What is CCF editing?

I tend to edit my images in the CCF format. CCF stands for Correct Color Finish. Lets break that down.

The first thing I do when I open up a raw image in Lightroom is Correct. What this means is I make basic edits in the “Lights” tab. The Lights tab is Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, and finally the S-Curve. The goal of this tab is to get the image to look like what you saw when you were there. The better you can do this in camera the easier it is and the less you have to edit in Lightroom. Remember less is better and ease into needing to do more. If your image is too dark to begin with bumping up the exposure will add noise to your image. Attack this in small tweaks till it looks right. Some times taking a beak and coming back to the image will reveal the areas you might have done to much.

The next tab to hop into is “Color”. Here you have your White Balance, Temp, Tint, Vibrance, Saturation, B&W, Grading, and Mix. The goal of this tab to balance out the color to look the way you saw them. Or this is the tab that lets you color grade to make your image have any tones and colors you wish. Again attack this in small steps. To much to fast will not look good very quickly. This is the tab you will correct skin tones, balance out colors that are to much or not enough, color grade your shadows mid tones and highlights.

Now for the F. The big Finish. This part of the editing process can take the longest. Finish does not mean export and done. My steps here are looking at the Effects, Optics, Geometry tabs. After making these adjustments it is time for Masking. Depending on what your subject is will change how you use Masking. Masking is a great tool to separate your subject from the background or to bring focus to a certain part of your image. Masking is also where I dodge and burn. Dodge is using the brush tool with a smaller radial size and lots of feathering to draw over all the highlight parts of your image. Then you can add a very very small amount of exposure to give it the most subtle pop. Burn is the opposite. You take the same brush but you draw on the shadows of the parts of the image you want to enhance. Now you can drop your exposure a very subtle amount. Now you can tab these masks off and on to see the effects. Next to the Healing tool. Using this tool in small amounts works best. What this tool does is removes things from your images. If your subject is a person you can use this to remove blemishes. But if you do it correctly you can also remove an entire car in the back ground. (Photoshop is better at this with content aware for removing bigger objects) I use the Healing tool for small fixes. Now comes Export. I personally use 100% quality jpeg at the highest available settings.

And that’s all there is too it. You have just edited an image in the CCF format that I personally use every time I edit. If you have any questions on editing you can always email me at john@uncommonsight.com

Peace

J