Clarification and reinforcement

I have had FRV for sometime, experimented with it and then shelved it. My genre of photography requires that I need realistic colors and as much detail as possible, which resulted in me going back to FRV and attempting to master the use of FRV. Generally my workflow consists of a slight flattening of the RAW image in Adobe Raw Convertor, then Color correction in Photoshop using Dan Margulis CC by using Lab numbers while looking at an RGB file. I then post process further using the Modern Photoshop Color Workflow as devised and updated by Dan Margulis and his team. I must add that my particular genre is bird photography. Recently I have been mastering bird photography in forest situations requiring the use of Flash. Not only in forest situations but also using ambient light often the way sunlight strikes white areas on birds helps cause loss of detail. These areas were not necessarily blown as confirmed by FRV just too bright in order for the detail to be apparent. Further investigation resulted in it being apparent usually only one channel was responsible, usually but not necessarily the Green Channel. I think I have worked out how to correct the channel and then using blend replace the faulty channel with the corrected channel. However by lowering the EV in FRV so that the faulty channel gives a desired reading (this does lower the other two channels, which may or may not affect the overall image). hence I plan on replacing the faulty channel and keeping the correct channels and then looking at the end result. So far I am not aware of any RAW convertor where individual channels can be adjusted or replaced, this would be perhaps a desireable action which could be introduced in future updates. To get back to my working by lowering the EV to get the faulty channel corrected allowed me to then post process and get all the available detail in the so called blown areas back. I have started looking at applying the same thought processes to normal or even underexposed images where I finf FRV gives me excellent information. I am experimenting with RAWDigger but am still battling to understand the software and know what I am looking at. Any comments and or advice would be most welcome.

I attempted to replace the original green channel with the adjusted green channel, red was totally lost. I then attempted to replace the Green with the red channel and ended with good detail, but not improved but washed out Red. By adjusting the EV and applying my normal workflow I ended with not only realistic colors but satisfactory detail but markedly better than working with the Adobe Raw Convertor image. Definitely worth the cost of FRV, I shall still look at RawDigger but at this stage do not see the necessity for a more detailed knowledge of the Raw file.

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