Benjamin Kanarek post processing method
Benjamin Kanarek - shooting pro who recently switched from Canon to Pentax. You can find his stunning fashion photography works here and here.
A while ago he shared his post processing technique with the DPreview forum readers.
First of all, you need to convert your PEF or DNG without any sharpening and export it to Photoshop (or save as TIFF or PSD to load it to Photoshop later). If you shoot in JPEG directly, use Neutral settings, but shooting RAW will give you much better results. Load your PSD or TIFF into Photoshop and apply Unsharp Mask (USM) filter with the following settings:
Amount: from 240 to 330 percent
Radius: 0.3 pixels
Threshold: 0 level
After that repeat Unsharp Mask with the Amount from 10 to 15 percent and Radius from 40 to 60 pixels (Threshold still at 0 level) .
Then you should duplicate layer and decide for yourself whether you want to emphasize blacks or colors and shadows. In first case you need to desaturate new layer, in the second - leave it as is.
Go to the Layers window and apply Soft Light blending mode to the duplicated layer. Then reduce it’s opacity to 50 - 80 percent at your taste. That’s all, flatten image “and ‘Voila’ a medium format film look in digital”.
January 28th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Here
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=21836316
you can find examples of the process.
regards
Rüdiger
January 31st, 2007 at 12:07 pm
It’s sad to see that dpreview mods (or was it Phil? What Canon weren’t happy with him sying he left them for Pentax?) are stupid enough to ban such a user form their forums…
February 6th, 2007 at 12:21 am
They banned him from the forum?
And why???!!!
February 6th, 2007 at 6:47 am
DPreview forums moderators sometimes lacks of logic sense. Some people says that since the DPreview is 100% commercial project and heavily dependent on support from particular manufacturers (C and N), they can’t allow other brands to look better.
February 14th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
The perception that there is a bias toward Canon and Nikon at that site is certainly out there. For example, after saying the Panasonic/Leica SLR partnership last year was the key event of the Photokina show, no review of the actual PRODUCTS was ever done.
March 9th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
They banned me for asking a question to which they thought I should know the answer. The place baffles me.
March 10th, 2007 at 6:52 am
There should be a correction here. In Raw do not convert to JPEG. When imported in to PS use PSD or TIFF (uncompressed) please…Would you kindly change this in your explanation. Keep in PSD or TIFF only.
Ben
March 10th, 2007 at 7:10 am
There should be a correction here in the article. I never said convert to JPEG… In Raw do not convert to JPEG. When imported in to PS use PSD or TIFF (uncompressed) please…Would you kindly change this in your explanation. Keep in PSD or TIFF only.
B
March 16th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Not Impressed!
April 6th, 2007 at 4:18 am
“Not Impressed” with Dave’s comment…
Benjamin, I am very much the photography neophyte, but I think this is a wonderful post-processing technique in certain circumstances. Thank you for sharing!
April 6th, 2007 at 6:16 am
Chris, I think you should check this PP methods too:
http://pentaxlife.com/forum/topic/49
and
http://pentaxlife.com/forum/topic/61
April 6th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Thank you, VK!
June 14th, 2007 at 12:38 am
Hi, found the info out on your site using the unsharp mask. I do shoot jpeg. and you say to use neutrual settings. Where is that ? Also just trying to figure out the need to desaturate new layer, in the second - leave it as is.
Can you just clarify this a little bit more for someone who is just getting to know CS?
Thanks
Scott
December 5th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
“Neutral setting” = Natural setting. This is done in the camera, not in Photoshop. Pentax DSLR’s can be set to Bright or Natural image tone for the JPEG’s.
December 11th, 2007 at 2:57 am
Actually, I mean a setting that does not accentuate the jpeg artifacts in the camera. That would imply the least sharpened possible. Again, I would highly suggest shooting in RAW when possible.
Ben
http://www.benjaminkanarek.com
March 20th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Very good techniques and this method has been becoming my normal post processing.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:03 am
I suggest you also read this link:
http://pentaxlife.com/forum/topic/61
Ben