# Photoshop Work Flow



## Smokey (Jul 22, 2010)

We all know that there are some real PSE Guru's here (and you know who you are) and some wanna be's such as myself so I got to thinking about how to tap into all that smarts.  

Most PSE users have a work flow that they follow for nearly every picture they edit.  So what do ya think about you Guru's editing a picture (I'll supply it) and working your magic on it.  Only catch will be to detail every step that you took to come up with the finished product and post it here for us little people to see and maybe learn from.  When I say "Detail every step", I don't mean _*adusted the sharpness*_. I'm looking for the exact setting you used.

I know that there are several different versions of PSE out there but they pretty much all have the same basic stuff.

So Guru or not, shoot me a PM if you're interested.  I know it will be time consuming to detail all the step's but I think it will help a lot of us out.


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## Crickett (Jul 22, 2010)

Good idea Smokey!


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## Hoss (Jul 22, 2010)

So what about us Blind hogs that root around until we come up with what we like?

Hoss


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## FERAL ONE (Jul 22, 2010)

sounds like a neat idea, are we starting from raw ?


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## Smokey (Jul 22, 2010)

Hoss said:


> So what about us Blind hogs that root around until we come up with what we like?
> 
> Hoss



Us blind hogs included as well.



FERAL ONE said:


> sounds like a neat idea, are we starting from raw ?



I'll send the pic in RAW and or jpeg


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## Browtine (Jul 22, 2010)

Great idea Smokey. If I had PSE I'd be in. Seems every time I've ever tried to post a how-to it has ended up not bein' PSE compatible. I pretty much gave up. 

I'd still like to give the photo a go in PS just to see what I come up with compared to the others.


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## Smokey (Jul 23, 2010)

Crickett said:


> Good idea Smokey!



PM me you email address and I'll send you the pic



Browtine said:


> Great idea Smokey. If I had PSE I'd be in. Seems every time I've ever tried to post a how-to it has ended up not bein' PSE compatible. I pretty much gave up.
> 
> I'd still like to give the photo a go in PS just to see what I come up with compared to the others.



Same thing I told Crickett!


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## GAranger1403 (Jul 23, 2010)

I'm in Smokey!


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## Smokey (Jul 23, 2010)

So far about 6 folks wanna play but I only have email addresses for about 3 of you.


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## Smokey (Jul 23, 2010)

Okay, I'm about to send the pic in both RAW and Jpeg to the 4 folks I have email addresses for...still waiting on the others to send me there's........and you know who you are.  I'm sending the full sized files.  I'll also post the pic straight out of the camera (sized down of course).


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## quinn (Jul 23, 2010)

i'm in but not today.


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## Smokey (Jul 23, 2010)

Okay, I just sent it in both RAW and Jpeg and it got kicked back due to size restrictions on the recievers end.  So I'll just try sending it in either RAW or Jpeg...PM me whichever you prefer?


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## georgia357 (Jul 23, 2010)

That is a fantastic idea.  Thanks for getting it started.


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## Smokey (Jul 23, 2010)

Here is the picture that I'm sending to the folks who have requested it.  This is straight out of the camera with the exception of being down sized to fit here.


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## Lee Woodie (Jul 23, 2010)

*Still learning*

so don't beat me up to bad I tried and came up with this the experts can tell me were I went wrong.So here is my rendition and settings I used.

ok her you go pse7
editor select full edit
under basic
setting are
tempture 3650
tent -12
exposure 0.95
filllight 12
blacks 9
brightness +35
contrast +28
clarity +95
vibrance -25
saturation -2
then click detail
sharpen 61
radius2.2
detail 64
mask 30
luminance 62
color 57
then open image
crop to your likes
commit to current changes
click enhance
select  adjust lighting
click shadows & hightlights
adjust 
lighten shadows =1
darken highlights=56
midtone contrast=+21
ok it
click enhance
select brightness & contrast
adjust brightness 45
contrast +22
ok it
click file save as name it save it
click file close 
you are done


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## Crickett (Jul 23, 2010)

Smokey said:


> Okay, I'm about to send the pic in both RAW and Jpeg to the 4 folks I have email addresses for...still waiting on the others to send me there's........and you know who you are.  I'm sending the full sized files.  I'll also post the pic straight out of the camera (sized down of course).




