Living a Non-Destructive Lifestyle
Posted by Wilk | Filed under post processing
I’ll say it ’till I’m blue in the face, then I’ll keep on saying it. Learning and using non-destructive editing techniques is the most important part of post processing you work. Is it possible all the time? Nope. I have situations where I have no choice, but even then I’m wise enough to make one safe layer that I keep tucked at the bottom of the Photoshop layer pallet for the just-in-case.
By enlarge though; there is absolutely no reason to physically touch a single pixel in your shot these days. So what’s the big deal? There are many reasons that non-destructive editing is important, but the biggest by far is the concept that you may indeed revisit the image, and if you have directly manipulated the pixels without a safe unmanipulated layer in the file, there’s nothing you can do but wish that you could undo the damage you’ve done, but you can’t. At that point you have two options, start from scratch or live with what you’ve done.
There are a couple layers to the non-destructive philosophy:
Using a RAW processor
Whether you shoot JPEG or Raw, you can and SHOULD use a Raw processor as the first step to working any image. Let me be clear… if all you shoot is JPEG, you should use a raw processor as the first step. Whether it’s Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Lightroom, Nikon Capture NX or any of the other RAW processors out there that allow you to edit JPEGs, it should always be your first step. The three programs I mentioned here especially (I say that because I actually know them) give you a wealth of adjustment possibilities that are either more difficult to do in Photoshop or simply can’t be done.
The great thing about using a RAW processor whether you shoot RAW or JPEG is, they are always non-destructive! Unless you manipulate a JPEG in a RAW processor and overwrite the original file, The changes you make in that RAW processor not only don’t manipulate a single pixel in the original, at least in the case of the two Adobe products, they keep track of the changes you made to that particular photograph in a metadata file, so if you decide you want to redo a particular JPEG after looking at your final, all you have to do is pull it back into Adobe Camera RAW or Lightroom (whichever one you used the first time) and the changes you made originally are already there! I suggest you settle on ACR or Lightroom early in the process, because Adobe was unable (or unwilling) to make the metadata files that hold the corrections cross comparable. There is a way to put the changes you made in Lightroom in a sidecar file (xmp) and then have those changes available in ACR. Because of those complications, it’s important to settle on your RAW processor and use just that one.
My impressions on which one to choose? I use both Nikon Capture NX2 and Adobe Camera RAW for the most part.
Capture NX on some JPEGS and RAW because I own Nikon equipment and NX processes RAW files especially better than anyone else because it’s their file format. Things like noise reduction, sharpening and other adjustments that are proprietary—All other companies, Adobe included have to reverse engineer every RAW camera format to do what they do. I stopped using NX because v1 was pretty much unusable. I have a dual Xeon and it was SLOW. Those problems seem to have been completely solved with NX2, they still lack intelligence and speed on batch processing, but ACR is fantastic for that. There are many other things I LOVE about the new NX though I have only had a few days to test drive it, I’ll write another article about NX specifically once I get to know it better. One thing I can say is the U-Point technology is amazing for manipulating things like sky and facial tone without touching other regions close by. What I don’t like about NX is the fact that I have to save a throw-away TIFF (usually 16 bit) to get it into Photoshop, whereas ACR opens your file right in Photoshop directly once you manipulate it—in the bit depth and color space of your choice.
Adobe Camera RAW is the other program I use. I currently prefer it over Lightroom because it fits my workflow better. I use Bridge for a lot of automation tasks and ACR fits like a glove into that part of my workflow. It has virtually every single adjustment that Lightroom has and it comes with no added cost. What I love about ACR or Lightroom is the HSL tab. Being able to manipulate saturation and luminosity for specific colors is an amazing thing, and there are times when that approach works better for me than the U-Point technology in NX.
Whether I use Adobe Camera RAW for a particular JPEG or RAW (I shoot mostly RAW except for HDR work, HDR does not need the added functionality of RAW, and because I mostly do panos in the HDR arena, it makes the stitching workflow a lot faster. For regular old stills though, it depends on which RAW processor will do a better job looking at what it is I want to accomplish. If I don’t think I need much from the RAW processor and don’t need D-Lighting or noise reduction, I normally choose ACR.
Non-Destructive Editing in Photoshop
With the advent of CS2, there no longer is much of a reason to touch the actual pixels in your photograph, and now with CS3, there are only a couple of occasions I can think of where that would ever be necessary. ALL photo manipulations can now be done non-destructively through the use of adjustment layers and Smart Objects. I’ll be doing a series of tutorials that show my non-destructive workflow techniques, and it bears repeating that this is something every photographer should learn. From what I see so far, CS4 will not offer enhancements to non-destructive editing (which is a shame) so the techniques I will demonstrate in the weeks and months to come should be valid at least a year from when they are posted. There are plenty of tutorials out there that demonstrate photoshop 7 which is pre CS that are still valid, but especially with the advent of CS3, there are much better ways of editing and staying on the non-destructive path.
Tags: nondestructive, photoshop
