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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Denis Richard, post: 26058014, member: 112673&quot;]In the world of photography, there is an endless variety of lighting scenarios. The world&#039;s dynamic range is far broader than any camera system can manage. I&#039;m talking about shooting a glistening waterfall under intense midday sun or the setting sun over a deep, shadowed valley. Shooting in RAW won&#039;t miraculously let you capture these images in one shot. Nothing will. But you can shoot multiple exposures and blend them with luminosity masks. </p><p><br /></p><p>To state the obvious, coin photographers are not shooting waterfalls. We&#039;re shooting coins in an environment we have complete control over, with adjustable lighting. We control the dynamic range of our scene. It is seldom, if ever, that a coin&#039;s dynamic range is wider than my camera&#039;s capture ability, so there&#039;s really no reason we can&#039;t get a perfect exposure every time. So why capture the image in raw? Because editing the entire dynamic range of your image will improve the final result. You can expand it in the case of a very flat looking coin, or compress it as you see fit to match the coin. </p><p><br /></p><p>These are my defaults when I open an image in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). Since every coin is different, these are the only setting I apply to all images. </p><p><br /></p><p>I shoot with studio lights, so ARC automatically sets my colour temp to flash. </p><p>It also makes lens profile corrections based on the Nikkor 105 lens I use, and removes chromatic aberrations. If you&#039;ve ever shot anything against a bright white background you&#039;ll notice the magenta and cyan artifacts around the perimeter of your subject. These are chromatic aberrations. They are not always present but annoying when they are.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then I tweak every image - yes, every image needs editing no matter how perfect the capture. I start with a combination of some of the following settings.</p><p><br /></p><p>Exposure</p><p>Contrast</p><p>Highlights</p><p>Shadows</p><p>Whites</p><p>Blacks</p><p>Saturation</p><p>Vibrance</p><p>Texture</p><p>Clarity</p><p>Dehaze</p><p>Sharpening</p><p>Noise Reduction</p><p><br /></p><p>This is just in the BASICS panel, but there are others too. The more I fine tune it in ACR the less is required in Photoshop. I can also undo or reset any of these setting with no affect on the image data. </p><p><br /></p><p>Generally speaking, ancient coins need subtle dehaze, lifting the shadows and saturation, but every coin is different, so the settings are never the same. </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1658177[/ATTACH] </p><p>This required a lot of highlight control in ARC as well as an separate technique in Photoshop. </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1658178[/ATTACH] </p><p>This is almost right out of camera, with minor tweaks to highlights, saturation and texture.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1658179[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>In the end, editing in raw is a choice that will only improve your coin images, but it comes with a cost, in both time and money.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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