So who keeps it super simple?

Sean

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I know Photoshop quite well from my college years + web stuff, image editing for the web, etc. I am familiar with various core options such as levels, sharpening, masking, etc. I am now using Capture One v23, which compared to photoshop feels next generation. The workflow on these new gen tools in dizzyingly fast and you don't feel like you need 10yrs to get your head around it.

I am not one to spend hours editing an image. I try to get the capture pretty dang close, then fall to some essential core techniques in Capture one to finish it off (levels, exposure adjustments, and maybe 4-5 other options). I have a 1080p 24" ProArt display that seems to get the color accuracy on point. Now that I know what works for my taste in Capture One, I can get a result I am happy with in about 10mins if the image capture is solid, 20-30min if it needs major surgery, but beyond that, I feel the capture is less true to itself and a bit of a failure if it takes THAT much tweaking with an advanced tool.

Some may balk at the speed of this work, in comparison it could take me an entire day to get a solid print in my darkroom. But on the other hand, when you are short on time like me, being able to keep it simple and get results you are happy with is a win.

I seem ok with color work, but B&W digital looks to be a huge rabbit hole to go down and difficult to compete with traditional work. For now, due to being so time poor, I will stick to color.

I'm curious about others' digital workflows. Are you a fast worker, or do you spend hours or days per image?
 

cerber0s

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I don’t spend a lot of time post processing. Kind of like you, s as far as possible. The only exception would be if I short one or several photos with the intention of doing some manipulation to them. That rarely happens though.
 
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Sean

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I'll also add that I have seen some majorly over-edited digital images. I think you'll know what I mean.. maximum saturation, HDR, hyper post-processing to the point it looks like a 3d rendering or digital painting. Maybe this is what it takes to grab attention these days, but it is definitely not for me or my taste.
 

Steven Lee

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Even 10 minutes per image sounds excessive! I am also a heavy C1 user and I heavily rely on presets. I have my own, I purchased some, and I also like creating a new preset per photoshoot and then mass-applying it to everything.
 
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Sean

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Steven Lee said:
Even 10 minutes per image sounds excessive! I am also a heavy C1 user and I heavily rely on presets. I have my own, I purchased some, and I also like creating a new preset per photoshoot and then mass-applying it to everything.
Click to expand...

I'm starting to experiment with the presets as this seems to make sense in many cases, or to at least get the image in the ballpark.
 

koraks

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Sean said:
I am not one to spend hours editing an image.
Click to expand...

Me neither. In fact, I shun digital editing work as much as possible and on the rare occasions I do sheet digital, I keep the editing to a bare minimum. Last time I printed anything digital, I captured in JPG and sent it to the printer without modification at all...
 

MurrayMinchin

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I use Capture One as well, and much like when making darkroom prints I don't use a heavy hand, preferring everything to look 'natural' even if it's a loooong ways away from where they started. I haven't wandered too far into the weeds either, preferring to keep things as simple as possible.

15 minutes to 20 minutes is about the average time I spend on an image, which is crazy, because it could take days using pin registered sharp and unsharp masking in the darkroom.

Don't use PS or Lightroom anymore. Fujifilm partnered up with Capture One, and my theory is Fuji must have shared some of their secret sauce regarding X-Trans sensors.

Even with 4x5 negatives I never made a print bigger than 11x14, so don't foresee going any bigger with digital...and since I'm making salt prints with digitally enlarged negatives, there's a good chance nobody would ever know what kind of camera took the original photograph.

Seeing Dick Arentz platinum prints from a digital camera was what convinced me that this was a viable option.

I cut my teeth editing colour photos for the last couple years, and am now learning how to convert to B&W for the salt prints. One thing I love is how you can play with the colour sliders while in B&W...very powerful stuff!

