Post-production post Photoshop: ACDSee Ultimate 9

I've finally done it! I've cut the digital umbilical cord (so to speak) and no longer have Adobe Photoshop on my home computer. Or any other Adobe CC product for that matter. No more InDesign, no more Illustrator, no Premier Pro.... nothing. I'm almost breaking out in a sweat just thinking about it!

This is a pretty big deal for someone who has used Photoshop since the very early days. I have been a graphic designer for most of my working life (the last 32 years), and have invested most of that time to learning, using, and even teaching the suite of Adobe software products. They are, after all, the industry standard.

When I started my own graphic design business 10 years ago, my first major outlay (after the computer), was the Adobe Creative Suite. I wouldn't have even considered running a design business without it. And to be honest, I still wouldn't. But I don't run a design business anymore. As a 'home' user, or hobbyist, I now have to justify to myself (and my wife), what I use for software and, more importantly, how much it costs.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I hate - and I mean HATE, the subscription model of software ownership. I know I'm swimming against the tide (don't worry, I'm used to that), but I just like to know that when I spend the money, I 'own' the software. It might make sense for businesses to 'lease' or subscribe monthly, but as a home user I just want to buy a product outright. But that's just me.

I was fortunate for the last year to be classified as a 'student' since I was enrolled in an on-line course through work. As part of the course, I qualified for the entire Adobe CC (Creative Cloud) Suite at a ridiculously cheap monthly fee. I signed up, knowing it was only going to last for the year, and knowing that after that year I was going to have to cut the cord and look for something else. I just can't afford the monthly fee that Adobe is charging for the whole Suite.

Well, the year is up. And today (as I write this) I ended my Adobe subscription and deleted the whole suite from my computer. And I should be freaked out. I should be worried. I'm a photographer for crying out loud. What's a photographer going to do without Photoshop?

First of all relax.... take a deep breath. There is life without Photoshop, and it comes from ACD Systems. I would recommend any photographer, with or without Photoshop, take a very serious look at ACDSee's Windows based (sorry Mac users) Ultimate software. I have Ultimate 9, but everything I am about to say also applies to their latest version - Ultimate 10 (which, not surprisingly, adds some newer features).

ACDSee Ultimate is very aptly named software. It's an incredibly powerful image viewer, organizer, RAW processor, and image editor - all in one! It incorporates individual programs like Adobe's Bridge, Lightroom and Photoshop into a single, seamless package. And it does so at blinding speed, all within an excellently designed UI. The designers and engineers at ACDSee should be incredibly proud of what they have accomplished with Ultimate 9. It is a truly outstanding piece of software!

As someone who has lived and worked within the Adobe eco-system for so long, I don't say that lightly. I really wasn't looking forward to ending my subscription to Adobe CC. But finding ACDSee Ultimate 9 has been an absolute revelation for me. In many ways, I find it better, faster, and stronger than anything Adobe could offer for my photography.

First, of course, is the fact that you can purchase the software outright - at a very reasonable price. You can also choose the subscription based model if you wish - or not. The choice, thankfully, is yours (and please, ACDSee, keep it that way).

Manage Mode - ACDSee Ultimate 9

Second, I prefer the way ACDSee uses your own computer hard-drive to manage, view and arrange the files. No database-driven library a-la Lightroom. I dislike the way Adobe's Lightroom creates its own library. I just never fully trusted it. Yes, the photos were there, until they weren't for some reason, and then heaven help you trying to get the library to sync properly again! I just love the simple, straight forward, logical, and yet effective way that ACDSee handles your images. It just makes sense.

Photo Mode - ACDSee Ultimate 9

If you really want to take image cataloging to the next level, try out the 'Photos' view, which gives you thumbnail images of all the photos in your folders. These can be arranged by day, month or year - and hovering over a thumbnail will give you a slightly larger view of the image. A single click will take you into the chosen images folder, while double-clicking will send the image directly into 'View' mode.

View Mode - ACDSee Ultimate 9

Navigating all makes perfect sense, and doesn't take long to get used to. View mode is nice and clean, with a film strip for the selected folder, and large view for the selected image. Simple metadata for the image is always displayed (I like this feature a lot), and moving through images is lightning fast. ACDSee made their name initially in Digital Asset Management (DAM) software, and it really shows in Ultimate 9, offering a wealth of different organizational tools and structures.

