Poll

After I develop my film, I:

struggle with Lightroom until the caffeine runs out
4 (23.5%)
wipe the goop on my right pant leg
4 (23.5%)
hey, what happens in the darkroom stays in the darkroom
6 (35.3%)
I just give my money to those nice folks at the drug store
1 (5.9%)
after I what now?
2 (11.8%)

Total Members Voted: 16

Author Topic: Post-processing poll  (Read 1451 times)

Jack Johnson

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Post-processing poll
« on: October 01, 2012, 03:31:13 AM »
I kept references to beer off the list, because I thought it might have an unfair advantage.

Steven.

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #1 on: October 01, 2012, 07:14:55 AM »
what happens in the darkroom stays in the darkroom.

nothing inappropriate, but my darkroom habits are quite odd.. nothing i would openly share online  ;)

Late Developer

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #2 on: October 01, 2012, 09:00:44 AM »
I don't have a darkroom (nor room for one) and I don't (currently) process my own negatives. However, after a lot of trial and error (and useful adice from fellow FWs on sharpening scans etc) I've got a "routine" together that allows me to produce B&W images just about how I like them.

Any "creative" effects on mono are usually courtesy of Silver Efex Pro - a plug in on Photoshop that is, effectively, a load of configurable presets appplied via a layer.

Colour is my Achilles' heel. I am totally reliant on the "auto colour" option on PS to get colours near where they should be +/- a bit of hue and saturation. Oh, how I wish I understood a single word of any of the books about colour profiling I've read........ :(
"An ounce of perception. A pound of obscure".

astrobeck

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #3 on: October 01, 2012, 04:49:33 PM »
I usually fight with my scanner after a darkroom session.
My Epson has been dying slowly for the past year and it gives me fits!
It works perfectly at times, and then at others, it throws tantrums like a spoiled 2 years old and just won't do anything right.

The darkroom stuff would bore everyone, but the handful of expletives muttered at the scanner might slightly entertain.    ;D

Ordinal

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2012, 06:41:28 PM »
I scan negatives in with Vuescan as 2400 DPI JPEGs, and then put the results into Aperture, archiving the original scanned files in case Aperture decides to die on me at some point. The actual post-processing tends to be one or more of:

1. nothing at all - scan, import, leave alone;

2. mess a bit with the white point and/or curve in Vuescan - but not often because it's easier to mess with pictures in Aperture;

3. in Aperture...
3a. boost shadows. This is the most common thing I do - most of the pictures I take seem to need this to some degree.
3b. remove dust, scratches, fingerprints etc
3c. auto white balance and auto levels for colour negative film (I can never get the colours right in Vuescan). For similar reasons I will sometimes play with the saturation and colour balances generally if I feel the result isn't what I saw.
3d. rotate if I've messed up while taking the picture, which happens a lot with folders and TLRs;
3e. anything else that I feel like doing for fleeting artistic reasons, such as cropping and colourising.

One of the reasons I don't shoot in colour negative much (apart from that I can't develop it myself) is that I find it very hard to scan. I almost never seem to get good results without heavy messing-about, which takes time and is rarely that rewarding. Slide film on the other hand always comes out lovely. If I were stuck with just Velvia and HP5+ I'd be perfectly happy.

eta: oh, and one of the most important things I do in Aperture is tag pictures and adjust other metadata like star rating, date, time and location. I have a Bento database with all of the rolls I've taken by number, listing the camera, date developed, development time etc, and I tag the images with "roll180" or whatever so that I can find them again. That's the most useful part of Aperture for me actually - as long as I've spent the time, I can find, say, all the photos I've taken of tables in August 2010 rated four or more stars. Not really post-processing perhaps.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2012, 06:45:08 PM by Ordinal »
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original_ann

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2012, 08:44:42 PM »
I process all of my film (b/w, c41, e6) but continue to scan the negs and process in PS.  Processing consists mostly of dust removal.  Please tell me I'm not alone in sometimes having to spend hours dusting (using a teeny-tiny healing tool brush) each image?

Francois

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #6 on: October 07, 2012, 09:48:09 PM »
I process all of my film (b/w, c41, e6) but continue to scan the negs and process in PS.  Processing consists mostly of dust removal.  Please tell me I'm not alone in sometimes having to spend hours dusting (using a teeny-tiny healing tool brush) each image?
Nope, you're not alone...
And everytime I have to do it, I'm hating every minute of it!
If only Digital ICE could work on something else than C-41 and E-6
Francois

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astrobeck

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #7 on: October 08, 2012, 03:40:37 AM »
oh, gosh, you're not alone at all Ann!

If there was some magic swiffer, shop vac, or whatever on the computer to take the dust away from my scanned negatives, that would just be genius!   8)

 8)

SLVR

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #8 on: October 08, 2012, 03:41:26 AM »
I process all of my film (b/w, c41, e6) but continue to scan the negs and process in PS.  Processing consists mostly of dust removal.  Please tell me I'm not alone in sometimes having to spend hours dusting (using a teeny-tiny healing tool brush) each image?

Count me in on that too. Though for my BW ive got it down to a science. I can usually scan with no healing brushing or any touch ups other than cropping out the borders of the image. Though i must admit, im a spot healing brush ninja. Don't tell anyone.

After i develop my film i wait for it to dry, scan it and prep sizes for posting to teh interwebs. I dont usually touch things up unless its something like strange color correction, scanning a FP-3000b negative, or if the image was just too good and i needed to salvage a bit of it to make it pop more.

95% of all of my shots are unedited scans. I like to think of myself as a bit of a purist in that sense (scanning the film for what its worth) but scanning in general defeats the purpose of that so yea.

Late Developer

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Re: Post-processing poll
« Reply #9 on: October 08, 2012, 09:00:45 AM »
I used to do the dusting at 100% TIFF size prior to other processing (layers / contrast / toning / vignettes and whatever else I decided to apply to get the effect I want). However, I now clone out any obvious dust and marks after everything else is done (but before sharpening) as this saves me a lot of time.
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