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• How to Photograph Birds in Flight by Clive Anderson on PictureCorrect

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• Visualization in Landscape Photography, Part 1: Practical Visualization by By Guy Tal on Black Star Rising

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• Follow Up – How Hard Can It Be? By Scott Bourne on Going Pro 2010

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• How to Get Dramatic Skies in Lightroom | Light Stalking

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• 7 Photoshop Tips for Better Portraits | Light Stalking

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I’ve been a happy Lightroom (LR) user.  My workflow consisted of dropping my CF card into a reader and using LR to convert the Canon RAW CR2 file into a Digital Negative (DNG) file.

I was happy with this workflow.  Lightroom was fast and is my primary library of photographs.  Importing is quick and painless and I could do all my metadata & tagging upon import.

I never really thought much about the quality of the CR2 to DNG conversion until I started using my Canon 7D.  There was something about the files that I just didn’t like.   After conversion and post-processing (95% of my files had to be post-processed), I was happier with the converted DNG but something was still missing.

True happiness?

While surfing the web one day, I ran across an article about DxO Optics Pro (DxOP).  The article (sadly I don’t remember which one it was) described the various benefits of DxOP including excellent noise reduction, sharpening and lens corrections.

I downloaded the demo version of DxO Optics Pro for Mac to try it out.   I chose some RAW files that had already been run through Lightroom and ran them through DxOP as a test.

You know what? There was really no comparison.

The DxO Optics Pro converted DNG was so much cleaner, sharper and more vibrant than the LR converted DNG.  That said, DxOP does much more to the photo thanLightroomdoes when converting… DxOP applies sharpening, color correction and noise reduction automatically.

One can argue that the DxOP DNG is a much different photo than the Lightroom DNG.  And I would agree.  They are different photos but I think that’s a good thing…the DxO DNG is a much better photograph in my experience.  Keep reading and I’ll show you what I mean.

Happiness at a cost

I’m happy with the results of DxOP.  Really happy.

But that happiness comes at a cost of something that’s extremely precious: Time.

To show the difference in conversion & import times, I ran a test. I went out earlier this week with my Canon 7D & my Canon 400mm 5.6 L and shot some birds at Spring Creek Forest Preserve. I filled up an 8GB CF card with photos…turns out to be 321 photos.

I decided to run all the files through both DxO Optics Pro and LR to compare conversion times and converted files.

Both DxO and Lightroom were set to convert the files to DNG using the ‘default’ settings.  DxOP applied color correction, sharpening and noise reduction to each file while Lightroom did not.

A summary of the results are below.

Number of files: 321

• DxO Optics Pro Conversion & Corrections:  4.5 hours
• Lightroom Conversion to DNG: 1.5 hours

After conversion and corrections in DxO, I had to import the files into Lightroom using the “import from disk” option and adding the converted DNG files to the library without any conversions. This process took only 1 minute to complete.

DxO Optics Pro took 3 hours longer than Lightroom but the photos provided out of DxO were much better photos (sharper, better color, etc) when compared to lightroom.

So…to get the same photo in lightroom, I would need to go through each photo and apply sharpening, color corrections, tone correction and other types of corrections…which could conceivably take 3 hours (or more).

So how good is DxO Optics Pro versus Lightroom?  Let’s take a look.

An Example

I used one of my favorite recent photographs as a test.  The female cardinal below is the final product out of DxO + some minor edits (crop, sharpening, etc) in Lightroom.

Female Cardinal - Converted and Corrected using DxO Optics Pro

Great photo if I may say so

As I said, this photo was converted to DNG using DxO Optics Pro on the default settings.   The photo below was converted from Canon RAW to DNG using Lightroom. The same settings (sharpening, color, crop, etc) were copied from the above photo and applied to the Lightroom Converted photo below.

Female Cardinal - Converted using Lightroom

Quite a big difference between the two photos isn’t there?

Let’s take a look at both photos close-up…and you’ll see where DxO Optics really shines.

The first photo is a side-by-side comparison of the female cardinal’s head and shoulder.

Side-by-side comparison of Dxo (left) vs Lightroom (right) - click for larger image

Bit of a difference isn’t there? Better color and a clearer photo IMO.

Let’s take a look at another comparison – this time a body shot of the same female cardinal.

Side-by-side comparison of Dxo (left) vs Lightroom (right) - Click for larger image

Conclusion

Have I performed a scientific test and proved anything significant? Nope.

But I have run a few thousand photos through DxO Optics Pro and say that I definitely prefer the files output from it over those from Lightroom.

Is the difference in image quality worth a processing time 3 times longer?  When I think of it taking 4.5 hours to convert & correct 321 files in DxO Optics Pro, I get a little antsy…that’s a long time.  But…those 321 files are ready to publish (for the most part) after DxO conversion whereas the 1.5 hour conversion process in Lightroom requires a significant time investment to fully post-process the files.

To me the additional post-processing time is worth it.

Buy DxO Optics Pro

There are two versions of DxO Optics Pro available: Standard ($169) and Elite ($299). The difference in the versions is based on your camera(s) and lens combinations.   Go here to find which version you’d need.

