Order for adjustments?

[Aussie4220]

I am very new to the world of photo editing and production.  I am working my way through the Affinity tutorials and i have been going back through the first 6 sections just to get a "comfort" with regard to the multiple processes introduced.

 

When editing my own pics, unless there are obvious corrections to be made , is there a "general" sequence or order to follow with regard to adjustments ie do you tend to start with "Brightness and Contracts" first, followed by ...........  or are there certain things that should be done before other things and not the reverse?

 

Any assistance or direction on this would be most appreciated.

 

Thank you

[DavidDoesAffinity]

I had hoped you might have had some informed responses. With video, we tend to "grade" (posh term for "fix it in post" -JOKE) starting with the luma and getting black and white levels "correct" and then working on colour, sometimes working with a matte on a selective colour. So I too would like to see an experts approach.

[Fixx]

There is a traditional order (set black/white point/gamma/colour balance, scale, colour separate, sharpen) but as AP can use non-destructive tools it should not matter (well, CMYK sep is destructive). At least I wish AP is smart enough to apply effects optimal way.

[Alfred]

At least I wish AP is smart enough to apply effects optimal way.

 

Do you mean you hope it's smart enough, or you know it isn't smart enough but you wish it were? :unsure:

[Fixx]

I think it does not matter in which order non-destructive effects are as AP is pretty smart.

[rmar]

I try to follow this path http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-photo-editing-workflow.htm

 

and then i usually break the rules anyway :)

 

One thing I had to learn to do was make a duplicate of the original photo and do all the work on the duplicate leaving the original as a place I can return to if I mess things up. I came from Lightroom and this wasn't a concern. In Affinity and other layer type editors the duplicating step seems to be the first on the list (the nondestructive workflow seems to make this obsolete now but I still make a duplicate to do all my work).

 

Recently, I found a really picky method that makes sense to me technically but I'm not sure of it yet. It goes back to ~2011 and uses the Lab workspace plus RGB in a way that's supposed to setup your editing better.

 

Affinity Photo has a Lab workspace so his ideas should work here even though he uses photoshop

 

If you want to pull your hair out like me, here are the two websites I'm looking at. If you can get the main website video on Chapter 3 to play you will see what I mean.

 

http://www.moderncolorworkflow.com/video-demo main website

http://geraldbakker.nl/PPWF/index.html overview

 

edit: you can also use the free NIK plugins with Affinity Photo. NIK has a recommended workflow as well https://support.google.com/nikcollection/answer/3000890?hl=en

[v_kyr]

The above shown adjustments path from cambridgeincolour.com is the common general way, most RAW development software also follows more or less this path and so the overall workflow order steps are often similar arranged among different image processing software.

 

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