Why no post-processing?

Okkie68's thread about a first post-processing experience reminded me that I've wondered why so many of the images I've seen on this forum are straight out of the camera. SOOC is great if the purpose of the post is to demonstrate what the camera can do all by itself. But it has been my experience that even a little tweaking in an editing program can improve most digital images.

Maybe it's me and how I handle the cameras, but my Lumix FZs seem to specialize in the green cast visible in Okkie68's unedited image. This is just one example of the sorts of things that are easy to fix. And it's fun! When my power was out all this week, one of the things I missed most was "playing with pictures."

I think everyone should be PPing (so to speak). ;-)

you're right about that, I guess

but being new at photoworld, the first thing is to know your camera a bit better, and I think here in this forum are more beginners, so, at first you want to know if sharpness, composition, light is good...the basic...

I am at the point willing/ dearing to learn PP .

After doing lots of animals (who often don't need lots of pp, my opinion) I'm shooting other subjects now, PP seems more important to me now....

Also having seen the possibilities of PP made me curious to PP....

greetings, Ella

the basics right, PP is the refinement a lite touch to correct is enough.

today's PP tools are very powerfull, but its alway's better to strive to get the basics correct.

another thing to consider is YOU need to like the outcome.

enjoy what you're doing.

You can start out with a simple point and click editor like Picassa to get going. Once you see how easy it is to improve your image 100% there's no turning back. I personally think a good editor like Lightroom or Photoshop should have a higher priority in a photographer's arsenal than constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest camera body available.

I posted a PP'd image in the fall pictures thread!

It's down to personal taste, such that I post process nothing that is my store of family images. I have had to learn to maximise keeper rate, record family events, and issue the CD of images pretty much on the same day. It's not everyone's photographic requirement I know, but I can say that I am now perfectly at home with leaving all images devoid of processing. On in experiments of during times of potential artistic flare do the post processing begin. But frankly little need be don to improve most images from the FZ50. For example you'll have noticed the model train post processing thread recently. A couple of comments in that declared the original good enough to keep as is.

Generally if it slideshows OK I leave the image as is. If it's too ruff for that I tend to delete it.

Maybe its my long history with film - getting ANY image was initially a childhood success! - when my parents met the costs. But in my teens the price of film and processing forced an attention to detail: a need to check meters, double-check settings: exposure, aperture, speed, focus, framing, lighting, because care before clicking saved hours in the darkroom: spotting, dodging, test exposures, etc.. Digital is SO easy. It’s auto everything. And if a quick glance at the LCD shows an error…just shoot again.

Maybe getting used to accepting noisy monochromes, push-processed to squeeze an image from a night shot, has made me more willing than many to accept less than perfect images.

Maybe old age has made me lazy. I’m certainly less willing to cart a cavernous case of kit, and happily embrace a tiny camera that meets my personal needs, to fill a couple of megapixels of screen: for I no longer yearn for poster sized images.

Maybe it’s the thousands of images I now take on holiday. Not just a few rolls of film of carefully chosen scenes, but snaps of almost everything I pass in strange exotic places, as in my dotage I imagine that my friends and relatives MIGHT be interested, though inwardly I know most would be bored by the things I shoot. Then I find on my return home that reviewing and listing the results, and choosing a very limited selection in keeping with most peoples’ polite attention spans, leave precious little time for PP work other than the simple adjustments that my Mac’s Preview tools enable - a bit more exposure, some sharpening, maybe a slight change to shadows or highlights.

Why bother to take so many mundane shots, you might ask? In dull winters I can review them and relive the sunny moments: walking down narrow alleys in the Marais, climbing into the clouds at Sigiriya, recall the scent of Yemeni streets, the heat of Sabratha, the cool cobbled lanes of Tallinn’s Upper Town… “then will I remember with advantages what feats [we] did that day…”

YMMV

--

Cyril

As has already been stated, "post processing is a very personal consideration". But what I have found is that once you become comfortable using whatever application appeals to you the most, a little post processing can usually help. Naturally it depends on the picture taken. But I dare say there's very few photographers, and very few of their shots, that would not benefit, at least to some degree, by a small amount of post processing.

It has always been my ambition to be able to take a picture that needed no post processing, or cropping, or anything, but would be perfect right out of the camera. I've been taking pictures for over 40 years and I have yet to reach that goal. I still try, but I'm beginning to think that I may never get there. At least not in any kind of a substantial way (read that as "one in 100,"maybe). but the real deal is, as you progress, you become more critical of your work. It's kind of a never ending vortex really, but a heck of a lot of fun. So go enjoy yourself!

Don

I seldom crop but nearly l aways sharpen, in fact I am often guilty of overdoing it, and I think a border gives a finished look. What amazes me is the number of mediocre images on here that get acclaim, I think viewers are over polite, which is not a help to the photographer, unless it is done purposly for effect or something. If I post an out of focus image, I don't want people to tell me it's great when I know it is not.

Different reasons, I guess..

Some people 'disbelieve' in PP - once you PP it's no longer a photo, it becomes a picture or artwork or something. ( to which I respond that it's no different to dodging or burning a negative print)

Some people have no idea what they need to do to PP an image; the steps to take and the order in which to take them. (to which I say that, if you don't save over your original, you can practice as much as you like without cost or worry (unlike negative-print work, mistakes cost paper with that))

Some people would rather take the photos and not spend the time on PP work afterwards. (to which someone else might ask what they took them FOR if they aren't going to get the best out of them)

Some people just run out of time to PP before real life intrudes, work, etc.. then they might forget that they wanted to PP and go out for more photos in what little free time they might have. (to which I say "that's sad that you have so little time to yourself, but you do what makes you happy!")

yellodog said:

yellodog wrote:

You can start out with a simple point and click editor like Picassa to get going. Once you see how easy it is to improve your image 100% there's no turning back. I personally think a good editor like Lightroom or Photoshop should have a higher priority in a photographer's arsenal than constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest camera body available.