Computers and printers are not my natural comfort zone, but I'll grind it out to get the best print quality possible before giving up, and if they fall short, there's an intaglio press and polymer photogravures whispering my name...
 

runswithsizzers

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Except for the obvious rejects, it is my habit to do at least a little bit of post processing on every shot. Now that Lightroom offers a half-way decent tool kit for masking, there is almost never any reason for me to use anything else. I don't pay much attention to the clock when I am editing, but my guess is that my edits probably average about 4-5 minutes each, and that includes keywords and captions. Note, I said average, with many photos taking only a couple of minutes, and some longer -- but I doubt very many take as long as 10 minutes.

Lately I have been shooting more b&w than color, but my usual ratio is about 50/50. Most of my color work is digital (Fuji), and all of my b&w is film. I camera-scan my negatives with the Fuji, and I probably spend more time editing the b&w film scans than I do the digital color images. Using the NLP plug-in to invert the negatives adds another layer of complexity to my editing process, and it may take 5-10 minutes to edit each b&w scan, especially if I take the time to edit the analog metadata.
 
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Alan Edward Klein

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I use Lightroom Classic licensed v6 and try to keep it simple too. Unfortunately, photography is shifting from picture-taking to computer art.
 

Cholentpot

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Lightroom and I spend as short as possible on an image. Color balance, levels and crop. Next.

I spend far more time editing scanned film shots than I do digital.
 

wiltw

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Using Lightroom, I take advantage of the Sync button...
  1. I edit one photo for WB, contrast, Shadow, Saturation, Sharpening, Clarity, noise, then Sync other similar photos to that first one.
  2. Then I look at individual photos to see if Angle adjustment or further tweak to Exposure, Highlight, Shadow are warranted to a specific photo. Maybe adjust Crop while reviewing individual shots.
  3. Then I repeat the first two steps in the next group of similar photos
Repeat first three steps for other similar photo groups. I probably average 1.5-2 min/photo before outputting JPGs from the RAW
It is a rare photo which gets more attention from me...sometimes to make the image ready for very large size print, sometimes to play around with alternate interpretations of a single shot (Using LR Virual Copy), sometimes to make a more compact image that I can store on my smartphone to show, etc.
 
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Alan Edward Klein

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Cholentpot said:
Lightroom and I spend as short as possible on an image. Color balance, levels and crop. Next.

I spend far more time editing scanned film shots than I do digital.
Click to expand...

The biggest issue with film scans is spotting the dust out of them.
 

Cholentpot

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Alan Edward Klein said:
The biggest issue with film scans is spotting the dust out of them.
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Dust scratches and hair.

I try to keep as tidy as possible to minimize the mess. This doesn't mean I don't have to get dirt off my image when shooting digital. There's just much less.
 

Alan Edward Klein

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Cholentpot said:
Dust scratches and hair.

I try to keep as tidy as possible to minimize the mess. This doesn't mean I don't have to get dirt off my image when shooting digital. There's just much less.
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When I got my Mamiya RB67 medium format camera 30+ years ago and shot my first roll of 120 film, there was this thin red line across every photo on the contact print and negative. It extended from the top, obliquely to the bottom. I thought I bought a defective used camera. So I take it apart and find one of my wife's long red hairs stuck in the removable film holder where the dark slide goes.

I didn't have Lightroom back them and don't recall now what I did with them. But it was pretty funny.
 

Paul Howell

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I use Corel Paint Pro, the stripped down version, an old version X9 and if I need to batch process Aftershot. In general I adjust for brightness, contrast, on occasion color or crop. I try to avoid burning and dodging, removing objects, and the like. I do have both Paint and PS, I just do not need to use the full boat very often.
 

BMbikerider

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With Paintshop pro what facilities do you have for working with RAW. I knoiw the full PS has updates for the latest versions of RAW but as I am gravitating more and more back to film that is little concern to me.

I have the subscription for PS but I only use a tiny fraction of what is provided so after 4-5 years I think I may give it the chop.

The other option is Photoshop Elements, but I am not so sure' That seems to be more orientated towards making albums which is not my thing. Has anyone any thoughts on either.

How many computers can you load these stand alone programmes onto. I have my desktop and 2 laptops so 3 would be nice.
 