PM sent. Sorry it took so long.


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## Hoss (Jul 23, 2010)

PM sent Smokey.  Nothing like picking an easy one.  Do I have to tell you how many times I hit undo?

Hoss


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## Crickett (Jul 23, 2010)

Hoss said:


> PM sent Smokey.  Nothing like picking an easy one.  Do I have to tell you how many times I hit undo?
> Hoss



 I was just going to leave those steps out!


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## JasonF (Jul 23, 2010)

Here is my edit Smokey.  There are many ways to skin a cat but I chose to keep it simple with my basic workflow.
Alright, so I chose to edit the RAW image because the white ballance was off in the original.  My adjustments in RAW were as follows:

White Balance:  Tungsten
Exposure:          +1.60
Shadows:           4
Contrast:           +50
Sharpness:        +62
Vignette:           -100

Once I opened the RAW image in Photoshop, after my adjustments, I did the following:

Contrast Boost (+20) 
Slight S-Curve adjustment for even more contrast.
Burned (with the burn tool) the bleachers and the dark areas of dirt around the horses feet.
Added a +10 Saturation Boost
Cloned out the orange sticker and light? on the wall above the bleachers.
Fixed the blurry spot on the horses leg: used the magic wand tool to select the area then used the paint bucket to apply the same Blue color to the wrapped portion of the leg to match the others.

Resized for Woody's:
Resolution: 72ppi
720 pixels on the long side

Sharpened for the web:
Amount: 200
Radius: 0.2
Threshold: 0
** Sharpened 3 times over with the same settings above.

Added the white border to finish it off before saving.

I'm a sucker for unique angles so I chose to keep the image as it was instead of straightining the horizon...even if you didn't mean to produce that tilted angle, personally, I liked it.  Now if I was to straighten it, I would only be concerned with getting the cone level, not the bleachers (just my .02).

And there is my effort, can't wait to see what the others come up with...


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## georgia357 (Jul 24, 2010)

NWCO, that is fantastic.  I'm gonna cut and paste that and see if I can do the same thing.


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## Crickett (Jul 25, 2010)

*My version*

Nervous about posting this but here goes!

I chose to edit the RAW version. 

From PSE7: 
Click image to edit
Editor -> Full Edit
Image opened in ACR(Adobe Camera Raw)
Exposure +0.75
Recovery 10
Brightness +16
Contrast +30
Clarity +30
Click Open image

I slightly cropped the bottom.
Click Enhance -> Adjust Lighting-> Brightness/Contrast
Contrast +20
Click Enhance -> Adjust Color-> Adjust Hue/Saturation
Saturation +5
Click Enhance-> Unsharp Mask
Amount 200%
Radius 0.2 pixels
Repeat Unsharp Mask

Click Image-> Resize-> Image Size
Resolution 72
Width 700

Click Layer-> New-> Layer via copy
Effects
Orange Tone
Opacity 27%
Select eraser tool
Erased everything except around the cowboy & the upper part of his horse.(I liked the orange glow from the blast so I wanted to try to enhance that just a little. Probably an easier way but this is the only way I knew how to do it.)
Click Layer-> Flatten Image
Click Contents
Select "No Frame"
Click Apply
Right click on photo-> Fit frame to photo
Click Layer-> New Fill Layer-> Solid Color
Select Color
Clicked & Dragged Color Layer so that it became my background layer
Click on "No Frame" Layer
Effects-> Layer Styles-> Bevels
Inner Ridge Bevel 
Apply

Adjust Frame edges to fit background
Layer-> Flatten Image

Click File-> Save as.....jpeg file
Jpeg Options
Quality 10
Format Baseline
Click OK


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## DRB1313 (Jul 25, 2010)

First off, let me say, great job on capturing the fast moving subject in the low light condition you were 
faced with.  That was the biggest challenge of all and you pulled it off nicely.
I must apologize for not writing down my exact settings as I edited, but I believe I can remember most all of it.
So here is what I did:

Opened in Raw
Changed color temp from 5000 to 4000
( I normally don't do much in the Raw converter.)

