Several weeks ago I wrote a post regarding how to shoot a runway during Fashion Week.  I quickly realized that many of the comments I received had less to do with shooting the runway than what to do with your photos in the post-processing stage to bring out the best in them.  So, for this week’s tech post, I’ve decided to give you the basics on photo processing techniques and what each element of the develop workflow actually does in plain and simple English.  This will be the first in a several part series that I’ll be writing over the next few weeks.

For this tutorial I’ll be using Adobe Lightroom 3, which I think is far and away the best processing program out there and because its develop workflow is almost identical to that of Adobe Camera RAW’s, which comes packaged with Photoshop and is thus the most popular processing program these days; no Apple Aperture or iPhoto here.

 

Hold Your Horses

A few disclaimers before I get into it:

1. This will be a description of processing for a RAW file, not a JPEG.  Refer to my reply to the first comment of that runway post for an explanation of why you should be shooting RAW for any images you really care about.  Also check out my reply to Alterations Needed’s comment for an explanation of the best way to expose for digital images.

2.  Lightroom and Camera RAW are not the cheapest of programs, I understand that.  That’s why I have absolutely zero compunction about stealing my software; it’s literally saved me thousands of dollars over the last few years.  As bloggers we need to take it where we can get it.

3.  There is no single proper way to process your photos, it’s all about seasoning to taste and bringing out the elements of the photo that truly matter, so feel free to play.

The histogram is your friend, shake hands with it and say hello.  The histogram is a visual representation of an image’s tonal values, i.e. a sort of topographical map of the brightness and contrast of the image and the image’s colors.

This flat image is the Play-Doh you’ll be playing with and molding.  I tend to go for a darker overall look and so by the end of processing I usually have a lot of clipped shadow detail and dense, inky blacks in my image and a histogram that’s weighted heavily towards the left side. 

Here’s an example of how to read a histogram for an unedited RAW image and then for the final image after processing:

 

Before:  Note the “clipped” highlights on the right side of the histogram; this represents the extremely bright, blown out highlights on the model’s face, skin, and in the white parts of the dress.  On the left side of the histogram you’ll notice “clipped” data as well; this represents the upper left portion of the image, the shadowy part where the audience sits.  You’ll also notice a high presence of red and yellow, as the runway lights are very warm and the image hasn’t been white balanced yet (which is one of the subjects for next week’s post).

 

 

After: Now notice how the histogram has changed to reflect the changes I made to the image.  I brought the exposure down to bring out the detail in her face and skin, see how the right side of the histogram is no longer clipping at all?  I also raised the level of the blacks to cut out the audience and make the model pop more, note that the histogram is now weighted more toward the left side.  Also, after white balancing the image, you can see how there is less red and yellow in the histogram, which really brings out the blues in the dress.

 

The histogram is not the end-all-be-all, there is no single “correct” histogram.  It is, however, a useful tool to know when you’re processing your images to see how contrasty your image is and to see how much information you really have.  Next week I’ll be going over the basic processing tools, which, I promise, will be way more exciting.