Post Processing...

JackKelly

Seems to be a bit quiet here, so maybe a little discussion could help liven things up.

Was just thinking today about post processing and whether it holds the digital equivilance of the idea that great photos are lost or made in the darkroom?

Recently i've very reluctantly started post processing photos. IMO, it really almost seems like cheating, and i'm always trying to take a photo that need as little PP as possible. Is this madness. Being able to easily bump up the colour/saturation/contrast on the pc, seems to take away from the skill required to take a good snap. Or am i talking rubbish.

Basically, do you post process photos? If so, to what extent, and do you think of it in any way,as cheating?

Rhyme

Ive never touched up my pics (excluding on-camera settings) apart from adding a frame to one or two. Taking a sub standard picture and making it more intense/invigorating etc takes away from the effort but can make a pic nicer.

I personally dont see a point, changing a photo to such an extent just takes away from the fact that you took it... it becomes just an edited shot and not your photograph anymore.

Sarsfield

Rhyme wrote:

Ive never touched up my pics (excluding on-camera settings) apart from adding a frame to one or two. Taking a sub standard picture and making it more intense/invigorating etc takes away from the effort but can make a pic nicer.

I personally dont see a point, changing a photo to such an extent just takes away from the fact that you took it... it becomes just an edited shot and not your photograph anymore.

Surely post-processing is just the digital equivalent of developing, and therefore a skill/artform in itself?

Rhyme

I always thought of it as editing a picture after its been taken... i am of the digital side of photography so developing isnt a real concern of me as ive never done it.

greys

TimAy,

I used to think exactly the same - no postprocessing at all. And along came all the lines about great skill of making digital photos which require no postprocessing at all.

But here's a thing: if you shoot in anything but raw, it IS postprocessed to a much greater extent than you might think. All the cameras do their internal bit of postprocessing - a bit of sharpness, a bit of noise reduction, a bit of color correction - and on top of this they give you a few options of the similar kind to control the result photo even more. And they provide profiles like "landscape" or "portrait" or "night shot". But all of this is postprocessing.

I've started shooting raw only when I got a better camera bought. And you know what? Now that I KNOW every photo of mine REQUIRES some postprocessing on my part, it's easier for me to make any changes I need - and it all would only seem and feel a natural art and not a cheating in any way. Bear in mind though, I'm talking about postprocessing to make the photo look real here - bright tones, maybe vivid colors (depends), a bit of sharpness, maybe cropping. So I'm still not at the stage of editing photo so much it looks unreal and it's clearly seen you couldn't have made such a photo without photoshop

PurpleFistMixer

Heh, I was just thinking of bringing up a topic for discussion. This is good (though it's far too early for me to be coherent).

I think as far as it goes, any post-processing beyond the bare mimimum (ie cropping, adding a border etc.) starts to go into the realm of 'photo manipulation' rather than pure photography. However, it isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just a different art form.
Problem I see with this is: people are either going to look at the photograph as a photograph or a manipulated photograph. So they're going to look either at your photography skills or your editing skills, (on dA at least, loads of photomanipulations don't even use photographs that the artist themself took) and you have to know where exactly you want to be putting the emphasis on your art work.

Personally, I used to edit my photos quite a bit. Since getting my new (and decent) camera, though, I'm trying to cut down on the need to edit at all. You know you've really succeeded when you get a photo that is perfect using just yourself and your camera.

Especially because Photoshop has so many filters for preset effects, doing that kind of photomanipulation, in my eyes, seems to just cheapen the effort put into the photograph. (That's not saying using photoshop isn't a skill in itself, it is, it's just that it has lots of tools that are really... just automatic. Thinking of autolevels/autocontrast here.)

Subliminal

Personaly, as a newbie photographer, i belive PP can only be as good as the picture. For example, i wanted to take a few pics on a digicam, of my nephew ( he's 2 YO ) in his halaween outfit, but i hadnt got the camera set up for indoor lighting/flash on etc.. and only 1 out of 10 pics was ok. I took the camera back to my place, and started trying to improve them on both Photoshop and Photoexpress ( Great for newbies learning photo editing ) not 1 of the other 9 pics could be fixed. I could increase the brightness. colour saturation etc, and even did auto level on photoshop, but the noise/crap pictures remained, and 9 out of 10 pics had to be dumped. My point is, that PP is only as good as the photographer, as i know had it been a good photogr that took thoose pics, he would have prob got 9/10 usable. Wheres the crime/cheat in him maybe removing some slight blur, or brightening some part of the pic etc? At the end of the day, most of the pics that ametuer and pros take, are not taken for themselves, but for others. We all take pride in our pictures, but we dont really shoot pics to hang in our wall, we mostly take them for other ppl IMO. So why not be able to touch up or "Repair" some pics, if it makes them better, in the end, someone might treasure that picture, whereas before it was ruined! Just my humble opinion.