Opened in Photoshop

Made duplicate layer (cmnd/ctrl J)
filter/noise/reduce noise with settings
10
26
0
0
repeat reduce noise
flatten image
duplicate layer (cmnd/ctrl J)
repeat reduce noise
erase horse and rider to reveal last edit to hang on to detail.
flatten image
duplicate layer (cmnd/ctrl J)
filter/blur/average
cmnd/ctrl I
change layer blending mode to COLOR
lower layer opacity to 27%
flatten image
duplicate layer
boost saturation +10
select BLUES and CYAN an desaturate to -36 and -36
erase riders shirt to add back the blues
flatten image
Crop image
use sponge tool set to de-saturate to remove lens flare from horses leg
grabbed clone tool and set opacity to 40% and cloned dark area from horses body to darken that area.
Made levels adjustment by sliding blacks to the right  and the whites to the left
resized image to 800 on the long side (this allowed me to use quality 12 and stay under the 488kb for Woodys
Duplicate layer
Smart sharpen:
200
0.1
Lens Blur
more accurate
Erase everything except horse and rider
Flatten image
Duplicate Layer
Smart sharpen:
200
0.1
Lens Blur
more accurate
Erase everything except horse and rider
convert to 8bit, save and post


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## Hoss (Jul 25, 2010)

I used the jpeg version as I don’t have the raw plugin for Canon installed in PSE 7.  I haven’t done much with jpegs since I started shooting raw, so this was some trial and error post processing.  Yes the Undo command remains my favorite.  Here’s what I did (the format I used to show this is  Menu – submenu – command – settings).

Open image
Enhance menu - Adjust Lighting - Adjust levels to white 204.  Gray and black no change
Enhance menu - Adjust color - Remove color cast using the white area around the horse’s tail as the white point set.
Image – Rotate – Straighten I used the building structure to establish straight line.
Image – Crop
Filter menu – Adjustments - Photo filter - Cooling filter (80) Density 25
Layer – Duplicate
Select Background layer 
Enhance Menu – Unsharp mask - Amount 136 -  Radius 1.0 – Threshold 0
Select layer 1
Filter menu – Blur – Gaussian blur  - 4.6 pixels
Select eraser - soft edge brush (various sizes used) – opacity 100%.  Erase horse and rider in level 1.
Layer – Flatten image 
Filter menu – Noise – Despeckle applied twice.
Image – Resize  Size for posting.

Gotta agree with DRB about stopping the action in that light.


Hoss


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## cornpile (Jul 25, 2010)

Heres my try at it,all free image touchups,Gimp,Noiseware,Picasa,etc.I leveled the staduim,took out the yellow lighting,filtered thru noiseware,cropped the horse and rider to take out the bright windows at the upper right.Couldnt say what I done,Just worked on it for a natural look.


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## JasonF (Jul 25, 2010)

DRB -  Dude, wow!! 
You are the man...nuff said!


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## DRB1313 (Jul 25, 2010)

JasonF said:


> DRB -  Dude, wow!!
> You are the man...nuff said!



Ha! You're funny.  On my calibrated monitor the colors look great, on
the laptop, they look a little on the cool side.
I think I'll trust the big monitor.


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## Crickett (Jul 25, 2010)

JasonF said:


> DRB -  Dude, wow!!
> You are the man...nuff said!



Yep! I have to agree! 

(Insert bowing smiley here)

Awesome work David!


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## FERAL ONE (Jul 25, 2010)

i absolutely refuse to go after drb !!!!


ha !!!
i opened in raw
boosted saturation
boosted exposure
boosted the blacks a touch ( gives depth to me )
and cooled the temp off a touch

open image
cropped and straightened ( just to be different !!!)
cloned  the lower right and upper left corners to extend 
one shot of noise reduction in pse
unsharp mask
levels adjustment
select image
extend canvas 
add bevel
flatten
pick blue from shirt and add to canvas
extend canvas
add bevel
flatten image
change canvas back to black
extend canvas
resize image
unsharp mask
save


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## Browtine (Jul 25, 2010)

Sorry, I was out of town for the weekend and didn't check this thread until this evening. I pm'd you my email addy.


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## Browtine (Jul 25, 2010)

Here's a quickie using the smaller jpeg version you posted of the original. I can't wait to play with the raw. I'll post my settings/edits when I get done with the real version.