Develop Mode - ACDSee Ultimate 9

But where ACDSee really shines for me, as a photographer looking for a Photoshop replacement, is in the Develop and Edit Modes. Develop Mode is Ultimate 9's RAW processing engine. And what a fantastic engine it is! I have compared ACDSee Ultimate 9's RAW output against several of the top RAW processing programmes, and ACDSee was a clear winner in my book. It easily beats Lightroom for colour reproduction, especially in the warmer reds, oranges and yellows. Develop Mode has a rich and satisfying feature set, with all the controls you would expect from a RAW processing engine. Lighting, colour and lens controls are all there, as well as curves, split toning, healing, cloning, sharpening and noise reduction. It is, of course, all non-destructive - attaching a script to the RAW file that moves with it if ever the file changes location on your computer. RAW processing software simply doesn't get better than this.

Edit Mode - ACDSee Ultimate 9

Finally, Ultimate 9's one-two knock-out punch is its inclusion of Edit Mode. What Develop is to Lightroom, Edit is to Photoshop. Layers, adjustment layers, masks, blend modes, crop, rotate, resize, repair, dodge and burn, skin retouching, sharpening, clarity, brushes - it all there, and more! It even has a few tricks up its sleeve; like Pixel mapping that masks particular areas through color and tone - as well as smart brushes (in Ultimate 10) that make selections magically, also through color and tone.

Adobe is such a formidable giant in the image editing industry, it seems almost unthinkable that a 'serious' photographer would use (or choose) anything else. Yet there are many good reasons why a 'serious' photographer, or someone looking to take their photography to the next level, should look elsewhere for an image editing program. As someone who has taught Photoshop to beginning photographers for years, I know how intimidating Photoshop (and Lightroom) can be. It has grown over the years to be something of a Frankenstein's monster of a program, with maybe 20% of content that photographers actually need, and 80% that simply confuses people.

This is where ACDSee Ultimate 9 really shines. It's got everything you need, and practically nothing you don't. All in a slick, unified, logical and useful package. It's a seriously impressive combination of well designed, cleverly organized and satisfyingly intuitive software programs for the modern photographer. If you don't have Photoshop, and are looking for a DAM, RAW development and photo editing package, then you have to try ACDSee Ultimate 9 (now 10). And if you do have Lightroom and/or Photoshop, but are struggling to learn how to use it, then boy do I have the solution for you! Do yourself (and your images) a favor and download the trial of ACDSee Ultimate 10. I think you'll like what you find. I know I do.

The Making of an Image

One of my favourite outings from last year would have to be the Greymouth Street Races. It was the shoot that convinced me that I had made the right decision moving to mirrorless. Up until then, I had been nervous about using the Olympus OM-D E-M5 MkII to photograph fast-moving subjects. But rather than being disappointed, I was blown away with the images that I got that day. It’s been a few months since then, and I have lived with the images for a while before deciding how to process them (there were over 2000 images!).

In the Lead. OM-D E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6 lens. 1/4000th sec @ f5.6, ISO 1600

As I said, I was thrilled with the quality of the images I captured – especially with the ‘cheap’ Olympus 40-150mm f4/5.6 consumer zoom. Cheap and plasticky it may be, but boy-oh-boy is it one sharp lens for the price. Even wide open, it’s as sharp, if not even sharper, than the Canon 400mm f5.6 and 70-200mm f2.8 pro zooms. And that’s not just anecdotal. That’s from actually comparing images taken with these lenses from previous years capturing the same event.

Cutting it Close. Olympus E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6 lens. 1/2000th sec @ f5.4, ISO 800

Yet as sharp as it may be, the one slightly limiting factor for the lens, and to a certain extent mirrorless itself, is the larger depth-of-field exhibited due to the smaller sensor size. F5.6 on the EM-5 MkII is equivalent to F11 on a full frame sensor (and probably around f8 on an APS-C sized DLSR). This is great for landscapes when you want everything in focus. Not so great for sports where you want a decent separation from the action and the background.

So, with the editing of the images, I set out to give more background blur, for a greater 3D quality and subject ‘pop’. I also wanted to simplify the backgrounds as much as possible, to really focus attention on the bikes themselves. I had tried to achieve this on the day by positioning myself somewhere on the track with fairly clean backgrounds. But even then, I wanted to make it cleaner still by cloning out a few problem areas.