Sal Santamaura

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About five years ago I purchased PhotoPlus X8. Adobe and anyone else renting software can eat it. I wanted 16-bit processing. Other than for snapshots, I do only black and white.

The only time I've spent a lot of time on an image was for one on 8x10 film needing lots of dust spotting. Since obtaining and using a D810 plus Sigma Art prime lenses, my workflow has evolved. At first, I used Nikon's Capture NX-D to retain camera settings that would be lost opening with a different RAW developer, then exporting as a TIFF. I'd open the TIFF with PhotoPlus X8 and go from there. Eventually I realized that just opening the RAW file with PhotoPlus X8, converting to black and white, applying a curve as necessary, then adjusting brightness and contrast dealt superbly with every landscape scene I've encountered. Super simple and extremely effective.

Concerned that future Windows versions like 11 might make PhotoPlus X8 unusable, I bought a copy of Affinity Photo to try. Like many things tech today, it turned out to be more feature-laden and user-hostile. I've no need of any additional capabilities it includes, and no interest in doing the extra work it requires to accomplish simple things like printing an image at a specific size with defined margins. Fortunately, Serif has provided an unlock code that will keep my PhotoPlus X8 disc loadable and users have confirmed that it is Windows 11 compatible.

I encourage anyone seeking a straightforward workflow to find a used copy of PhotoPlus X8 or pick up one of the other editing programs posters here use like Corel, etc.
 

MurrayMinchin

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faberryman said:
I am not sure what "super simple" means. You can do a lot to an image in PS and LR in five or ten minutes. Certainly make the image unrecognizable.
Click to expand...
Good point.

For me it means doing pretty much what I'd have done in the darkroom (balancing local & overall contrast, dodging/burning, balancing corners/edges, emphasizing important bits and diminishing/hiding annoying distractions, etc) with a few extra tweaks & nudges that digital allows.
 

Cholentpot

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Great story!
 

Paul Howell

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BMbikerider said:
With Paintshop pro what facilities do you have for working with RAW. I knoiw the full PS has updates for the latest versions of RAW but as I am gravitating more and more back to film that is little concern to me.
Click to expand...

Paintshop works with RAW., even Sigma RAW, my old SD9 and 10 only shoot raw, I also have Sigma PhotoPro, have not used in the past few years, Corel works as well.
 

wiltw

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BMbikerider said:
With Paintshop pro what facilities do you have for working with RAW. I knoiw the full PS has updates for the latest versions of RAW but as I am gravitating more and more back to film that is little concern to me.
Click to expand...

I have been a Paintshop Pro user for a very long time, currently have PSP X23. I usually use LR for initial photo postprocessing and output of JPG, and I use PSP as a local editor to remove unwanted details (e.g. facial blemishes) in the JPG. I just used PSP to read a deliberately underexposed RAW file (exposed to capture sky with greater color saturation, greatly underexposing shadow area detail) and bring up Shadow area exposure without altering overall Exposure. PSP editing of RAW files is pretty complete, but is lacking some of the flexibility found in LR. But I would not hesitate to use its RAW file postprocessing capabilities, if I did not have LR.
 

warden

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I enjoy editing scans and probably spend 15 minutes minimum on each scan in photoshop. Part of the fun!
 

MurrayMinchin

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Here's an example of the kind of post processing I do with digital stuff. Nothing heroic; basically a colour version of what would happen with a B&W negative in the darkroom, and a good jumping off point to make a digitally enlarged negative for a salt print. It's an old 16 megapixel image from my first hike with a digital camera. I'm not very efficient, so this was probably 30 minutes or so:

 
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jtk

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The first thing I do after fiddling with densit/exposure in PS is look at the file using NIK. I usually finish whatever I'm doing with NIK. Sometimes that takes virtually no time at all, sometimes a lot. Has entirely to do with the image.


I find working from scans easy because I do the scans properly.... but the work I care the most about, other than work on some of my historic restorations, is new digital photos.


In general, if this stuff takes a long time (more than a few minutes) I print, inspect, discard, and come back later. Inspection of prints is more reliable than viewing on monitor.
 
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