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Why do people show us un-post-processed photos

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gdsf2

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How many times have you seen folks post a nice photo and then brag that "no post processing was done," or "right out of the camera," or "the only thing I did in photoshop was..."

I don't know about you, but I would rather see the photo AFTER they have done EVERYTHING they can do to make it look its best.

Somewhere among the cereal box tests and the lens cap tests, folks on this forum have forgotten the difference between photographs and test shots.

Post processing is part of the art and science of digital photography, not a way to cheat to make your pictures look better. Be proud of your post processing skills and share them!

Jerry
 
I guess people are proud with what their equipment and camera can do without the extra effort.

--
My portfolio: http://www.PaulAndre.com (Experimental photo site.)
My girlfriend: http://www.iNikki.com (She's beautiful!)
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'Set no limitations. Break the rules!'

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Great photographers learn from other people's mistakes!'

 
gdsf2 said:
How many times have you seen folks post a nice photo and then brag
that "no post processing was done," or "right out of the camera,"
or "the only thing I did in photoshop was..."

I don't know about you, but I would rather see the photo AFTER they
have done EVERYTHING they can do to make it look its best.

Somewhere among the cereal box tests and the lens cap tests, folks
on this forum have forgotten the difference between photographs and
test shots.

Post processing is part of the art and science of digital
photography, not a way to cheat to make your pictures look better.
Be proud of your post processing skills and share them!

Jerry
Click to expand...
I kind of feel the same way...Why?...Everyone has Photoshop for a reason...To process pictures....The thing is, that when you shoot film...Your lab or local drugstore or where ever you leave your film..Does all the corrections for you....I wonder why people do it?...It's basically like putting the negative on here......Maybe it's to show what the cam is like before processing? It's obvious that Canon leaves us the ability to do most of the corrections after the fact...They don't force us to have the camera do everything internally.

Cregg
 
Cregg6 said:
It's obvious that Canon leaves us the ability to do most of the
corrections after the fact...They don't force us to have the camera
do everything internally.

Cregg
Click to expand...
EXACTLY although I'm still trying to figure out what settings I like with the 10D. With the D30 I shot with sharpness and contrast at -2 and saturation at +2. I always shoot in RAW so ultimately it doesn't matter. With the 10D I often find that I back off on the saturation a notch and bump up the color temp a bit. I'm still futzing though. I consider Photoshop to be part of the process.

Cheers, Joe
 
gdsf2 said:
I don't know about you, but I would rather see the photo AFTER they
have done EVERYTHING they can do to make it look its best.
Click to expand...
Sometimes people don't think they can or need to bring their photograph into Photoshop to make it better. I feel that way about a lot of my shots. To go out and be proud to say that you did no post processing means that as a photographer, you nailed all the settings the first time.
gdsf2 said:
Post processing is part of the art and science of digital
photography, not a way to cheat to make your pictures look better.
Be proud of your post processing skills and share them!
Click to expand...
Many people aren't great at post processing. It is an acquired skill. It is also not always necessary. Sure. On every shot I take, I can spend time in Photoshop to sharpen and color the photo. Usually, a manual levels will do both at once. However, look at how much technology is built into these cameras. It can show you the overexposed part of your shot within a second of pressing the shutter. If you set the White Balance, you usually don't have to do any more processing. Even if you don't, it is pretty good at doing that for you.

I have some great photos that I took this weekend while in Vancouver. I will post them sometime, and you can see for yourself how my unprocessed images look. Maybe I'll take the time required to process some of the best of them. I got a few wonderful shots with ISO 3200 on my 10D. And my trusty old PowerShot S20 couldn't do a good ISO 400. The 10D is a marvel. I shot most at ISOs between 100 and 400. I got some great ones at 800, 1600, and 3200 though.
-Mike
--

Photography is a lossy process. You start out with a 3D world with an infinite range of colors, pick 3 or 4 frequency ranges, and integrate a few million discrete locations in a film plane over a discrete period of time. The fact that anything 3D looking comes out at all is a miracle of perception.
 
it reveals capabilities of the camera/lens.