Catch Me If You Can. E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6 lens. 1/2000th @ f5.6. ISO 640

What follows is my post-processing steps to create the final images included in this post. I will cover what and why I did what I did at each stage of the process, without going in to too great a detail about the actual how-to’s of the individual processes themselves. I’m very happy with the results, although that doesn’t mean I wouldn't do it slightly differently six months or a year from now. That’s the great thing about post-processing an image. You can take it in many different directions – as long as you keep the original!

First step is cropping. I don’t crop all that often, preferring to ‘crop’ in-camera as I shoot. But sometimes the action is fast and frenetic and you don’t have time to crop perfectly. So in this instance, and again, to help simplify the composition and distractions, I cropped afterwards.

Complete Concentration. E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6. 1/2000th @ f5.6. ISO 1000

Second step was actually sharpening. Yes, the images were already sharp, but I wanted to give them even more crispy sharpness. I achieved this with ‘high pass’ sharpening (my favourite way to sharpen), and then added a layer mask to mask out the areas I didn’t want sharp (like the asphalt on the road and the background).
 

Third step, cloning out the unwanted distractions. Cropping got rid of some of them, but many of the plastic barriers had dark holes and branding on them that were very distracting – even out of focus. So I cloned them out using a combination of 'content aware' fill and the clone brush.

Next was some dodging & burning and levels adjustments to get the exposure looking exactly how I wanted it. This usually meant some light dodging on the faces, and some opening up of the shadows with the highlight/shadow setting on +10 for the shadows. Then a simple levels ‘S’ curve finished things off.

Layers Palete in Photoshop for Blur

Having achieved all that, I was then ready to create the background separation. I wanted the final images to look like they were shot with an f2.8 aperture rather than the f5.6 (f11) they were actually taken with. To do this, I cut around the bike and rider using the pen tool (make sure you use a good graphics tablet if you’re going to be doing a lot of pen tool work) and selected this with a 0.5 feather on the selection. I pasted this on a new layer (Ctrl + J), and then went back to the original layer and duplicated this as well (Ctrl + J again). I re-selected the selection (found in the Path palate), this time with no feather, and hit Delete (Backspace) on the keyboard to cut it out of the layer. To this layer I applied a 15% Gaussian Blur, then added a layer mask. Using the gradient tool I masked out the lower third of the image, graduating towards the top where I wanted the most blur. And hey-presto, an f2.8 background!

This is the most time-consuming element to the image, but still only took me about 10 minutes to achieve. And I’m more than happy with the results. I wanted the bikes to really ‘pop’ out from the background, without making it look too unnatural. Hopefully I’ve achieved that?

All the changes made in post process to get the images looking how I wanted.

To finish it all off, I flatten the layers into one final image, and then darkened the top and bottom a little, before adding a 10% black feathered vignette to the image. Subtle, but just something to again help draw the eye to the action in the image.

It sounds like a lot, bit it really isn't when you sit down and get into the flow of processing. Each image probably took about 15 minutes, and it certainly helps if you have a good graphics tablet (Wacom Intuos).

And the finished image after all that processing.

Admittedly, I could have saved myself a few hours of post processing work by just shooting with an f2.8 lens in the first place. Agreed. Except, I don't have an f2.8 150mm lens on me, and am probably never likely to. So you make do with what you have, and just know you're up for some computer work afterwards. I don't think that 10 to 15 minutes is overly excessive in terms of post production anyway. I certainly wouldn't want to spend that time working on every shot I take - and I don't. My average is probably only a minute or two. But for images that I want to take the time to elevate to a higher standard, then 10 minutes is totally worth it (IMHO).

Out in Front. E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6 lens. 1/4000th sec @ f5.6. ISO 2000

There may be some photographers out there who still believe any use of Photoshop in an image is a crutch. Hard to believe maybe, but I'm old enough to remember back to Photoshop version 1 and the hot debates held by 'purist' photographers and those crazy early digital adopters. For a long time, Photoshop was a dirty word in camera club circles and while that may have changed, I know that many photographers still believe that you shouldn't spend longer than 1 minute 'working' on a photo on the computer.

I can sympathise. But sometimes, I also think that you've gotta do what you gotta do to help create your vision. You can't use Photoshop to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but you can (and should) use Photoshop to help you achieve the end result you envisaged when you took the photo. And that's exactly what I've done with the images in this post. Hope you like them?