2nd Step; Saturation: A digital sensor reacts very differently to light than does a film emulsion. Film reacts chemically, photons passing through the emulsion cause a chemical reaction, the wavelength of the EM wave, the color, depends entirely on how energized the photon is. Since higher energy causes shorter wavelengths, and any chemical reaction will react faster when more energy is present, film emulsion is very, very good at capturing color, because it reacts directly with the wavelength of the light hitting it. Charge-Coupled Devices don’t react chemically, they react electrically, and they don’t react with light, but rather with heat. It works because on the scale of the light-dot, heat and light are directly proportional, that is, more heat is equivalent to more light, less heat means less light. The most common CCD type found in today’s digital cameras is the Complimentary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) chip. If you’re familiar with Ohm’s laws, you’ll know that in a semiconductor, as heat increases, resistance decreases, and thus the resistor draws more current so that the voltage of the circuit remains constant. This makes the digital technology possible, when you have 6.1 million resistors (what we know as light dots), the camera’s processor can calculate, based on how the resistors drew current, the image, and put it together to create said image. The only problem is that it works in black and white, color is a little more tricky, so to make CCD’s sensitive to color, each light dot is broken down into four sections, one sensitive to blue, one sensitive to red, and two sensitive to green (Your eye tends to sense sharpness best in the Green part of the color spectrum). That works to add color, but still, straight-out-of-the-camera RAW images still seem to lack a healthy amount of saturation. To correct this, in Photoshop, I create an adjustment layer for Hue/Saturation and raise the saturation by 20 points, always. *Next, I use Jeff Miller’s Velvia Mask action, and instead of brushing over certain parts of the mask to reveal the saturated layer below, I use the fill bucket with a tolerance of 255 (so it paints over everything) and an opacity of 60%. Depending on the images, I will make one to three passes before flattening the image.

3rd Step; Sharpening: I have my own progressive sharpening steps which I use now, I’ve put it into an action so all I have to do is hit play and erase away the jaggies, but here’s the steps of the action: 1st step, resize the photo down to the size you choose (I use 1200 pixels wide). Then, duplicate your background layer, and on the duplicate layer, apply USM (My settings: 250%, .2 Radus, 0 Threshold). I then duplicate the new layer, and apply another setting of USM on this layer. Finally, I make a duplicate of the new layer and apply one last pass of USM on this new layer. By this point, the jaggies are clearly visable, all you have to do is erase them away. If you’ve erased them away from the top layer and they still appear, simply go to the layer below it and erase there. Keep doing this until all the jaggies are gone and you’re left with a nice sharp image.

4th Step; Final Corrections: All that’s left is make sure the image is free of sensor dust, and remove any offending dust spots on the image. I make a duplicate of the background layer, then go to image>adjustments>equalize on the new layer. This will make all the dust spots pop out. I then use the lasso tool to select the dust spot to an area of about ten pixels outside the spot, and delete the equalized layer. The selection remains and all you have to do is clone inside each selection you’ve made, then deselect. If nothing else needs to be done, then save the photo and prepare to upload.

Exposure: Usually I use a grey card to take my exposure and it is always very accurate, however sometimes it is necessary to fix an exposure, and there are several ways in which to go about doing just that. For minor adjustments, for example alot of airlines now paint white on top of the fuselage but darker colors below the fuselage (United, British Airways), I like to brighten up the belly of the aircraft. To do this I duplicate my background layer, then on this duplicate layer, create a Levels adjustment layer and brighten up the whole thing. When I’m done, I’ll go to Layers > Merge Down, so that the changes I made on the adjustment layer are now a part of the image layer. Then, on the top layer, I add a “Hide All” layer mask, to do this, simply go to Layer > Add Layer Mask > Hide All. You will notice that your foreground and background colors change to white and black, and this is because you are no longer painting on the layer, you’re changing the opacity of the mask. Painting white on the image makes the mask less opaque, thus causing the mask to be less visable and the adjustment layer you’ve just made to show through, and painting black over the mask causes the layer below to be less visable. This makes brightening only certain objects in a photo very easy because all you have to do is paint a little white down with a 50% opacity to the part you want brightened and you’ll make the photo pop with a nice, subtle brightness.

For more drastic exposure corrections, it is necessary to adjust the RGB curve of the photo. This makes it possible to adjust the levels of the whole range of the photo, from the shadows to the highlights, individually. With curves, it is possible to brighten up the shadows without blowing out the highlights, which makes it a very handy exposure adjustment tool. You’ll notice that it also works for each color, but unless there’s something really screwy going on with your photo, I simply set it to RGB for the adjustment.

That pretty well covers the workflow, if you have any questions at all do not hesitate to e-mail me at Eric@rockymountainavphotos.com or ask in our forums, we are very happy to help you achieve great results with your photography!

*Note: This step is only intended for Digital images. Those taken on film will not need this step because, as said above, film is directly sensitive to the color of the light hitting it.

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Also, don't forget to visit our forums, Where we discuss everything from what made Jason's face turn red to all the different ways Eric has messed up a photo! Ok, we don't do much of that, but we do like to discuss what's coming in, what used to be here back in the days of yore, the different editing and in-camera techniques we use, plus any issues concerning the site get discussed as well. We also have a great News section, as well as the Photo Gallery Where photos using these techniques are displayed!

All material copyright 2006 Kyle Matson, Eric D Smith, Jason Thacher, and Ryan Richter.
No use without permission.