I knew my number one challenge would be getting the images out of the camera to the level that I envisioned (which was/is set extremely high). I was not prepared to give this project the green light unless I was able to achieve the Professional Photo Studio high standard that I needed to make this book something special.
Back in 2002, I met with another collector that published a successful Star Wars book. I walked away from the many conversations thinking that I only needed to spend a couple of weekends, a few thousand shutter clicks and out of the camera the final images would emerge. I was under the assumption that the only post-production photography step needed would be to delete the backgrounds.
When Steve, the photographer, was asked what post-production steps he takes to deliver the final images to the designer, his response was the following:
“I start up the hard drive, open up photoshop, open up the raw file and set my initial exposure/color temperature, straighten the image according to a grid overlay, check various points in the image to ensure accurate color rendition and remove any color shifts, check the levels for correct density in light and dark areas, make a selection around the item and delete the background, save the layered file as a master psd file, flatten the file and add a mild amount of sharpening, and save the finished file as a tiff.”
From Steve’s response above and as you can clearly see from the images presented below, a lot more work is involved than originally anticipated to achieve, what we hope, to be a new standard in photo quality for Star Wars collectible books.
Vintage Example - RAW to final TIFF:
Modern Example - RAW to final TIFF:
From the before and after examples shown above, I want everyone to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes once the pictures exit the camera. The above examples are only 2 out of over 10,000 images that we shot so Steve has been extremely busy over the last 2 years. He is scheduled to finish the post-production photography in about 4 - 6 months.
- Todd DeMartino
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