# Photographic Editing - Workflow

## Image Editing/Workflow Tools

### A Standard Workflow Proposal

When performing a basic workflow, the primary areas for consideration are:

1. Exposure: White Balance

2. Color: White Balance

3. Black and white points: White Balance or Adjust Levels

4. Contrast: Adjust Curves

5. Saturation: White Balance or Vivid or Hue/Saturation/Lightness

6. Resizing (interpolation) : Change Size

7. Sharpening

8. Digital Asset Management (applying tags, captions, rating, geolocation, save under new name)

We recommend this sequence of image editing steps to ensure optimum photographic quality for the end product. In particular, never do sharpening before the last step. And we recommend using a lossless format like PNG or TIFF for storing photographs. Otherwise you'll lose a bit every time you save the results. If you can afford it, use 16 bit/channel for your best shots. If you want to change color space, in particular if you want to work in CIEL*a*b, 16 bit per channel are required to avoid truncation effects.

If you swap step 4 and 5, which is well possible if the initial contrast is already very good, you can do the first 4 adjustment in the same plugin, the white balance

Many of the tools you may need for photographic editing are included with &digikam;. Their description follows here.

### Introduction to common editing tools features

All Image Editor tools like Sharpen, Blur, Noise Reduction, Refocus, Unsharp Mask, &etc; use a common dialog style that previews the effect before applying the filter to the current image. Below you see the "Apply Texture" tool in action using this common dialog layout:

#### The Apply Texture Tool in Action

The Apply Texture Tool in Action

- (1): The seven buttons to the top left select the comparison style of the preview area. The modes are:

  - Original image

  - Split vertically without duplication. The left area shows the original whereas the right side shows the filter applied to the continuation of the selected zoom.

  - Split horizontally without duplication. The top area shows the original whereas the lower area shows the filter applied to the continuation of the selected zoom.

  - Split vertically. The left area shows the original and the right one the filter effect for comparison.

  - Split horizontally. The top area shows the original and the lower one the filter effect for comparison.

  - Effect preview. This is a live effect preview without comparison.

  - 'Mouse over' style: preview when mouse is off the preview (in the settings area), otherwise shows original.

- (2): There are two buttons that can be toggled to show over or underexposure. The colors can be customized in the general setup page.

- (3): The preview selector frame. Click and drag with the mouse on the floating frame to move it on the image. The preview area on the left of dialog is updated accordingly.

- (4): The filter or plugin settings area.

- (5): At the lower left corner: there is help and a reset to defaults button (all settings are remembered from the last use of the plugin).

- (6): There is a progress indicator for plugins with involved calculations.

### The &digikam; tool set

- Image Color

  - Auto Correction

  - Brightness/Contrast/Gamma

  - Hue/Saturation/Lightness

  - Color Balance

  - Black and White

  - Encoding Depth

  - Color Management

  - Levels Adjust

  - Color Effects (Solarize, Vivid, Neon, Edge)

  - White Balance/Exposure/Saturation

  - Curves Adjust

  - Channel Mixer

- Image Enhancement

  - Sharpening (sharpen, unsharp mask, refocus)

  - Blur Tool

  - Red Eye Removal

  - Photograph Inpainting

  - Noise Reduction & blurring

  - Hot Pixel Correction

  - Lens Distortion Correction

  - Photograph Restoration

  - Vignetting Correction Tool

- Image Transformation Tools

  - Change Size (reduce and blow-up)

  - Free Rotation

  - Perspective Adjustment

  - Shearing Tool

- Image Decoration

  - Add Border

  - Insert Text

  - Template Superimpose

  - Apply Texture

- Special Effect Filters

  - Simulate Infrared Film.

  - Add Film Grain.

  - Simulate Oil Painting

  - Simulate Charcoal Drawing.

  - Emboss Photograph.

  - Distortion FX.

  - Blur FX.

  - Add Rain Drops

## Processing RAW image files, RAW work-flow

A typical RAW workflow with &digikam; may follow these steps:

- Setting up the RAW conversion and color management preferences

  - get the ICC color profiles for the camera, display and printer

  - setup &digikam; correctly defining a color work space

- Camera whitepoint setting

- Demosaicing (includes interpolation, noise filtering and chromatic aberration correction)

- Conversion to a color space

- Gamma correction, tone mapping

- Color profile assignment

- Dynamic range expansion (optional)

- Continue with standard workflow

From there everything is simple, select a RAW image and open it in the editor. The color management widget will be displayed after the image has been processed in order to adjust color rendering. Without color management all images are very dark, this is normal. You can experiment the various profiles you have in order to select the best input profile according to your image (some tends to be very neutral, even a bit dull, some gives more saturated results, &etc;).

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