Digital Post-Processing

[Michael Tam]

In the beginning, there were negatives and slides when photographers were judicious in their number of exposures.  In the digital age, there is no limit to the volume of exposures per photographic expedition.  As a result, the ability to retrieve a particular image requires diligent organization.  

Photoshop CS series was initially designed for the use of drafting professionals whereas Lightroom was built from ground-up for photograhers.  Lightroom is a catalogue system and not a browser.  It enables easy access and workflow.  To understand further the difference between Photoshop and Lightroom, the following article is very helpful to learn the advantagous way to utilize both of these wonderful post-processing tool:

http://www.naturescapes.net/articles/te ... fe-easier/

Good birding and photography.

[Michael Tam]

The RAW format is a proprietary format of each DSLR manufacturer while DNG is the Adobe universal image standard.  For a post-processing software to read the RAW data, there must be a compatible RAW convertor to import the file into the process.

Not all RAW convertors are created equal.  The following article compares several widely used post-processing softwares, including the popular Adobe Lightroom 4, in the the performance of various features:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/821958 ... ightroom-4

Good birding and photography.

[Michael Tam]

A constant struggle for nature photographers is the search for a tack-sharp image on one's subject.  The sharpening tool on Photoshop is very helpful to mitigate deficiencies that exist in the original capture due to a variety of reasons.  The following article described the use of the Unsharp Mask Filter in Photoshop in this regard:

http://www.naturescapes.net/articles/te ... -unveiled/

Good birding and photography.

[Michael Tam]

In the pursuit of a sharp focus wildlife image, there is frequent call for high shutter speed in order to eliminate motion blur which cannot be corrected in digital post-processing.  However, this double edge sword is the corresponding increase in ISO, therefore the risk of noise in the captured image.

In this article, nature photographer, Juza, described the workflow of noise reduction in Photoshop CS-3, which can be deduced in the current version CS-6 below:

http://www.naturescapes.net/articles/te ... otographs/

Good birding and photography.