After buying a Canon 5D Mk2 at the SWPP conference in January I had to upgrade Lightroom. Lightroom is the application I use to do initial editing and manage thousands of images. The current version of Lightroom is able to take advantage of the Adobe colour space, which has a larger colour space than Canon’s RAW file.
This means it possible to take advantage of more colour data captured in the RAW image. This adds even more refinement to using high bit image data, which gives greater tonal control and colour corrections.
I didn’t take much notice of this until testing the camera’s exposure meter accuracy before my first wedding this year, which is in a few weeks. This highlighted the fact that images were captured too dark in the middle grey tones using the standard settings. This means skin tones may be recorded darker than they should for a correctly exposed image. It may also explain the need to slightly brighten images before printing.
All this inspired me to configure the processing of my RAW image files using a technique taught by Dave Montizambert a world expert on lighting for digital. The process requires a Macbeth colour profiling chart, so I took the plunge and ordered one.
The Macbeth colour chart arrived a couple of days later, so on Friday I took it into the studio to take my reference shot. Then following Dave’s instructions I configured Lightroom to correctly process the RAW images to produce the right density of tone at each step going from black through to white.
Black and White are both captured slightly below the extreme values possible to allow details to be recorded in very dark clothing and shadows etc. whilst retaining detail in the highlights. The process confirmed my findings when testing my camera’s exposure last week. All the tones from dark grey to very light grey were being recorded too dark.
Each adjustment made in Lightroom affects everything else so tuning the settings took a long time. Comparing the default and my revised pre-set for converting the RAW images looks almost identical – even on my calibrated monitor. The changes are very subtle and are typically within 3% of the original values. But they are in critical areas of your skin tones and capturing fine detail in dark shaded areas.
Much of this information is lost when the image is converted into sRGB. sRGB is the starndard format for displaying images on a screens exactly as you doing now. It is also using for most printing.
The following images show the reference image and then one image taken from a recent glamour photo session. One image was processed using the default settings whilst the second one has been processed using the Adobe colour space and revised settings. There is very little difference between them. And you may not be able to see the differences on you monitor. But the slight refinement should improve the quality of in a very subtle manner.
Image processed in Adabe colour gamut using the standard settings
Image processed uisng revised Lightroom settings in Adabe colour gamut using the standard settings. Differences are very subtle but can be seen by carefully observing Sarah's correctly lit face and areas falling into shade.
After retouching, I converted the final image into black and white drawing more attention to Sarah's form created through light and shade.
Pat
Professional Boudoir Photography
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