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Given that with the latest tax changes we are about $1200 poorer every month, I do not believe I'll be buying anything.
Can you explain which brush you are using to desaturate the skin tones only? Thanks in advance.
I find that the "camera calibration" settings for my 5diii are best on neutral when shooting scenes with skin tones in them. You will have to add some contrast back into the scene after changing this but it's worth it.
I find that scenes with skin tones are the most difficult to adjust. Here is my work flow for wedding photos:
1) Get the skin exposure right with the exposure slider
2) Get the color temp, this is often the hardest one of the bunch!
3) Adjust the white and black sliders while holding down the cntrl key so that whites are pure white and blacks are pure black. This kind of stretches the DR a bit and adds contrast.
4) I will usually bump the vibrance up to 40-50 and the saturation to 10-15 to start. Doing this screws up the skin tones so I will go into the color saturation panel and use the dropper to click on the skin and draw down the saturation of just the skin tones. (I have a couple of presets for this and will tweak the presets for each wedding couple) This process adds the "pop" to the colors.
5) Add a little bit of contrast. You can do this with the slider but I find that adjusting the curve to an S curve is more natural. (just use the pre-programed curves) The amount of contrast is going to depend on the lighting and on your lens.
6) Tweak the white and black sliders again to get the final effect i'm looking for.
7) Tweak the noise reduction with the picture at 100%
Obviously I jump around these steps and use a little different settings based on lighting but for a "standard" picture this is basically it. Some might say that colors (particularly reds) become too saturated using these settings so you have to adjust for the scene but most people today are looking for the photos that "pop" rather than a very natural look.
FYI, I also use a 50d for weddings and the settings are totally different for it. The tones are rendered very differently between the two cameras. Most of the photos I take with the 50d end up as black and whites.
I used to hate Adobe colours but they have come a long way in the last few years especially (as mentioned) adding camera profiles. When I compare DPP set to faithful and LR to faithful on my screen I find they are pretty close. Adobe is still a little stronger on the yellow but much improved.
For skin tones I use a simple preset. I first make sure I'm on faithful adjust exposure (if needed) and my preset is
Clarity - 10
Vibrance +10
Saturation - 10
I then adjust black do get back that contrast/punch lost in my preset and make slight adjustments on the basic panel as required. Now you do lose a little sharpness but it really smooths out the skin tones and hides minor defects. Depending on how much editing you have to do you can do a little selective sharpening around the eyes, etc but for mass edits it is impractical unless you want to spend all that time. I will do it if really necessary but I find the output sharpening using LR does a pretty good job at the end.
I have seen some work amazing work by people. Not sure what PP software they use but they get the skin tones so natural and creamy looking. I'll try to find a link if can. I'm still trying to figure that one out.
I am interested in step 4 of your process. I might play with that after my process to add a little more punch to my images if I can get the skin tones back to where they were.
Thanks for the info!
Question about strobes - do I need them for snorkeling? My assumption was they are only really necessary for diving - for snorkeling there is enough light from above the water.
Maybe a housing for my 5Diii?Quick answer is no, there shouldnt be any difference in color output from video cards. The color settings are all software coded and you should be able to tinker with them in the video card utility, so i would start there and make sure you didnt set something weird.
I'll try that. All I did was unplug the old monitor, and plug in the new one with an HDMI cable. I didn't mess with the video card utility at all, but the calibration is all f'd up now.QuoteAs for video card suggestions, i need to know your price range and what you except to do on it to be able to help.
Photo editing is the only thing I'll need a good video card for. I'm not a gamer, nor do I watch movies on my computer. I don't have a firm price range, but if a decent card is going to cost more than $250, I'll probably just buy a new computer with a good video card already in it.
Photo editing is not very video card intensive, it relies more on your processor power. So really any midrange card (150$ max) should be more than enough for your purposes. So for ati something like a 6770 or 7770, for nvidia something like 460 or 550 (sorry, but im not too familliar with the new 6XX series of cards so cant really comment). The one thing you have to be sure of, as the last guy commented on, is the power draw of these cards, make sure your system requirement is less than your power supply. Another thing to watch out for, some video cards require 2 pci-e power connections, so make sure your power supply has an extra if you choose one of those cards.