If no postprocessing was done and photo appears sharp and vibrant, it tells a lot about camera/lens.
gdsf2 said:
How many times have you seen folks post a nice photo and then brag
that "no post processing was done," or "right out of the camera,"
or "the only thing I did in photoshop was..."

I don't know about you, but I would rather see the photo AFTER they
have done EVERYTHING they can do to make it look its best.

Somewhere among the cereal box tests and the lens cap tests, folks
on this forum have forgotten the difference between photographs and
test shots.

Post processing is part of the art and science of digital
photography, not a way to cheat to make your pictures look better.
Be proud of your post processing skills and share them!

Jerry
Click to expand...
--
Mishkin
 
Dear gdsf2, Thanks so much for this post. I couldn't agree more. Big deal it is "right out of the camera" ! So what! I would never send out a photo that was not at it's best. For me, "right out of the camera" means nothing. That is like a women saying "Here I am, no makeup, didn't even comb my hair, I am right out of bed" As far as I am concerned, we should always show our best. IMHP. :o)
gdsf2 said:
How many times have you seen folks post a nice photo and then brag
that "no post processing was done," or "right out of the camera,"
or "the only thing I did in photoshop was..."

I don't know about you, but I would rather see the photo AFTER they
have done EVERYTHING they can do to make it look its best.

Somewhere among the cereal box tests and the lens cap tests, folks
on this forum have forgotten the difference between photographs and
test shots.

Post processing is part of the art and science of digital
photography, not a way to cheat to make your pictures look better.
Be proud of your post processing skills and share them!

Jerry
Click to expand...
--
Roger Bloemers
 
gdsf2 said:
Post processing is part of the art and science of digital
photography, not a way to cheat to make your pictures look better.
Be proud of your post processing skills and share them!
Click to expand...
This is the real situation, but incomprehensibly enough many people seem not to understand that post processing is an integral and indispensable part of digital imaging.

Incredibly, there seems to be a widespread, and of course totally wrong assumption that "pictures should be good enough straight out from the camera." However, that is not the way it works. But people are showing each other unrocessed pictures; in many cases they are recording images in JPEG and just downsampling them. Then they say: "Look at my great pictures."

Yes, many of these are good shots. But they are more often than not destroyed by a lack of understanding that in order to take out the full potential of digital images post processing is required.

Per Inge Oestmoen, Norway
http://www.coldsiberia.org/
 
I'd rather see the woman without her makeup, thank you very much.

She can comb her hair, though. ;)
Roger Bloemers said:
Dear gdsf2, Thanks so much for this post. I couldn't agree
more. Big deal it is "right out of the camera" ! So what! I
would never send out a photo that was not at it's best. For me,
"right out of the camera" means nothing. That is like a women
saying "Here I am, no makeup, didn't even comb my hair, I am right
out of bed" As far as I am concerned, we should always show our
best. IMHP. :o)
Click to expand...
--
The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.net
Photography -- just another word for compromise
 
well, I prefer women which look best without makeup. Makeup is like USM 500/2/0 -- an ugly lie about something which is not there in the first place ;)
Roger Bloemers said:
gdsf2 said:
How many times have you seen folks post a nice photo and then brag
that "no post processing was done," or "right out of the camera,"
or "the only thing I did in photoshop was..."

I don't know about you, but I would rather see the photo AFTER they
have done EVERYTHING they can do to make it look its best.

Somewhere among the cereal box tests and the lens cap tests, folks
on this forum have forgotten the difference between photographs and
test shots.

Post processing is part of the art and science of digital
photography, not a way to cheat to make your pictures look better.
Be proud of your post processing skills and share them!

Jerry
Click to expand...
--
Roger Bloemers
Click to expand...
--
Mishkin
 
Mishkin said:
well, I prefer women which look best without makeup. Makeup is like
USM 500/2/0 -- an ugly lie about something which is not there in
the first place ;)
Click to expand...
Mishkin, could you elaborate on this? I generally don't like women wearing makeup. More specifically I don't like women who don't know what they're doing who use over the counter makeup products wearing makeup. They usually go too heavy and don't finish the job (you can't just stop with the face, then you have a difference between the skin color of the face and neck/chest/rest of body). However, a model wearing makeup applied by a makeup artist is a completely different story. It can look great!

