Introduction to Adobe Photoshop

I use exclusively Adobe Photoshop to post processes my photos; even though there are many image editors, none come close to the wide range of features and the advanced controls of Photoshop CS3. The price is pretty high, but if you are seriously interested to post processing, it is a good investment: with the right techniques, Photoshop can really improve your photos.

A glance to Photoshop CS3 and Camera RAW

Adobe Photoshop CS3, announced in March 2007, is the tenth version of the most popular photo editing software. It has a rational and well-thought interface that gives access to the many controls. The workspace is easily customizable; on the right you see my usual workspace with PS CS3. On the left side there is the Toolbar; the image is in the center, and in the right side there are the windows that I use most often: Navigator, History and Layers. The upper (horizontal) toolbars contains the various menus and the settings for the selected tool. The strenght of Photoshop is a complete set of controls and tools that allows to retouch every aspect of the image (color, contrast, detail, etc.), to correct lens and camera errors, and to expand your creativity. Photoshop is not designed to be easy - some tools are pretty straightforward, but others require some time to learn how they works: the purpose of my articles about Photoshop is to explain how to get the best results from this program with nature photography images. On the right: the default workspace of Photoshop CS3

Photoshop includes Adobe Bridge, an excellent file browser, and Adobe Camera RAW, the plug-in to convert the RAW files of nearly all existing cameras. Every two-three months Adobe upgrades ACR to support the latest cameras; you can download the latest version from the Adobe Camera RAW page. The installation of ACR is not user-friendly at all - Adobe lets you download the (zipped) file, they you have to copy it in the folder "Program Files/Common Files/Adobe/Plug-Ins/CS3/File Formats" if you have windows or "Library/Application Support/Adobe/Plug-Ins/CS2/File Formats" with Macintosh. Why Adobe has choosen this system instead of a simple auto-installing application is still a mistery to me; lucliky, you don't need to update often the camera RAW file, unless you buy every new camera that comes out ;-)

My workflow : from camera to print

I carefully post processed each one of my RAW files to optimize the image; usually I spend 10-15 minutes per photo, even though some photos that requires advanced processings take more time. The first step is to set the camera file format on on RAW. The other parameters (Saturation, Contrast, Sharpening, White Balance) don't matter, you can set them as you want since they will be applied only to a small preview image, and the RAW file remains untouched. You can change all them when you open the file with ACR.

With Adobe Camera RAW, I set all the parameters and the controls on neutral values, as shown in the following screenshots. I prefer to avoid enhancements with ACR, because its controls are not as fine and advanced as the tool of Photoshop. Converting the file with these settings, you get a very flat, soft file: while it looks bad, it is actually a very "unthouched" image that has the maximimum detail you can extract from the file, and it is very workable with the tools of PS.

I set the controls of Camera RAW on neutral values to get a untouched file that I process exclusively with PS.

If the photo is very underexposed of overexposed, I use the Exposure slider to give the right brightness to the image, otherwise leave the Exposure on zero. I open the photo in 16 bit / Adobe RGB mode.

When I've loaded the photo into PS, I do the main adjustments of color and contrast for all the photos, and other customized processing: for example, if the photo has been taken at high ISO I use noise reduction; for some sunrise/sunset photos I use the technique of blended exposures to expand the dynamic range; many times I use the layers and layer mask to make selective adjustments of color, contrast and other enhancements (all my techniques are described in-depth in my Photoshop articles).

When I've finished the processings, I convert the photo to 8 bit and save it as uncompressed TIFF. I don't apply sharpening to this file: many magazines requires unsharpened files (becauce they prefer to apply their sharpening, instead of relying on the sharpening techniques of every photographer). I use the sharpening only when I create the web version of the photo, or when I want to make a print: in this case, I create a copy of the file, where I apply the sharpening required for a determined print size.

Why post processing?

There are many ways to post-process a photo. You can do just the basic adjustments of contrast and saturation, or even setting the camera on your preferred color/contrast parameter, shooting in JPEG and don't post-processes the photos at all. In the other hand, you can spend hours on every photo, to use advanced techniques and to enhance every aspect of the image that can be improved. You can consider nature photography as a kind of photojournalism, that has the purpose to show reality, or like portraiture and art, where every retouch is allowed. They are very different interpretations, but they are both legit.

My approach to nature photography is something between these two "extremes": I try to enhance the photo as much as I can, while maintaining its value of natural history image (in particular for animals: I consider the landscapes a more "artistic" genre). My photos are not a faithful representation of reality, rather an "interpretation" of the scene - I like warm, saturate colors, perfect contrast, clean background without distracting elements and perfect details. On the other hand, I want to mantain the natural history value, so I don't make composites (with composite I mean taking the subject from a photo and moving it into another photo), and I don't do other retouches that invalidate the image. Just to make an example, it is ok for me to clone out even large elements from the background, but I'd never add a sixt gill to a fish, even though it would be just a matter of cloning few pixel: it is not the width or the intensity of the retouch that matters, but its action.

This is not a rule: it is just my approach, a personal choice. I respect the different views about nature photography, and I like both the "journalistic" and the "artistic" interpretations.

The following photos are shown before and after, to give you an idea of the results that you can achieve with good post processing techniques, and to show how I processes my images. Remember that the RAW looks pretty flat due to the conversion setting that I use, as explained in the previous paragraph.

This is one of my most post-processed photos. Here, I did major cloning retouches to remove the out of focus herons.
The key to improve this photo is to work on contrast, to give depth to the image and to create strong, pleasing colors.
I cloned out the bright grass stem into background and I did some careful contrast ajudtsment to get the best colors and detail.
Many times, there is not a night and day difference: here, the main enhancement is the correction of brightness and contrast.
I cropped for composition and I warmed up the colors, to enhance the light. Reality was something between the two versions.
A tighter crop helped to focus the attention on the subject, and with some work on color and contrast I got very pleasing tones.
A simple crop, contrast and color balance. I've choosen to leave the grasses in front to give an idea of the environment.
I enhanced the colors and the contrast, paying much attention to preserve the detail in the white stamens.
I cloned out a stick and I "painted" on the out of focus areas to improve the background; I added a little of room on the bottom.
I cropped to get a less centered composition, and I enhanced the contrast. I warmed up the colors and I increased saturation.

Do you have comments or questions?

If you have comments or questions about this article, feel free to ask in the Juza Nature Photography Discussion Forum!