Making Your Images Look Great

There are a lot of options to check when you are editing your images. Choosing the right ones will make sure your images will look great no matter where they are viewed.

In this episode we cover 16bit vs 8bit and colorspace. These may sound boring, but they do make a big difference in your final image.

Today’s Episode Timeline

0:30 -Making sure your images look good on the internet
1:00 – 16 bit vs. 8 bit.(Here is a great article)
2:45 – Opening the DNG
3:50 – Changing your color space
5:30- Opening your image from the RAW Dialogue
6:00- editing your image
7:26- Saving Multiple copies of your images
8:00- Saving your images for the internet
9:30- Deciding your quality
10:30- Opening your image on the internet
12:10- Keeping you from getting pissed off!

Starting with a lot of information

Be sure you are shooting in RAW! You want to start off with the most info possible and then work your way down.

Here is a decent workflow ->

Shoot with your camera in RAW mode. If your camera does not have RAW, choose the FINE under the JPG settings.
Import into Lightroom or aperture – these programs will read your RAW files.
Edit your image in Photoshop – 16 bit mode, ProphotoRGB or Adobe RGB 1998
Save a copy of your image as a .PSD file – this will allow you to have layers so you can edit the image further later if you decide to.
Save another copy of your image for the web using FILE-SAVE FOR WEB AND DEVICES from Photoshop. Be sure it embeds the color profile SRGB and is around 80 quality.
Upload to the internet!

Pheatured

A Preferred Working Space for Digital Photographers

Great advice on color space from the Luminous Landscape

Tips for Changing Color Tones

Make Your Own Lighting Diagram

http://www.facebook.com/alfonso.barona Alfonso Barona

Hey aaron!!I had the same problem a few months ago…the colors in flickr where totally horrible….so I upload the finall image yo Lightroom…and then upload to facebook or flickr…from lightroom directly…i didnt knew it was because the SRgb thanks for the info!! So if anyone want to upload like 10 photos maybe its quicker that way…In the Libraty of lightroom…left column…facebook flickr etc…
Hope it help!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wunderlusting/ Cindy

Thank you! Hopefully that is the last time I squint at the screen after uploading and go ‘whaaaaaaat!!!’ Always worked in raw and edited in 16bit but didn’t convert to srgb. *head desk*
http://twitter.com/RajeshTaylor Rajesh

Great episode. I ordered a colour monitor calibrator yesterday and have just used it for the first time. Colour is the name of the game for me this week. Thanks for explaining Prophoto RGB and saving to sRGB for web on final web output.
Jeff

Don’t forget to sharpen. If your 16 megapixel image is only going to be displayed at say 600X600 pixels but you upload a full resolution file odds are it’ll look a little fuzzy because your browser auto resizes it. Photoshop (or lightroom) can resize it much better (I like the bicubic sharpener, or in lightroom set to high) this combined with exporting to sRGB helps to keep the small photo on the web looking as good as the original did on your screen. At least it has in my experience…
Nika

Such a help! I’m going to use this info when I edit for hours tomorrow.
Mark

I noticed you saved to jpg at full resolution. I don’t think it’s necessary to publish photos on the internet at full resolution. I typically make a stamp visible layer to a new file and then re-size and save. Saves on both bandwidth and file storage. Another plus is that you don’t receive those annoying PS memory errors with a smaller file.
http://www.conkerphotography.co.uk/ Mark

Thanks Aaron – hadn’t really understood what sRGB was all about.

Totally agree with Mark below though – I always resize before upload. Not only does it save bandwidth and storage space but if you upload to sites that have maximum pixel dimensions (eg. 1000px wide max), and you let them auto resize your image on upload, some of them compress it horribly. I also sharpen (using a high % of the smart sharpen tool set to 0.1px) before saving out. Hope that helps someone a bit
http://twitter.com/nickjbedford Nick Bedford

Most non-MF D-SLRs are actually 12-14 bit raw formats.
Tim Piggott

This was really helpful – but I did a “DNG” search and only got today’s episode!?
http://www.batteredluggage.com/ IPBrian

Oddly enough I was thinking about suggesting this topic…Aaron Nace, psychic! Thanks man!
http://www.leavittphoto.com Ben Leavitt

Hey Aaron, how often do you actually edit in 16 Bit mode?

By the way, if you haven’t seen this yet, I thought you’d get a kick out of it…
http://www.leavittphoto.com Ben Leavitt

Hey Aaron, how often do you actually edit in 16 Bit mode?

By the way, if you haven’t seen this yet, I thought you’d get a kick out of it…
http://twitter.com/KF_Photographer Karl Filip Karlsson

I agree with 16-bit. but thats i hard to use always because alla filter dont work with that.

Why ProphotoRGB Aaron?
i never use “save for web” to convert or something when i will ad a photo to the webb

instead i use “Edit > Convert to profile > sRGB (after i us this way i never got the wrong color)
image > image size (and then make it smaller, 1000pixel width or smaller) > bicubic sharper (because the photo lose sharpness on the web so this will help > OK
(because how often will you ad upp full-resolution photo to flickr or deviantart?)

Hope i can learn something here if you even listen?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=503900955 Tyler Hayward

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it, but also if you do save using the web and devices option, your exif data isn’t recorded in the jpeg D:
Charlotte

What would you say is a good size to re-size the images to? I agree at not uploading at full res, but I can’t seem to find the perfect size, would love some advice on this Thanks
http://twitter.com/clarkmc07 Mike Clark

I was recently playing around with this method. In my experience, once in the “Save for Web…” dialog you must check “Embed Color Profile” in addition to “Convert to sRGB” otherwise it will simply save the file with it’s original color space. I think that’s why when Aaron goes to check the info on his saved image it still shows an RGB color space.
Mark

Are there PRO cameras that shoot ProphotoRGB? My EOS 5D can do either AdobeRGB 1998 or sRGB. Remember folks to set this in your camera as well before you even start shooting …
http://twitter.com/Runee Stefania

Thank you so much for this Aaron!!!
Samuel

Anyone have tips about uploading to Facebook? I know that they recently allowed high quality photos to be uploaded with a 2048 pixel resolution on the long side. Not sure about color though, I’ve heard it used to be 72, but that may have changed as well.

I’ve simply exported photos from Photoshop as maximum quality 2048 JPEGs, sometimes with a slight amount of blur, and then uploaded them. The results are ok, but there is a definite difference in viewing them as thumbnails or Timeline posts vs. in the photo viewer.