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## DRB1313 (Jul 25, 2010)

Great job everyone!! Looks pretty good in B&W also.
Smokey,  Thanks for letting us have fun playing around.


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## Smokey (Jul 26, 2010)

WOWZA!!  All of you that have posted your work just blows me away.  There isnt a bad one in the bunch.  Better yet, there is a lot of knowledge posted here that I know I can learn from.  Thanks for the help.


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## DRB1313 (Jul 26, 2010)

So, Smokey, Do we get to see your version?


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## Hoss (Jul 26, 2010)

DRB1313 said:


> So, Smokey, Do we get to see your version?


 X2 

Hoss


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## Browtine (Jul 26, 2010)

Got the raw file today and played around with it. Converted in Adobe Camera Raw with the only changes to settings being:

Temp: 3750
Exposure: +.50 (half a stop plus exposure)
Vibrance: +30

Noise Reduction in ACR with settings as follows:

Luminance Noise: 40%
Luminance Detail: 50%
Color Noise: 25%
Color Detail: 50%

I also set the camera profile to "Camera Faithful"

Once I had it converted to a 16 bit file in PS I straightened it pretty close by clicking Image> Rotation> Arbitrary and played with different amounts of clockwise rotation degrees until I found that 4 degrees got it pretty close. I settled for a slight compromise between leveling the railing and straightening the cone... After it was straightened to my liking I cropped to a standard medium format film size of 6 X 7. 

Then I done basically the same noise reduction routine as DRB (picked some of that up from him in another thread a while back) but with settings of:
Run 1: 
10
25
0
0

Run 2:
7
35
0
0

Before flattening I erased approximately 80% of the noise reduction layer over the horse and rider. 

From there I made a duplicate layer, set it to Luminance blend mode and adjusted brightness to +10 and Contrast to +30 and flattened the image.

Then I created an other duplicate layer and set the blend mode to color and adjusted the colors using a curves adjustment. I chose to adjust to get the walls in the background fairly neutral and chose to leave the skin tones warm from the light of the muzzle blast. I liked the warm tones the blast gave parts of the horse and the rider's face. 

After getting tonality and colors like I wanted them I flattened the image and resized to 800 pixels on the long side. 

A duplicate layer was made and set to luminosity and Levels were adjusted to the following settings:

10   1.08   245

Image flattened. 

I decided to play with the contrast on parts of the horse and rider so I created a dodge and burn layer by creating a new layer, setting it to Overlay blend mode and filling it with 50% grey. Once this layer was in place I done my dodging and burning of highlights and shadows by painting with white and black using different opacity, size and softness settings with the paint brush. I carefully brightened some of the highlights with the white and darkened some of the shadows with the black, generally with the opacity set to between 5% and 8%. The trick here is to match the size and softness of the brush to the area you are burning or dodging and use a low enough opacity to allow painting it all in rather than doing crude one pass adjustments. The more subtle you are with this, the better and more realistic the results look. 

The vignette:

Lastly I made a large circular selection by using the Elliptical Marquee Tool (circle mask tool) and holding down shift while I created the circle to constrain it to a true circle. I made the selection large enough to include all of the rider and just about all of the horse except for the legs. With the circular selection made and positioned over the horse and rider I clicked Select> Modify> Feather and set the radius to 150 pixels. (Keep in mind that this radius setting will differ according to the size of the image you're applying this technique to. Larger will require more feather radius... smaller will require less)

After applying the feather I clicked Alt>S and then I to invert the selection. With the selection inverted I clicked Control>J to make a duplicate layer that contains the outside edges of the photo with the feather applied. I set the blend mode of the duplicate layer to Multiply and adjusted the layer opacity down to 35% to get the amount of vignette I wanted. This setting can differ a fair amount from image to image as well. I keep adjusting and clicking the eyeball on that layer to toggle it on and off until I like the amount of vignette I see when it comes on. 

Before flattening that layer I erased the horse and rider from it so that they popped from the darkened background a bit more. 
Flattened image...

Lastly I converted to 8 bit mode and sharpened using the following settings. 

Smart Sharpen

1st pass:

150
.1
Lens Blur
(I don't use more accurate)

2nd pass:

70
.2
Lens Blur

Finally I flattened the image, created a duplicate layer (Control+J), selected the background, extended the canvas size 30 pixels using white background color, selected background and done a 3 pixel black stroke. On the duplicate layer I done a 2 pixel black stroke, flattened the image and Saved for Web at maximum quality. 

