My new color managed workflow
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.
Nikon 50mm/f1.4g lense review
This became my favorite lense. It’s (relatively) cheap, has a fast autofocus and f/1.4 is great for most subjects (portraits). I also use it for panorama pictures where I stitch picture together using Autopano pro.
Well, now I have a 3-line review.
I will write a bit more later on, but bottom line is: it is a great lense which I like very much.
Some sample pictures taken with this lense today:
Zoo Zuerich – Images by Markus Linke
Imagekind
Today one of my pictures and this blog was featured on Imagekind. Check it out here: http://blog.imagekind.com/2009/03/05/how-to-photograph-in-hdr/
Dave Hill Style – my first attempt
This is my first attempt to create a picture with a Dave Hill / Jill Greenberg look.
No more snapshots!
I currently have 13,282 pictures on flickr, because I use it as a cheap picture archive. I thought just adding some tags to the pictures and putting them into folders would make them easy to retrieve, but I was wrong. Therefore I’ve decided to do some changes to the way I take pictures. In the old days with my F5 I was carefully planning each shot (because film costed money). With digital I just shoot the same thing 10 times for no good reason.
I was planning to only keep pictures:
- which are razor sharp at 100% (unless it’s a memorable moment)
- which have the correct exposure (to justify my new light meter)
- which have proper white balance
- which are straightend and cropped
Those pictures will get a “qa/qc”-tag.
Did I forget anything?
Markus @ Alamy.com
I’m just about to have my first pictures published on Alamy.com. (I’m testing the “featured article”-function of the website, so this is why you see this posting before all other show up.)