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This is a great tip that a lot of beginning photographers don’t think about. While you may only be taking photographs of your family and posting them to facebook, flickr or another location, it still makes sense to add basic copyright info and your contact information.

In addition to adding your copyright information, metadata will help you later when you are looking for those photos from Seattle…if you add metadata to them (e.g., tag it as  “Seattle”) you’ll be able to find those photos much quicker in the future.

Metadata includes information about your photographs that can be used to sort, manage and retrieve these photographs at a later date.

Adding metadata to a photo should be fairly simple and straightforward. Most digital cameras these days come with software to allow you to edit and/manage your photos and most of these products provide some form of metadata entry mechanism.  If you use a photo editing and/or management tool like Apple‘s Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop CS4, Bridge CS4 Apple iPhoto or other similar tools, you will have an easy time of adding meta-data.

While you may not take 1000′s of photographs, you still could use some type of workflow when moving your images to your computer for storage.  This workflow will be different for each person but its nice to know you have one that work s for you.  A few good books on the subject are listed below…jump over to Amazon and read more about the topic.

• Lightroom 2: Streamlining your Digital Photography Process
• David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual
• Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow Handbook: A Guide to Staying Ahead of the Workflow Curve
• The Complete Raw Workflow Guide: How to get the most from your raw images in Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom, Photoshop, and Elements
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Workflow Bible

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While Kelby walks you through step by step on how to do things, Earney goes into more detail on some topics which is something I enjoy. It’s nice to know how to do things, but knowing ‘why’ is better for the long run. I do wish Earney went into more detail on more topics though. FOr example, if Presets had been described with more detail and depth, this book would have been much more complete.

While a good book and one I’d recommend as a companion to Scott Kelby’s Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter), I would use this book as an addendum to Kelby’s and not a replacement of it.

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The book is the ONLY book I’d recommend for Lightroom 2.  It walks you through everything you’ll ever need to use in Lightroom 2 and provides screenshots for darn near every step.

It’s the perfect book for anyone wanting to learn Lightroom 2. Not only does it provide step-by-step guidelines for using LR2, it also provides tips and tricks for setting to the tool up to make workflow easier.

Highly Recommended!

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I still take snapshots for the most part but I’m learning.  I’m also learning that I can take a regular snapshot and, using tools like Adobe Photoshop CS4 as well as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 , I can turn the snapshot into something that resembles a photograph.

Let’s look at an example.

I took this picture at the Dallas Arboretum last month:

Now….this picture isn’t bad.  Composition is OK but it really doesn’t “say” anything…its a snapshot of a rose.  Blah.

While looking through my pictures one day last week I decided to see if I could turn them into something more than snapshots.  I opened this picture in Photoshop CS4 and cropped it.

I then did some Selective Color adjustments and ran Nik Software Sharpener Pro 3.0 on it…and this is what I got:

Now…a more skilled and seasoned photographer might have been able to take this photograph without the aid of photoshop…but I’m happy to be able to find something this beautiful in a so-so snapshot.

Some may argue that this using tools to ‘make’ a photograph rather than ‘taking’ a photograph is cheating….I disagree…especially when someone is learning the art of photography. Think about the above example and the lessons I learned from it.   Next time I encounter a rose will I take the first snapshot or will I attempt to take the 2nd photograph?

Even if you aren’t skilled and/or experienced enough in the art of photography, don’t let that stop you.  Keep learning and shooting and playing with your digital tools and you might be able to take an average snapshot and turn it into a real photograph.  It’s OK to fail in photography (and in life)…just remember to learn from it.

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If you want to view more of my flower photography, jump over to my Flower Gallery.

All photos taken with my  Canon EOS 5D and Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM.

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The announcement:

We are very excited to announce the release of our new preset pack for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom called Dojo Monochrome Tools. This new set is designed to cover most of your B&W and Monochrome needs. With 27 different presets to choose from, you are sure to find one that you really like. Several of them are based on the Black and White filters available on Photoshop CS4.

The Monochrome Tools provide some excellent B&W conversion options….the sample photos on Camera Dojo are excellent. You can order the Camera Dojo Monochrome Tools on their website for $14.95.

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Here’s my workflow right now.

1. I take my card from the camera and drop it into my reader.
2. Import into Lightroom 2.
3. Do a quick review to find out of focus and poor images and delete them.
4. Start working through the shots and rating them (5-star, 4-star, etc)…I do this quickly to get my first instinctual read on the photo.
5. Filter by 5 star and start editing in Photoshop.  I crop, sharpen and do other fun things…lots of cool actions out there.
6. Save the edit.
7. Repeat Step 5 to edit all photos I want to edit.
8. When done editing, I select the “Export” option to upload to Flickr.
9. To export, I use  Jeffrey Friedl’s Flickr Upload Lightroom 2 Plugin along with Timothy Armes’ LR2/Mogrify to add my a watermark to the photo (this is a new step for me).

I’ve cut down my workflow from a hodge-podge of playing around with photos to a more streamlined method.  Since I’m not selling my photos, I upload to Flickr so I can easily share with others…works perfectly for me.

Any others care to share their workflow?

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