Osman - thank you for the kind words - I'm still swooning over your beautiful waterfall (and, to be honest, waterfall shots usually leave me rather cold).
These are all M8, 35 mm Summarit. I am still struggling with my processing: most of these are RPP+PS5 - I find that mostly RPP is vastly superior to ACR5, but it tends to require more PS work, after the raw conversion, naturally enough. The ridge shot is all Adobe though, as I couldn't get close with the RPP version. Colour balance is my main problem - I may have to start using my WhiBal card more, particularly for flower shots, until I get better at it.
HI There
Nice shots - I like the Red Lily and the last view shot the best, but I reckon that the colours look a little flatter than you perhaps meant?
Of course, that could be what you're looking for, in which case it works pretty well.
I'm a lazy goodfornothing, and my view of your workflow is that it's terribly complicated (and it must be terribly time consuming as well). I'm quite aware that some converters are better than others in some cases, but generally speaking the differences are small, but the disconnect you (Me of course) get by swapping between makes things difficult.
The two major DAM packages: Aperture and Lightroom, both do a really good job with the M8 files, and the benefits bestowed by a simpler workflow and therefore more time to learn the nuances of the packages can make things much easier.
I very rarely spend more than 5 minutes on PP on any image - usually less than a minute (of course, you might say
and it shows ). I know what I want, and I go and get it , my problem is perhaps that I'm not very consistent in what I want, which means that the results lack coherence (but that's just a reflection of me!).
As for colour . . . . well, it seems to me that it's rather like carrying a big pile of magazines, as long as you leave it well alone they stay stacked up, but if you try pulling one out the whole lot goes.
Of course, you can mess with the white balance, but surely what you are after is a reflection of the natural light, where a mid grey probably isn't mid grey?
I've long since changed to using Daylight white balance in daylight - it gives me a real understanding of how the camera deals with colour, and, of course, if necessary it's easy to do a batch change to a number of images at once. Recently, I was doing some Auto White Balance testing for someone else, and it simply reminded me of how messy things can become, especially in mixed light and shade.
I seem to be going on - sorry, and probably it's all rubbish anyway. What I'm trying to say is that simplicity is really helpful, and when you pare things down to the basics (one program, one WB, one sensor) suddenly things are clearer, and it's easy to understand what you really do want, and to change things accordingly.
right . . . set soapbox off