I thought I’d make a page covering the tools I use to process photos as well as a little about techniques I use during processing.

Software: Lightroom 4, Photoshop CS6, Nik Software Color Efex Pro

When shooting I always use RAW as the format for the images, this is because JPEGs can often be lower quality. RAW gives you the most information about the image and therefore the best opportunity to manipulate the image during post-processing with no limitations.

Once I export my photos on to my computer I open them in Lightroom 4. LR4 is great for doing minor tweaks to the image such as lightening just the shadows or increasing the color vibrance. It’s also great for noise reduction on night photographs or other high ISO images. Once I make my tweaks in Lightroom I save the image as a 100% quality Photoshop Document.

I then open the Photoshop Document or PSD and do a combinations of edits using adjustment layers and masks. I won’t get into technical details but it could be anything from blending multiple exposures for HDR images or changing the image to black and white. Once I complete my edits in Photoshop I re-size the image for best quality for the web and it’s complete.

I am new to using Nik’s Color Efex Pro, a set of filters for Photoshop, but so far I’ve been impressed. There are a lot of details and somewhat technical details that I’ve left out of the description but feel free to comment on this page if you have any questions at all.