibrant and alive, a far cry from the dull, flat image I started with. It also only took a few minutes to complete this series of edits.
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| Golden Daisies - © Red Rose Digital Art - Rosanne E. Casu |
As you can see, an image that would have been ready for the bin as a JPEG was able to be turned into an attractive vibrant image, just by having shot it in RAW format and a few minutes of editing. If you have RAW format available on your camera, try switching it on and enjoy the improvement in image quality!
If you enjoyed this post and the images presented here, please check out the rest of my main web site at http://www.redrosedigitalart.com/, my on-line photo galleries directly at http://redrosedigitalart.smugmug.com/, http://redrosedigitalart.artistwebsites.com/ and http://www.redbubble.com/people/rrda or my greeting cards at http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/RedRoseDigitalArt. You can also find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RedRoseDigitalArt. Come and say “Hi”!
