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Here is the workflow I have adopted for working with my N Digital:
- On the field, where I pretty much do all my shooting, RAW mode is out for me because of the lack of preview. TIFF takes too long, so the best quality JPEG is it.
- After trying various settings with 1.07 and 1.08, like Irakly and Marc I am now shooting at straight 1.07. Granted, the images look like mush out of the box, but they also noticeably provide the best tonal range options that you can then squeeze out using Photoshop. I noticed that by boosting the chroma you do get better looking pics out of the box but the contast and chroma range suffer especially if you you are off the perfect exposure.
- Once in Photoshop I re-assign to Adobe RGB color profile which improves initial color, then convert profile (NOT assign profile) to sRGB. As far as I have been able to tell, this has not affected the color quality at all (24 bits is 24 bits, I believe just some hue aspects in an unusual Cyan range are different), and I do enjoy the color I get. This way I don't have to keep separate copies for web and print.
- I save my working copy as TIFF with ZIP compression, also non-lossy but usually smaller size than LZW, and archive the original JPEG. This way there's no quality loss between work sessions.
- If I have to do any kind of extensive surgery like wire or spot removal, I save a "working original" TIFF after the surgery, separate from the working copy in which I continue my image processing.
- I do all the tonal manipulation on the working TIFF copy, usually some combo of Contrast / Brightness, Saturation, Level, and occasionally Curves.
- For "dodging / burning-in" I use the magic selection tool to isolate the area, with the marquee for large areas inside the irregular shape, then depending on the image I use Saturation, Contrast / Brightness, and Level.
- I have played with switching to 16-bit color during most manipulations to let the calculations be performed at the higher precision, then switching back to 8-bit at the end. In theory should help, but who knows
- I print off the working TIFF.
- I create web JPEGs off the working TIFF.
DJ
- On the field, where I pretty much do all my shooting, RAW mode is out for me because of the lack of preview. TIFF takes too long, so the best quality JPEG is it.
- After trying various settings with 1.07 and 1.08, like Irakly and Marc I am now shooting at straight 1.07. Granted, the images look like mush out of the box, but they also noticeably provide the best tonal range options that you can then squeeze out using Photoshop. I noticed that by boosting the chroma you do get better looking pics out of the box but the contast and chroma range suffer especially if you you are off the perfect exposure.
- Once in Photoshop I re-assign to Adobe RGB color profile which improves initial color, then convert profile (NOT assign profile) to sRGB. As far as I have been able to tell, this has not affected the color quality at all (24 bits is 24 bits, I believe just some hue aspects in an unusual Cyan range are different), and I do enjoy the color I get. This way I don't have to keep separate copies for web and print.
- I save my working copy as TIFF with ZIP compression, also non-lossy but usually smaller size than LZW, and archive the original JPEG. This way there's no quality loss between work sessions.
- If I have to do any kind of extensive surgery like wire or spot removal, I save a "working original" TIFF after the surgery, separate from the working copy in which I continue my image processing.
- I do all the tonal manipulation on the working TIFF copy, usually some combo of Contrast / Brightness, Saturation, Level, and occasionally Curves.
- For "dodging / burning-in" I use the magic selection tool to isolate the area, with the marquee for large areas inside the irregular shape, then depending on the image I use Saturation, Contrast / Brightness, and Level.
- I have played with switching to 16-bit color during most manipulations to let the calculations be performed at the higher precision, then switching back to 8-bit at the end. In theory should help, but who knows
- I print off the working TIFF.
- I create web JPEGs off the working TIFF.
DJ