Whew! Took way longer to type all this than it did to do the edit! I think I included all my steps. I wrote it down as I went but not sure I didn't miss something. Oh, I did forget to include the point at which I healed out the orange sign and the light housing above the seats. Not sure where along the way I done that. I also worked on the leg wrap with the clone tool using areas from the horse's chest and the other rear leg's wrap.


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## SKEETER2 (Jul 27, 2010)

I have the Adobe Photoshop, and really just play around with it.  There are some dang fine adjustments on the other photos.  

What I did was;

Curve-  Output(10) Input(30)

I changed some of the dirt under the horse 
+4 Red
-13 Magenta
-68 Yellow

Changed the cone
+100 Red
-64 Magenta
-100 Yellow

Changed his shirt a little with the color balance

I now this is very basic, but I know nothing about all the settings, temperatures and all of that good stuff.  Some of the stuff some of you are changing, my version of Adobe doesn't have.  Again, I literally just upload it and play.


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## Smokey (Jul 27, 2010)

After seeing everyone elses results I'm almost embarrassed to show ya'll mine.  I learned a lot from the others that I will start adding to my work flow in PSE.  Here is what I did and the end results.

Opened in RAW
Temp 3250
Tint 0
Exposure + 0.75
Recovery 80
Fill Light 2
Blacks 8
Brightness +50
Contrast +25
Clarity +50	
Vibrance +50
Saturation 0
Opened in Photo Shop Elements 7
Duplicated the image (Control j)
Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise  
6
8
2
Repeat reduce noise (control f)
Flatten Image
Duplicate Image (Control j)
Repeat reduce noise
Erase the cowboy (not horse)
Flatten Image
Duplicate image (Control J)
Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels
- black eye dropper click on blackest part of picture
- white eye dropper click on whitest part of picture
- gray eye dropper click on neutral gray part of picture
Flatten image
Duplicate image
Enhance > Adjust color > Adjust Hue/Saturation
Master Saturation +10
Cyans -28
Blues -28
Erase cowboys face to tone down the red
Erase cowboys shirt to add back the blue
Flatten image
Duplicate
Enhance > Adjust color > Adjust Hue/Saturation
Reds saturation   -19
Flatten
Duplicate
Enhance >  Unsharp mask >
54
1.7
4
Repeat unsharp mask (control f)
Repeat unsharp mask (control f)
Add a little gaussian blur
Erase just the cowboy
Flatten
Reduce image size to   Width 769    Height 900
Unsharp mask
Unsharp mask
Same levels adjustments as earlier
Save and post


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## GAranger1403 (Jul 28, 2010)

*Heres mine!*

1. Adjust sharpness 61%-1.2 radius, Gaussian blur.
2. Reduce noise 10/20/10
3. Eraser brush over layer to put select detail back.
4. 8x10 crop
5. Overlay layers, opacity 15%
6. Lighten shadows on background to 0%
7. Adjust light on muzzleflash.
8. Adjust saturation around muzzleflash with sponge tool.
9. LBB cooling filter at 44%
10. Adjust DOF with blur/erase
11. Liquify tool to enhance tail and muzzleflash.
12. Add vignette
13. Matt/reduce


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## Smokey (Jul 28, 2010)

That was a lot of fun.......and I learned a ton.  I actually got something from each post that I think will help me.  I hope everyone else enjoyed it and learned something as well.  We need to do more "learning" stuff around here.


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## Smokey (Aug 2, 2010)

There's still a few that I sent the picture to that havent posted their version yet


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## quinn (Aug 4, 2010)

okay here's the part that has been making me not in a hurry!  
open in jpeg
add a layer 
reduce noise strength 6,preserve detail 60,reduce color noise 45
unmask mask amount 195,radius 0.2,threshold 0
lighting
levels
0,0.90,184
lighting
brightness/contrast
brightness 0
contrast 20
adjust color 
saturation +18,yellow -25,red -20
reduce noise same as before
unsharp mask same as before
flatten image
resize image largest side to 720
unsharp mask x 3 same as before
save as


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