On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 2:59 AM, <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This may seem heretical to say, but I find that Faststone enables me to do
> all I usually need do do to images.
Hi Brian,
I don't think it's heretical. They're your images and you're the boss.
If you like what you're getting, that's happiness as far as I'm
concerned. Shoot more images, spend less time at the computer.
Like others, I use Faststone only as a viewer. I do a rough selection
of the images (i.e., delete total losers) in FS, but then I usually
edit them in Lightroom, using the "Edit in External Program" feature.
There are a couple tools in Lightroom and PS that I can't live
without. I'm also stunned at times at how different the image looks
in FS and then in Lightroom. FS must do some kind of auto edit of the
image for display purposes. It's useful up to a point, but it almost
always blows highlights, and even with the "Smooth" setting checked,
it seems a little more crude than what I'd like. I haven't found a
way to turn it off. Occasionally when I have pulled the image into
Lightroom I can see that FS has pulled the image to the right on the
histogram. I find that feature in FS to be OK for viewing but I don't
like it as a starting-point for editing.
But that's just me. My daughter edits her photos in Flickr! I've
tried to work with her to get her to learn to work with a dedicated
editor, but she is as stubborn as her dad at being told how to do
things. She does some very creative things with those tools, and
they're not rocket science tools anyway, so what's the big deal?
The tools I can't live without in Lightroom: the Exposure panoply,
which includes a levels, WB tweak, highlight recover, and and fill
light adjustment tool. Taken as a whole, this set of tools manages
exposure with more subtle control than a simple editor. The
Clarity-Vibrance-Saturation panoply of tools can be imitated in
Photoshop and perhaps in other editors, but it's very convenient and
simple to use, particularly if you're used to applying LCE in PS or
with somebody else's USM tool.
I often find that there is a little bit of additional work that I do
in Photoshop after exporting a 16-bit TIF from Lightroom and FS with
its browser smarts is helpful in my locating the TIF and opening it in
PS. A recheck of levels usually shows that I have a little bit of
highlight adjustment that I may be able to do and I appreciate having
a good Curves tool. Lightroom's is OK, but I'm just more used to the
one in PS. Also the Shadow-Highlight tool in PS provides that last
bit of control I like as compared with Lightroom, though it may be
that I am simply more used to the H/S tool in PS. Bascially, it does
provide greater control than the Recovery and Fill Light sliders in
Lightroom, but it's a little harder to use well without taking some
time to learn what it can do.
I am also more confident about doing all USM sharpening with PS. I
have actions set up that proceed with sharpening in very small amounts
and I always use multiple passes. Pressed to it, I could live without
layers, but they are useful. I tend to save mulitple versions of
files, depending on what I had done to it and for what purpose, which
tends to obviate some of the need for layers.
Sorry, as this is probably a lot more than you wanted!
Joel W.
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