NB: This document is work in progress and not completed yet.

Being an average photographer I’ve decided to at least get my pictures to an excellent (well … as good as it gets …) technical quality. Basically I want the picture to be sharp, the exposure right and colors correct. Not much more, but not less either.

Pre-requisites:
- calibrated display using X-Rite Eye One Display 2
- create custom ICC profile for my Nikon D700 (update: X-Rite Eye One Display 2 does not allow to be updated to create camera profiles, therefore I don’t have a custom ICC profile I’m going to use. Instead I will be using the generic D700 profile in Capture One).
- My first shot includes the Colorchecker SG target, which I will then use to create an ICC-profile per session using the Photoshop Plugin inCamera from PictoColor.

I’m following the Color Management Recommendation by Thom Hogan:

1. Set ProPhotoRGB in your converter as your Color Space if you shoot raw (it doesn’t matter what the camera setting is). You’ll be surprised to know that your DSLR can do much more subtle and extended color than AdobeRGB can do. Fortunately, whatever setting you have in your raw converter will override your camera setting.
2. Set sRGB as your Color Space if you shoot JPEG and print at labs or if you only output to the Web. Setting anything else means you have to convert your Color Space before sending the image to print or putting it on the Web.
3. Profile your monitor. This is the best thing you can do to help you achieve good color. And these days, it doesn’t cost much. But make sure the monitor profile is only used for the monitor! It’s not a Color Space.
4. Use the printer driver and custom profiles for the paper you print on. All printer makers have profiles for their papers, and most paper manufacturers have profiles now, as well. Only when you know how to print this way should you try anything more sophisticated or switch to having the application handle the color management during printing.

I also found a nice guide to Color Management on the X-rite website.

My photo workflow:

- apply custom white balance using an Expodisc
- use Elinchrom BX Ri studio strobes if needed
- manually meter necessary exposure using the light meter (only for studio strobes)
- use ISO 200 whenever possible
- shooting in RAW
- ingest photos from CF-card using Photomechanic, apply default caption and default keywords
- add basic description and keywords in Photomechanic

- open photos in Capture One doing the following corrections:
– use generic Nikon D700 camera ICC profile
– correct exposure
– correct white/black-point
– apply 5:4 crop
– export JPG (for upload to Photoshelter) [sRGB]
– export TIF (for further processing in Photoshop) [ProPhotoRGB]
– merge RAW and JPG (group together) in Photomechanic
– upload both to Photoshelter for archiving

For panoramas:

- same as above but no crop
- stitch photos using autopano pro
- crop to taste

For HDR:

- same as above, but no exposure correction
- using Photomatix to create HDR
- Post-Process in Photoshop (white/black point, crop)

Further Processing:

For pick’s, pictures I like enough to spend some more time on them, I do the following in Photoshop:

- create shot-specific ICC profile using
- reduce noise using NIK Software where needed
- apply Portraiture on portraits where needed
- apply LucisArt effects where benefitial

Book recommendation:

Update 20091012: I give up … I like the color calibration of my monitor and I’m glad I did it (and repeat it at least weekly now); however, the custom profile of my camera did not bring any good results .. I was hoping, that I just add a shot of the Colorchecker SG Target, apply it to the picture and good, but that’s not the case. If you want decent results you need to spend a lot of attention to have it evenly lightend etc. In the end the generic camera profile Capture One provides is good enough for me and because the monitor is calibrated what I see matches the print. Thats good enough for me.

I am trying to create a photo book using Adobe Indesign CS4. I will send the exported JPGs to Millers Lab, but have trouble to come up with a good photo book design. Are there any professional templates available?

Please note that I am not looking for a company to print the book. I have tried Blurb before and even though it was ok, I wasn’t perfectly happy with the results (prints were too dark). I am impressed with Millers Lab so far, so thats my print company of choice. I am really only looking for an InDesign Template. Unfortunately Google-searches so far only returned print companies.

Update: I finally found at least one provider at ScrapGirls. Please comment on this post if you know others.