My Basic Work Flow

 Step 1: Levels

  The first thing I do when I open up an image is adjust levels to bring some of the dynamic range back. This cuts out some of the flatness you get with digital photography. It's a bit closer to a film quality. When you open the levels histogram, you have three arrows you can drag around. At the beginning and the end of the histogram you typically have areas that are flat (have no information). The goal is to drag the 1^st and 3^rd arrow to areas with the first bit of information. You can also move the middle arrow around to play with the balance of exposure. In this image I only needed to move the 1^st arrow up. Notice the flat area at the beginning of this histogram. It has been highlighted in red. 

Step 2: Lens Correction

    Lens correction is my second step. I use a middle of line Tamron lens as my all around shooter. The optics are fairly nice and clear, however there's some issues with frame alignment. I am also short and do not always have something to step on when I shoot. The lens correction tool allows me to correct the angle and perspective. The best way to master this tool is to go in and play. As you're making changes, the image may get fuzzy but when you click ok to go back to the work space, the image will be clear again. Note that I'm on the custom tab and not the auto correction tab.

Step 3: Photo Filter

   My 3^rd step is to chose a photo filter to begin color correction. My corny joke is that I am a cool girl. I always tend to correct on the cooler side. The 82 cooling filter was my favorite in film and it's my favorite in digital. This image was very warm to begin with because of the angle of the sunlight. I throw my digital cooling filter on and good bye warm. Of course this causes over cooling in certain areas. I address this in the next steps.

Step 4: Color Balance

   In the next step I open up the color balance tool. Technically I could have started from here but I feel it's easier to work with this after a initial photo filter. The key to this is to look for an area in the frame that you know should be white. Play with your arrows until that area is perfectly white with out a discernible cast of another color. After this, I still have overly cooled areas and her red tights are muted. We'll fix that in the next step.

Step 5: Hue/Saturation

  Finally, I make fine adjustments with the hue/saturation tool. There is a drop down that allows you to play with different color channels. In this image, to remove some of the blue cast off the white wall, I drop the saturation of the blue and cyan channels to -100. This also makes my blacks blacker. I also nudged the red channel up to +17. If there are other blues or reds you do not want affected by this changes, use the mask tool to block them out. Luckily that wasn't an issue for this image so easy peasy down.

Here is the before and after. 

 

Hope this was helpful. Please feel free to ask questions in the comment section.

Corey

Intro to Shutter Speed

Please read aperture priority before reading this if you do not understand f/ or DOF.

Shutter speed is the 2^nd part of a 2 part equation for perfect exposure. The first is f/ or aperture size. The lower the f/ the faster the shutter speed. The higher the f/ the lower the shutter speed.0

Depending on your lighting source, shutter speed determines how long your sensor/film gets light. It's like a curtain behind your camera's pupil (aperture).

Imagine walking inside after a long time outside on a bright and sunny day. The room is dark and cloudy. This is because your brains shutter speed is set too fast. Your world is underexposed. After some time, your pupils dilate to compensate and the room is brighter and in better focus.

The shutter in your camera isn't as sophisticated as your brain and optic nerve signals but the concept is similar. To master shutter speed you have to master the concept of time. Much like the time you need for your eyes to adjust to a new lighting situation, the longer you have to expose your picture.

Lighting Situations:

If you are in low light, you'll need to work with longer shutter speeds and bigger apertures. The disadvantage is grainier pictures and more motion blur. If your subject is moving and your shutter speed is longer then 1/125^th of a second, there may be blur.

(“Surreal Chicken” f/2.8, shutter 1/5^th of a second)

The above image was taken in a fairly dim barn. The chicken is moving, causing motion blur. The background is blurry because I'm moving, causing camera blur.)

If you are taking a picture of a landscape, this can be equated to standing outside on a bright day squinting your eyes and shielding your eyes, with your hands, to put everything in focus. Your pupils are constricted (small aperture, large f/) and your brains shutter speed forces you to look longer to see focus in the distance. The fact that your aperture is so small to gain all the focus of the image means you have to deal with a longer shutter speed. It's time to pull out your tripod. Sure your subject (the landscape) isn't moving but you are. This is where you'll get camera shake. You are a breathing, heart beating, bundle of muscles. Any shutter speed longer then 1/80^th of a second can turn into a blurry picture without a tripod.

("The Creek", f/13, shutter speed 1/80^th of a second, I propped my camera on a railing in place of a tripod.)

Aperture Priority

So, if you are like most beginner photographers, you are afraid to steer away from one of the automatic settings on your SLR. Here's the thing, if you have your camera set to point and shoot, you are ignoring a world of possibilities. How do you make the leap from point and shoot to manual mode? Use one of the semi manual modes such as aperture priority.

To understand the concept of aperture priority, you have to understand aperture. Much like the pupil of your eye, the aperture is an opening that allows light to enter the camera. The larger the aperture, the more light hits the sensor/film.

(*F/ (f stop): The setting on the camera that designates the size of the aperture. It's numbering is inverse to the size of the opening. The smaller the f/, the larger the opening. The larger the f/, the smaller the opening. It's just one of those pesky “to remember” things. Don't worry, there's not a lot of those.)

How does more or less light translate to the picture? The more light, the wider the aperture, the smaller the *f/, and the blurrier the background. You may have heard the term shallow depth of field (DOF). This technique is excellent for portraiture photography. The subject in the foreground is in focus and the background is blurred to bring the attention to the subject.

(“I shot my sister” f/2.8, notice the blurred background, the face is in focus)

The smaller your aperture, the less the light, the more DOF, and the larger the *f/. This is ideal for landscapes where you want everything to be in focus. 