donncha

I post-process all the time. There's nothing wrong with it unless you're mis-representing a scene as a photojournalist.
How would you take this photo without editing? I had to brighten up the foreground significantly because it was lost by the glare of the sunset. Yet, when I looked at the scene, I saw a beautiful sunset, with city roofs reflecting some of the light.
Camera technology isn't there were you can expect it to capture a scene as you see it 100% of the time.

Metacortex

Sarsfield wrote:

Surely post-processing is just the digital equivalent of developing, and therefore a skill/artform in itself?

It is, but for some reason people seem to think 'post processing' are dirty words when it comes to digital photography.
Basically is using a digital darkroom, its the equivalent of a regualr darkroom.

The problem being of course that everyone can post process but not everyone can do it well. I hate, honestly hate, people who run an image through 5 different filters and think its well done, its not and it never will be.
Alot of people seem to go completly overboard with it instead of just being subtle, which is the real trick.
I use photoshop for all my images, but this doesn't take away from the hours i spend planning/setting up/taking the actual image.

I've always thought that if you're not going to use a darkroom (digitally or otherwise) then whats the point?
You're going to end up with a nice image but its never going to be anything but nice unless you can bring out all the colours and contrast that are there and that need bringing out.

febreze

Crop, Levels & Saturation, maybe an unsharp mask...

That's all the PP anyone should have to do. Anything else is editing the photo a bit too much beyond the original.

Valentia

I have never understand why anyone would not PP.

Every time you buy a film you decide to do a form of postprocessing. Velvia, Kodacrome. Fuji or Kodak- colour negative, transparency ot monochrome?. Even in B&W do you use TriX (do they still make it?) or Ilford FP4. Then it is developed and printed. So how can anyone who understands photography say that they would not PP a digital image.

Digital images, especially from the high end cameras, need to be PP. They are manafactured to provide a basic latent image which is basically flat and not sharpened. If it is not processed it looks like a damp day in Douglas. Cheaper cameras have more sharpening and more saturation built in therby destroying the creative process, but that's their job: to make it easy for the casual user.

When someone says that it spoils the integrity of the original I wince. What on earth does that mean? Has anyone ever seen a photograph that captured a scene as it really was. Of course not.

Then again mabye this topic comes up so often because someone is just trying to stir it. :rolleyes:

Zombrex

There is a difference between post production and alteration and personally my ethical/artistic/whatever objects to a photo only come into play when it has been altered to the point where it no long represents what was originally photographed. The degree of object depends on the type of photo. If a person removes an annoying wall socket from a picture that isn't that big a deal, especially if it is small and in the back ground. But if someone starts doing massive alterations, like removing people or scenery then I think it starts getting very silly. You shouldn't use alteration to turn a bad photo into a good photo, you should just take a good photo from the start.

As far as things like adjusting RAW exposure settings, or colour balance or any of that stuff I have no objects to doing that in a PP, after all it was always done to film. As someone said, printing in a darkroom is a serious skill. No one just plonks down their paper, prints their neg straight off with default exposure and appeture levels and leaves it at that. Even developing the film is a form of post production. Its silly to say that the RAW image obtained from the camera should be final and nothing should be done to it.

Metacortex

Valentia wrote:

Digital images, especially from the high end cameras, need to be PP. They are manafactured to provide a basic latent image which is basically flat and not sharpened. If it is not processed it looks like a damp day in Douglas. Cheaper cameras have more sharpening and more saturation built in therby destroying the creative process, but that's their job: to make it easy for the casual user.

Exactly, you said it better than i did. I forget to mention that the point of a high end camera is to provide the most neutral shot possible, thereby making PP a necessity. Im still suprised at the number of people who own DSLRs and don't realise this.

JackKelly

Maybe as i started in the digital era, i never had he experience of using a dark room, so never realised what could be done by postprocessing in the lab. As i said, its winning me over. I've gotten a few nice images now, after messing with colours saturation etc.