Curvemeister Forum

This is a question Mike and I ask every session.  We want you to ask questions here that may have been addressed but your understanding is still unclear or new issues that do not seem to fit into any other area.

Please feel free to ask then here we will do our best to get you an answer.

Greg

Greg and Mike,

Do you have any thoughts about a standard workflow?  I have been avoiding using any tools other than CM2 for this class.  How do you approach processing RAW files?  Do you use camera raw or lightroom (or other packages like them) to do any simple adjustments before using CM2?

Thanks for all your work and help!

Gus

Hey Gus!
Well for me I do use the camera raw plugin for PSE for my Nikon Raw images. 

I find though that I really just adjust the exposure and brightness.  I really don't mess with the color too much. 
As for a work flow for me....

Typically, I start with camera raw, then I use CM2, then I apply other tools as needed, after that I save the file as a Tiff or PSD to preserve the Layers and then flatten and "save as" to finish off.

I don't really have a formula..I'm pretty flexable actually.

Greg

Hi Greg & Mike,

It appears that the Pin Skin tone tool will affect the color, in addition of the skin, of the whole image. Is there any way to limit the effect of the Skin tone Pin to the skin only? ::)

Wai-hong Chung from Hong Kong

Masking with a selection can be used to accomplish this, but none of the example images require this, and in most cases other objects in a normal image will benefit if skin tones are improved. Using the RGB or wgCMYK color space will also limit the change in skin tone more than in Lab, where the color change is always uniform throughout the image.

For example, in the Mona Lisa image, moving the skin tones into the normal range has the happy effect of increasing the blue color of the sky and water in the background, resulting in something that more closely resembles the original image.