Work Flow

Image: Eyelash Viper, Costa Rica, 5D2, 70-200 f4 L IS, f7.1,1/200s ,ISO 1600,-.2/3 ev. Digital photo Pro and CS3

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The Darkroom, or rather Lightroom as its referred to today, now consists of electronics instead of chemicals, but we still do the same basic things we did in the film days, we adjust saturation, we dodge and burn, we try to get every last thing out of our RAW files that we used to try to do with our film in the dark room. "RAW" this is the equivalent of what used to be the negative, so remember if you shoot in jpg only, you are throwing away the negative.

Every camera's work flow will be a little different, maybe by a small amount, but always in my experience at least a little. The 5D Mk II is no exception, Digital Photo Pro, the software that comes with your camera, if you use a Canon, actually works very well in a lot of cases, the software of choice for me is Lightroom (currently at V 2.3) see Killer Tips, followed by CS3 (now CS4) for local adjustments, final color, size, sharpening and print.

I will always adjust curves, white balance if needed, noise and sharpen in RAW, whether I use DPP or LR and save as a 16 bit TIFF file, the only time I use jpg is when saving for use on the web. Next step is to open in CS3 and adjust curves, levels and color, I always use layers with CS3 as you have the ability to turn them on or off. Next I do local adjustments and dodge and burn if needed. Now I size using bicubic and sharpen for print using Smart sharpen and save as a 16 bit TIFF, a 100 meg file is not unusual at this point. I do all of this on an external LaCie 1 tb drive, all my best work is burned to CD at this point for back up, the rest is put on a 2 nd back up drive for later use as stock. I have found I will use DPP for animal, city and people and Lightroom for landscape or seascape. This of course is only an overall look at workflow, I could write pages about it, mostly it takes practice to develope your own workflow, but these are the basic steps I use.

I use ACDsee Pro for viewing and selecting work, you can drag and drop images into CS3 for printing and re-sizing, it is ultra fast when viewing large amounts of photo files.

Shadow and highlights where just added to the latest release of DPP 3.6.1 and I look forward to trying this new version out, Canon is constantly updating DPP and you should try the newer versions. Update DPP 3.6.1 Get it here

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Ross Murphy Images In Light
coming soon: sharpening and sizing for the web.

Costa Rica and Aviarios Del Caribe

Picture: Two Fingered Sloth young, taken with 5D2 and 24-105 f4 L, ISO 3200 f7.1, 105mm.
El Perezoso or as we know them in English The Sloth:

One of my favorite places to visit when in Cost Rica is the Sloth sanctuary, run by Luis and Judy, it is located on the Caribbean side just north of Cahuita National Park about a 3 1\2 hour drive from the Capital of San Jose. They have a small hotel here that is a nice place to stay, they conduct educational tours of there facility and also run birding tours on their extensive property. If you need some where to stay on the way south, I highly recommend it. They rescue orphaned and injured Sloth and rehabilitate them and release them back to the wild when possible, when we where there a couple of weeks ago they had about thirty Sloth, ranging in age from new born to adult, including both species, the Two fingered and the Three fingered. These animals are incredible and a joy to see up close, especially the young, they have a very alien appearance and are probably the most good natured of all wild animal's. They can be seen in the wild through out most of Costa Rica, including nearby Cahuita N.P. (watch out, the White Face Capuchins may steal your food) which is a must see when in the area.
Puerto Viejo is the last major stop on the way south past Cahuita and the beaches at Manzanillo are to die for, with lots of interesting and eclectic jungle lodges and hotels to stay in. One I can highly recommend in Cahuita is Coral Hill Bungalows. Be sure to stop in Manzanillo and eat at Maxi's (pic) or play a game of soccer with Ricky (the owner of Maxi's) and the gang on the beach out front, they play every night, your sure to have a good time.

Ross Murphy Images In Light