(“Island of Life” f/14.0, notice that everything is in focus. The building in the background has defined lines)

In order to maintain somewhat perfect exposure of an image, you have to have a balance between shutter speed and aperture size. If you have a big hole, the shutter doesn't have to be open as long. If you have a really small hole, you'll need the shutter open longer. The nice thing about aperture priority is you have the ability to play with the creative aspects of DOF without having to really figure out a balanced shutter speed. Let the camera do it for you. This way, you have the best of both worlds, some creative decision with some of the ease of automation.

White Balance

Back in the day of color film, we used filters screwed on to the lens to correct white balance (WB). You would use a handy color temperature meter to find the temperature of the light. If the temp was too warm, we screwed on a cooling filter. If it was too cool, we screwed on a warming filter. There were varying degrees of filters with different hues and opacities.

Thankfully, digital photography has not only made WB easier and quicker, it's also made it forgiving. When you shoot in RAW, you have the ability to change the WB if the original settings were incorrect.

How do you WB? Most digital cameras have presets for lighting situations. For example, incandescent/tungsten light is a warm yellow orange.

      Example: Grab a piece of white paper at home and really study it. Try to ignore the fact that the paper is SUPPOSE to be white. If you start to notice it is really a dingy off white in your current lighting, you're a step closer to having an eye for correcting WB automatically.

So we've established that indoor lighting is warm. How do we correct this? In film we would have twisted a cooling filter on the lens. In digital we have several options. I'll discuss the 3 basic in-camera techniques for correcting digital WB.

Using presets is easiest way to WB. Typical presets vary but are usually "indoor light, fluorescent light, Flash, outdoor daylight (sunny) , cloudy/shady outdoor". Indoor light is warm and when we set are preset to the corresponding light source, it adds a digital cooling filter to offset the warmth of tungsten lighting.

What the hell does that mean?..... Well, 

Take a look at this picture below. All three images were taken on a sunny day. It was at a time were sun light is fairly neutral/optimal in color. The first image was taken with the "Tungsten" preset, resulting in a bluish image. The one in the center was taken with the "Daylight/Sunny/Fine" setting resulting in a fairly balanced image. The last image was taken with the "Cloudy/Shade" setting resulting in a orangish cast.

If I would have been shooting indoors (tungsten) my lighting would be orange and the cooling filter would offset this to get closer to neutral.

Lighting (warm/ red orange)  +  Offset (cool/ bluish greens)    = Neutral Density/ truer color

Custom is one of the most accurate ways to WB without a color temp meter. This is the time to pull out your handy cameras manual (what? you haven't read it cover to cover yet?) and read how to set custom WB. You'll need a grey card.

"Meter/ Eyeball" Method: You remember the color temp meter I mentioned? This is a time where you pull your sixiticolor out of storage or buy a new fancy one with bells and whistles. If you're reading this tutorial, you're probably not read to drop a couple $1,000 USD on equipment. You can find a used sixticolors on ebay for next to nothing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJu4k6Jvqo0

These will give you a color temperature read out in Kelvin. If your camera has a Kelvin WB option, you set it to the same temp as your reading. Viola, you have WB. It also helps to commit temp variations to memory. Below is a chart with light sources and their corresponding temperature and correction needs.

2,700–3,300 K (too warm) Incandescent light bulb

3,200 K (too warm) Studio lamps, photofloods, etc.

3,350 K (too warm) Studio "CP" light

4,100–4,150 K (too warm) Moonlight

5,000 K (too warm) Horizon daylight

5,500–6,000 K (balanced) Vertical daylight, electronic flash

6,500 K (too cool with a greyish tone) Daylight, overcast

6,500–9,300 K (too cool with a greenish tone) LCD or CRT screen

What about mixed sources? Set to your main source. You can do fine tuning in post by masking and selecting specific areas of uneven white balance.

WB for creative use: If you look at my gallery, you'll notice I'm a "cool girl". (<-----corny photography joke ). I love to cool down the color palette of all my images for the most part. It's a creative choice. I intentionally set my WB a bit warmer then the actual situation to get a cooler tone . In portraiture, I tend to shoot a WB to complement skin tone and then in post, mask out the skin and cool everything else down. Call it my blue period.

You can give digital photos a dated look by setting the WB to cooler then actual lighting. You'll end up with a warm tone reminiscent of aged photos stored improperly.

The drawbacks of digital white balance in digital photography, we are at the mercy of others. With film we could select which printer we would use or print photos ourselves. Now we display our images online on sites that compress our images even more then we did in post processing to jpeg formt. The viewer's monitor has a array of color options via software and hardware. How do we know our images are being viewed the correct way? We don't! What we can do is try to make our colors is post processing as accurate as possible (for printing) and cross our fingers that variations of others' monitors won't cause a drastic discrepancy. In my humble opinion this is similar to the film world in that our prints were at the mercy of the developers (if we didn't develop our own C41 process color....LOL). Difference is we could bitch and ask for a reprint before anyone else saw that crap.

Warning Anecdote: At a photography workshop I attended, a long time photo journalist asked me to take his camera and get a couple shots with him in a group. We were outside and I noticed his WB was set to fluorescent lighting. All of his images had blue cast on them. I pointed it out and he said "oh, I guess these will get turned into b/w". I explained to him that he could correct the mistake in post easily since he shot RAW. After showing him how he said "I was told I should always shoot RAW, now I understand why. You just taught an old dog new tricks." 

If you shoot in RAW and use a RAM image editor such as bridge for adobe creative suite, you can adjust the shot WB setting. Freakin' awesome! Good bye screw on filters!