New recently completed project in the photography gallery for Ian Springford Architects.
Typical processing workflow is something like:
- compare all bracketed exposures in Adobe Lightroom, flag the most likely ones, eventually end up with the best one
- adjust exposure, white balance
- remove chromatic aberration, vignetting
- remove sensor dust spots with spotting tool
- export tiff to ptlens, correct any distortion & perspective
- back to Lightroom, final crop
Thankfully Lightroom takes most of the pain out of doing this to 250 odd shots, I just wish it was possible to do distortion correction on a dng without converting to a tiff.
Any chance future LR updates might negate the need for ptlens?
from what I have read on the adobe forums it seems it involves pixel level transformations (ie what photoshop does) but I’m still hoping!
Nice shots, sir. I keep wondering if there might be an automatic chromatic aberration detector/fixer out there? I mean, it’s pretty easy to spot. Mind you, I guess that would involve analysing the image itself, rather than just the exif data, as PTlens does for barrel distortion.
Out of interest, what colorspace settings do you use when exporting from Lightroom?
thanks, I find CA is more or less consistent on a particular set of shots with the same lens, but for these i think i did tweak each one individually. I suspect the amount of CA could also be dependent on the contrast of what you are shooting?
I normally export things intended for web as srgb, otherwise adobergb… I don’t print much, maybe I’m doing it all wrong?!
Hey Peter,
I just want to maybe give you a few pointers that might make your photos even better. These already look good.
You can take you bracketed photos and merge them into a HDR image… realistic look, not the crazy ones that everyone shows as HDR online. It is because most cameras can only see five levels of f-stop where the human eye can see 11 to 12 f-stops (if you put it camera terms).
I use photomatix (I’m not a rep or the such… just a photographer/3d graphics person so you may find something else) because Adobe doesn’t plan on having a good workflow until CS5 (what I have heard from alpha testers)… it is what I do for my interior architecture photos. It really helps normalize the outside lighting with the indoor light so nothing is blown out, light sources from being blown out or shadows too dark.
The other thing is you have to use a tripod too to get a good HDR image… I believe the above pictures aren’t by how much of the red chair is showing on the right or this is taken at two different points.
Also you got the chromatic aberration part… there is too many photographers out there that never look at it. That is almost step one for me after choosing the photo.
Keep shooting,
Topher
Hi topher, thanks for your comment. I should maybe have pointed out that the image on the left is the corrected one, the image on the right as shot. All photos were taken on a tripod, the reason I put these two up was just to illustrate how much of a difference correcting the distortion makes. (maybe thats why you thought they were two different photos?)
As for HDR, although I use it extensively in my 3d work (see related HDR post), I’m just not a fan when it comes to photography. Having played around with various techniques (inc. photomatix) for several years, I decided that I actually quite like blown highlights and don’t mind not being able to see all parts of an image at a normal exposure. That’s just my preference though. I do sometimes use several exposures and blend them together manually in photoshop using masks, or just use the linear grad tool in lightroom. I have yet to see any photo that looks good having had the photomatix treatment, but am willing to be proved wrong!
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2010/04/preview_of_lens_correction_sol.html
et voila lens correction is now included in lightroom 3, no more need for ptlens
Saw that too, great news!