This old dog was laying on the sidewalk in Basseterre, St. Kitt's, in one of the worst parts of town. He was so obviously beat up but so completely unconcerned with me or anyone else for that matter.
One of the primary digital services I offer is RAW file conversion to RGB or CMYK. I'd like to explain a little of what this involves so clients will have a better understanding of what they are paying for when they order a conversion.
Photographers and designers learned early on that the high quality jpegs (usually referred to as "fine" jpegs) straight from the camera, created using the internal camera controls, were not high enough quality for most professional uses. Although, these fine jpegs are certainly good enough for most amateur uses. More importantly, shooting in fine jpeg mode locked in decisions that were made "on location", where viewing conditions were less than ideal to make such decisions and the internal camera controls were, at best, blunt instruments in comparison to the software tools available on the computer back at the studio.
Consequently, most professionals switched to shooting in RAW format even though shooting in RAW format adds a layer of complexity and requires a great deal more post production work. The final results were so far superior that this decision was almost unanimous across the professional photography universe. RAW is the original information captured by the camera, before all the decisions about color balance, sharpening and gamma are applied. I like to think of the RAW file as a "digital negative". All the choices that the photographer makes on location are contained within the file but those choices haven't yet been applied to the file so they can be fine tuned, after the fact, at the studio, using a calibrated, color controlled monitor. No original information captured at the scene has been thrown out, as it would be in a camera produced fine jpeg. RAW images, because they contain proprietary information and because they are in a RGB color space, cannot be used in offset reproduction; the RAW file image must be converted to an industry standard file format like jpeg or tiff and converted to CMYK before it can be placed in a document destined for an offset press.
Aside from converting the image from RAW to TIFF, from RGB to CMYK, most images require additional optimization. There are always some images that require very little adjustment and can be used very close to how they open up within the RAW processor using the default settings, they simply need to be sized and sharpened for the size they will be used, but this is the exception not the rule. Most images require subtle or even gross changes in the white balance, gamma, black level, highlight level as well as tone. The "auto" settings within imaging software programs are significantly better than they were just five years ago, but like most automatic controls they only work well on images that fall within a statistical norm. If an esthetic decision was made by the photographer to create an image outside the realm of "normal" the auto settings will not provide the most accurate rendition, for this you need an actual person, someone who is familiar with the vision of that particular photographer.
Any image interpolation, the sizing of the image up or down, is also applied within the RAW processor because the image will retain the highest quality by being sized there. Many clients think they have the best solution by ordering the image in the largest possible size, but this is not the case even when the image will be used in many different sizes in the future. They sacrifice quality for a small gain in convenience. The highest quality is obtained by sizing the image within 20% of its final use every time it will be used. This is best done from within the RAW processor.
Once the corrections are made within the RAW processor, the image is saved as a tiff. The tiff is then opened within Photoshop. In Photoshop additional changes are made which are image specific. Frequently there are areas of the image which are outside the acceptable range in contrast or exposure, windows for example, or colors falling outside of the CMYK gamut, these can be adjusted to a color that can approximate the RGB color within the CMYK color space. Image sensors sometimes get dust on them during lens changes and these darker areas need to be cleaned up. I also adjust areas that require more contrast or spot sharpening, for instance in a group photo, frequently the light levels are not equal over all the individuals, making some individuals darker, flatter and less visible. I adjust the tone on their faces to account for hue differences in the way individual skin tones reproduce in a photo. I also clean up areas of their faces that are distracting to the picture like blemishes, discolored teeth. I clean up the whites of the eyes in most portraits. In an exterior, I adjust uneven tone in skies and fill in areas on the lawn, remove trash and other small distractions that detract from the image. All of this is included in the price the client pays for the original conversion.
Sometimes the client requires additional retouching outside of the scope of the changes I routinely make as described above. This might involve removing an individual from one picture and placing them in another or changing a cloudless sky to include clouds or change the color of a shirt, change background colors, etc. This work I bill by the hour and will be happy to estimate this additional cost up front. My charges are well at the low end of industry standards for retouching and I work fast.
When I'm finished the image should be ready to be placed in the document and require no further adjustment by the pre-press department at the offset house. Adjustments, if made, will be minor. This will save the client money and, most importantly, time at the offset printer. Recently I asked a printing rep that I work with frequently just how much pre-press time I saved them and he estimated that the cost to the client was cut in excess of 70%. In most cases, zero adjustments needed to be made to the images after the proofs were made. I use an industry standard CMYK profile but I'm happy to use any custom CMYK profile provided by the offset printer if requested. I also, convert to black and white, providing either duotones or quad-tones. This is best done within the RAW processor because a well balanced color image doesn't necessarily translate immediately into black and white without adjustments in gamma and exposure.
Images used for the web are processed a little differently in that they will remain in the same color space that they were captured in, RGB, and will be used at much lower resolutions. It is important to order separate web versions created that use a sRGB color profile rather than taking the CMYK file and converting it back to RGB. The original Adobe 1998 RGB file tiff can be used to create the web version (once converted to sRGB) so clients should request delivery of the final RGB files if they intend to use the images on their website. All images are saved in RGB format before the final conversion to CMYK so there is no additional charge to get the RGB files sent along with the order.
One of the more exciting things we've been doing lately has been creating panoramas, this is where numerous images are stitched together to create one long continuous image. This can be done in horizontal format or vertical or a combination of both. Some very interesting artistic results can be obtained from using this tool.
About me:
I received a BFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art, MICA, in Photography in 1978. After graduating I worked as a location assistant, commercial photographer and finally as photographic printer and digital image processor. I continue to shoot my own fine art photography, which has been shown in museums and galleries. My personal work is in the permanent collection of the Baltimore Museum. I opened my own photographic business in 1979. My business was mostly all photographic until around 1997 when digital images and high end digital printers first started to make serious inroads into the photographic arena. My lab was one of the first photographic labs in the area to jump head first into the digital world (I have the scars to prove it). Now I work almost exclusively on digital images. I still do some work in the darkroom, with film, but less and less every single year.
My current and past client list has included most of the well known (as well as lesser known) commercial photographers in the Baltimore/ Washington area as well as photographers from around the country. I've worked on a number of book projects. I've also worked on publications and pieces for a large portion of the Fortune 500 as well as colleges and non-profit institutions from around the country. I have almost 35 years of experience in making images look great for my clients who are composed of photographers, designers, ad agencies and corporate clients. Even though I now work in front of a computer using a software program, instead of inside a darkroom on an enlarger, the task of getting the best possible image is still fundamentally the same. The tools have changed but the task is still the same, make that image look as good as it possibly can. When you pay for a conversion you are paying for my many years of experience with a few million plus images and counting.