Click to expand...

+1

Also in addition to color correction etc, don't forget cropping, which can also improve your shots by reframing them, fixing camera tilt, etc. which IS part of PP.

Picasa is easy to learn and free and does some basic editing pretty well. One of the advantages of programs like picasa and lightroom is that they do "non-destructive" edits of your photos - the originals remain just that. If you need to print, you create a new copy of the adjusted file. While you cannot "damage" the original file with these editors, depending on what you do, it is possible to delete the original from within these programs if you're not paying attention. So learn about commands that bring images into the editors and how commands like "delete", "remove", "move" etc. might affect your actual files....

If you're on a mac, iphoto is similar, ALTHO (BIG FLASHING LIGHT HERE), iphoto makes it VERY difficult to move your pictures for use with another editor. iphoto stores all of your images in a special file that's no fun to deal with. I'm on a mac, and would never use iphoto again. too painful to deal with the files.

Have fun.

Just throwing in my 2 cents here:
In my book, post processing can have two goals: to correct camera faults, or to artistically improve the image. Since the argument for it is so obvious, I won't delve into the second reason here.

I believe a good camera should relieve me from the burden of doing PP to get things like colour balancing and white balance right. The image shouldn't show any colour cast, it should show as little chromatic faults as possible, should be well exposed with a realistic dynamic range, and be as sharp as possible.

If I need to PP do correct these things, it's a sign that the in-camera processing could have been done better. I would rather not spend my time doing PP to improve on the basics. So it's a valid exercise comparing how well cameras do in this regard. Some do it better than others, and the ideal should be that there is little improvement to be had from PP snap-shots.

If you want to go the artistic route, the rules change. But as a recording instrument, there should be no need to PP.

jonbev said:

John Beavin wrote:

What amazes me is the number of mediocre images on here that get acclaim, I think viewers are over polite, which is not a help to the photographer, unless it is done purposly for effect or something. If I post an out of focus image, I don't want people to tell me it's great when I know it is not.

Click to expand...

This has been discussed a lot over the years. I generally comment only on the pictures that appeal to me in some special way -- they're not always the best technically. It helps if the person posting the picture says what they would like you to see in their picture and ask for critical comments if they want them. Otherwise, I think it's best to be polite.

BTW, I pp every picture in some way -- straightening, cropping, sharpening (got to be careful with that), and sometimes contrast or gamma. I've found that my newer cameras are doing a good job with exposure and color accuracty.

Perhaps the trend away from PPing today is partly because the advent of digital photography - we can take hundreds of shots in one outing at no additional cost to us, hence time becomes factor (Who wants to PP hundreds, or even dozens of shots?)

Back in the day when we had to pay for every shot we took (film processing and then our prints), we took far more care in composing and creating each shot. We wanted every one to be a keeper.

Speaking just for myself, I post only my very best shots of the day on my Flickr portfolio, and thus wanting them to be the best I can make them I do whatever PPing I can to make them the best they can be. Sometimes this is as simple as denoising, sharpening and adding contrast to the eyes of a bird or squirrel, which makes them come alive.

As well, (again, back in the day) processing film and making prints in the darkroom was at least as much fun and rewarding as taking the shots themselves, and I see PPing today in the same way... it's fun, not a chore. However, if I were dealing with dozens and dozens of shots it would not only be a chore, but a bore!

my 2 cents

Rudy

A photographer who specializes in family group photography, had an outdoor shoot planned, but at the last moment the weather turned really bad and had to bring the group indoors and did not have enough portable background to cover the entire group. She shot this and asked if I could save the session. IMHO a digital photography setup includes a good camera, an image processing program for light or heavy retouching and a good printer so you have total control of the final image. Here is how I saved the shot in photoshop. BTW...if anyone is interested in how I was able to fix this shot, the one thing she did made all the difference in the world.












--
www.pbase.com/davidjaseck

Be careful how you interpret the world: It is like that.

What was the one thing she did? I'm impressed with the way you made the background conform to the steps!

Same photographer of family group pictures, asked me to remove distractions from background as well as some on the people themselves, glare on glasses, button glare. Let me be clear, if someone is happy with OOC images that is just fine, however IMO, so much is being missed for the possibility of image enhancements.







--
www.pbase.com/davidjaseck

Be careful how you interpret the world: It is like that.

....many of which reflect my own thinking. I know what it's like to feel daunted by the prospect of tackling a learning curve (my new scanner sat for a couple of years before I bit the bullet and learned how to scan my dad's 1940s negatives), but most of what we call post-processing is both simple and easy--and can do wonders to make an image the best it can be.

bigdaddy999 wrote "...If you're on a mac, iphoto is similar, ALTHO (BIG FLASHING LIGHT HERE), iphoto makes it VERY difficult to move your pictures for use with another editor. iphoto stores all of your images in a special file that's no fun to deal with. I'm on a mac, and would never use iphoto again. too painful to deal with the files...."

And, curiously, although the iPad, iPods and iPhones are excellent portable devices to carry a lot of photos to show off to friends and relatives, importing photos, dealing with photos, and exporting them, in those devices, is not easy, and tends to need a link to a computer. Which makes them of little use to travellers wishing to operate in the wilderness with minimum baggage.