i think you’re absolutely right, the 5-8 modules you need are there, and once you find them you won’t need much else, in general. There will always be special situations where some extremely specific knowledge would be helpful, and well, that is what the community is for.
My first suggestion is to submit some photo(s) you’re having trouble with to our Play Raw category. People will edit them and post their sidecar files. You can take the renditions you like, load the sidecar file, and see what they’ve done.
Talking about this in the abstract will only get you so far. Getting hands on with some images would be the most helpful.
My editing routine is more or less this:
While you’re capturing your image, do everything possible not to clip your highlights. You can recover a ton of information from the shadows. Bracket if necessary. Do what you need to do in order to capture the full dynamic range of the scene. With that said, I’ll leave highlight reconstruction out. I start with it turned off and I don’t often need it since I’m exposing carefully.
- Turn on lens correction.
- Use Rotate and Perspective to level the horizon or make things straight
- Use the Exposure module to make your mid tones to the desired brightness.
- Use Filmic RGB module > Look tab > Contrast to contract or stretch the histogram so that the contrast is pleasing. I generally stretch the histogram so the highlights touch the front. If needed, I increase the White Relative exposure just a bit.
- Use the Diffuse or Sharpen module’s “Add Local Contrast” preset. Increase the Iterations slider if you desire more local contrast
- Use Color Balance RGB’s preset to add color back in. The most vibrant one is nice for landscapes and city scapes.
- Use the Crop module to crop as desired.
- Use Tone Equalizer to manipulate the over all contrast of the scene.
- Add a vignette using the vignette module.
You should have a very accepable looking image at this point. When I’m editing, from this point on is local edits using the modules masking features. For that I mostly use:
- Tone Equalizer and masking for dodging/burning or altering tones
- Color Balance RGB and masking for manipulating colors