Cheers, Joe
 
Joe Ciarcia said:
model wearing makeup applied by a makeup artist is a completely
different story. It can look great!
Click to expand...
  • only if the beauty is THERE. No amount of grease can make an ugly woman beautiful.
Also, it's not worth going from "before 6 beers" to "after 6 beers" when after the "after" the "before" will inevitably follow. One thing is a model who you don't care about, another is a woman who supposedly will sleep with you all your life! LOL



--
Mishkin
 
Mishkin said:
  • only if the beauty is THERE. No amount of grease can make an ugly
woman beautiful.
Click to expand...
Agreed... you can't polish a turd! Garbage in, garbage out. Audio engineering and photography are a lot alike. You're always thinking about the "weakest link". We start with the source. If you have an upright piano I don't care what post processing you do to it, it's always going to sound like a crappy upright. If you want a good piano you start with a grand, I prefer Steinways and Yamahas. Then you go to the mics... I'll spare you the pain of a discussion on microphone selection but suffice it to say that a Shure SM58 is going to sound about as musical as peeing on a snare drum. Then there's the cable, the preamp, the analog to digital converters if you're recording digital or the tape machine if you're recording analog (I'm still a big fan of analog tape), the mixing console, blah blah blah.

The point is all that stuff starts with having a grand piano. If you put an crappy piano in front of the mics, even if you're in a multi million dollar facility that system will accurately reproduce with perfect detail, the sound of a crappy piano. Oh, there's another HUGE part of the equation which is the musician.

If you need to make compromises I've found that you cut back on the downstream if the upstream is of extremely high quality but it doesn't work the other way around (sacraficing the upstream and improving the downstream won't be as good as the other situation".

For example: What situation would you prefer, a drop dead gorgeous model and a Canon 10D with a 24-85 or a not so drop dead gorgeous model with a Canon 1DS and 28-70 f2.8L? I'd take the drop dead gorgeous model with the 10D thank you very much. There's nothing a 1DS can do to make a woman more attractive.

Do I actually have a point??? I'm not so sure, it's late and I think I just started rambling on and on and on and on... ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz
Mishkin said:
Also, it's not worth going from "before 6 beers" to "after 6 beers"
when after the "after" the "before" will inevitably follow.
Click to expand...
LOL, I think my head just exploded.

Cheers, Joe
 
This makes it much, much easier for those of us trying to get some bearing on the capabilities of a camera. This is primarily a technical forum and site, not one devoted first and foremost to photographic aesthetics. FredMiranda.com is closer to that.

If I was to get a 10D tomorrow, I would post pics unprocessed out of courtesy to others looking to purchase one, and curious about its capabilities, not my abilities in image editing.
gdsf2 said:
How many times have you seen folks post a nice photo and then brag
that "no post processing was done," or "right out of the camera,"
or "the only thing I did in photoshop was..."

I don't know about you, but I would rather see the photo AFTER they
have done EVERYTHING they can do to make it look its best.

Somewhere among the cereal box tests and the lens cap tests, folks
on this forum have forgotten the difference between photographs and
test shots.

Post processing is part of the art and science of digital
photography, not a way to cheat to make your pictures look better.
Be proud of your post processing skills and share them!

Jerry
Click to expand...
 
Right on bearcat. I'm a Photo Shop user when I must but there are enough in camera settings now to deliver what you see is what you get shots--if you take the time to learn your camera---not Photo Shop. By the way---labs don't save slide film and many of us shot nothing but slides to keep labs from messing with our images!
 
Jerry,

I can see several occations when out of camera images could be of interest, but if you don't include all data about your camera settings, they are of no value and don't tell you much about the capabilities of the camera.

--
Tommy
 
Ben Taylor said:
Right on bearcat. I'm a Photo Shop user when I must but there are
enough in camera settings now to deliver what you see is what you
get shots--if you take the time to learn your camera---not Photo
Shop. By the way---labs don't save slide film and many of us shot
nothing but slides to keep labs from messing with our images!
Click to expand...
--

'Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordian.' Jed Babbin 1/30/03
 
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