1.7. Preliminary EditingNow we come to the point in this book where the workflow of Photoshop editing and manipulation begins to take place. There are two main stages in this workflow: Camera Raw and Photoshop. 1.7.1. Editing Stage 1: Camera RawBefore you get into Photoshop, make sure you've done everything possible in Camera Raw to give yourself a good foundation. Remember, everything you do in Camera Raw is nondestructive, so you want to do as much as possible before you move on. You want to make your image look as gorgeous as you can in regard to color balance, dynamic range, cropping and leveling, lack of fringing and noise, and controlling contrast within specific ranges of Brightness with the new Curves tab. If you don't mind spending the money and taking the time to work outside of Photoshop, you might want to do even more on your RAW files with a third-party application such as Phase One Capture One or Pixmantec Raw Shooter Premium. The Camera Raw workflow is covered in Chapter 4. 1.7.2. Editing Stage 2: Photoshop CS2As amazing as Camera Raw is, it just doesn't do everything you might want to do. Rather than list all the things it doesn't do, I'll just list the things you'll most likely want to do in the most constructive and efficient order:
By following the steps above in order, you will easily locate the point where you made a revision to your image. Moreover, you're working from the place where the adjustment affects more of the overall image to the place where it affects lessat least until you get past the point of using Adjustment Layers. You are basically turning off layers from the top down. When you get to the point where your image is free of any content or characteristics you don't want it to have, stop and start building new layers. Now here's the really good part. You can keep the old layers, group them into a set or sets, and then turn off the set. Then, if you want to show yourself or an art director the difference between one version of the image and others, you just turn the layer sets on and off. This allows you to display whole ranges of interpretations of an image without ever having to change images. The specific tasks you'll do during this phase are covered in Chapters 5 through 11. |