Today I 'd like to touch on the subject of editing images after making the shot, and I'm talking from a photographer's perspective and about photographers.
Some people take pride in the fact that the images they upload have undergone no editing, which is fine if you shoot jpeg and the editing has been done in-camera.
I don't have a problem with that. The ones I refer to are possibly of the opinion that what the camera 'sees' is what their eyes saw, and any editing would take away from the perceived 'reality' of the scene.
I say to this - Bullplop!
No camera has ever seen what the eye saw, it doesn't have anywhere near the qualities of the human eye. For one, the eye has increased dynamic range to the camera, it constantly scans the scene in front of it, and the brain does the background 'editing' to enable us to see what we see.
The camera just records an instant in time, confined by it's available technology. It's then up to us how we display the image, to enhance the part that drew us to the scene in the first place, to make less prominent the things that take away from the composition or subject etc. I mean, who wants to be a button clicker and nothing more?
It's not that rewarding.
Jpeg:
For the jpeg group, they're happy with how the camera and it's firmware interpreted the image, but that's not really serious photography, of course excluding photo journalists that shoot and document news for a living, accuracy and expediency is the requirement there, not 'artistry'.
Just be aware if you get home and your image has a serious problem, you may not be able to do anything about it in editing. Jpeg compression removes all the data it doesn't need in the final image, so there's not much left to play with. At least shoot in RAW+Jpeg if your camera allows it, you can always delete the surplus later.
RAW:
Now, photographers that shoot RAW have also submitted images with the same proclamation, but in their case, there is a very good reason for post processing being required for these images.
A sensor converts what it sees to little square dots, called pixels. Being square, the pixels on the edge of an oblique line in an image are not smooth or straight, they are stepped, or 'aliased'. In Jpeg, the image processor in the camera irons these out, it is called not surprisingly, 'anti-aliasing'.
But in Raw, no such in-camera processing takes place (other than LE noise reduction etc which can be turned off), you generally get100% of what the sensor saw, and it's up to you to apply luminance smoothing, sharpening, contrast, exposure, colour balance, warmth and an endless number of changes that you make to this RAW data is what makes your final image, not the camera's, - yours!
Create a preset in Lightroom or whatever software you use to do the basic adjustments, fine tune the ones you intend to keep or post.
Film:
I also see the resurgence of film shooters, including myself.
Many of them also proclaiming the posted image was not edited after scanning the neg, as if that's some sort of achievement, but it isn't.
What they did was probably get the exposure correct, which is a good thing and to be expected, but in my and many other photographer's darkrooms back before digital, a good amount of time was spent on each print, doing test strips in many areas of the print to get the best exposure in each area. Little pieces of cardboard were cut out to match a shape in a part of the image, so that dodging and burning could be used during exposure under the enlarger, to give each area of the print the optimum amount of light to produce the image the way the photographer envisioned it to begin with.
Worse still in my opinion, is the wide-spread practice of doing no spotting or hair removal on an image when posted, saying that it added to the film 'feel'. Now I'm not talking about applying editing techniques to force an 'aged' look or apply a texture for a more abstract image, just straight images.
But, from what I can recall, a good print from film was never required to be covered in crap to 'feel' right, and I don't really see it enhancing the medium.
Geez, buy a giant Giotto blower already, it saves heaps of time in editing, and if you don't care, at least the image will have less garbage on it.
The 'retro' attraction of film has also caused some people to be so happy to see any sort of an image produced on film, they will post anything, and some are truly crap, with blown highlights, featureless shadow, covered in hair, fingerprints and a bit of a Potato crisp and a drop of soft drink to round them off.
Excusable for a beginner maybe, but not a serious photographer.
And finally:
If you are happy with the images your camera produces on it's own, what do we need you for?
Some people take pride in the fact that the images they upload have undergone no editing, which is fine if you shoot jpeg and the editing has been done in-camera.
I don't have a problem with that. The ones I refer to are possibly of the opinion that what the camera 'sees' is what their eyes saw, and any editing would take away from the perceived 'reality' of the scene.
I say to this - Bullplop!
No camera has ever seen what the eye saw, it doesn't have anywhere near the qualities of the human eye. For one, the eye has increased dynamic range to the camera, it constantly scans the scene in front of it, and the brain does the background 'editing' to enable us to see what we see.
The camera just records an instant in time, confined by it's available technology. It's then up to us how we display the image, to enhance the part that drew us to the scene in the first place, to make less prominent the things that take away from the composition or subject etc. I mean, who wants to be a button clicker and nothing more?
It's not that rewarding.
Jpeg:
For the jpeg group, they're happy with how the camera and it's firmware interpreted the image, but that's not really serious photography, of course excluding photo journalists that shoot and document news for a living, accuracy and expediency is the requirement there, not 'artistry'.
Just be aware if you get home and your image has a serious problem, you may not be able to do anything about it in editing. Jpeg compression removes all the data it doesn't need in the final image, so there's not much left to play with. At least shoot in RAW+Jpeg if your camera allows it, you can always delete the surplus later.
RAW:
Now, photographers that shoot RAW have also submitted images with the same proclamation, but in their case, there is a very good reason for post processing being required for these images.
A sensor converts what it sees to little square dots, called pixels. Being square, the pixels on the edge of an oblique line in an image are not smooth or straight, they are stepped, or 'aliased'. In Jpeg, the image processor in the camera irons these out, it is called not surprisingly, 'anti-aliasing'.
But in Raw, no such in-camera processing takes place (other than LE noise reduction etc which can be turned off), you generally get100% of what the sensor saw, and it's up to you to apply luminance smoothing, sharpening, contrast, exposure, colour balance, warmth and an endless number of changes that you make to this RAW data is what makes your final image, not the camera's, - yours!
Create a preset in Lightroom or whatever software you use to do the basic adjustments, fine tune the ones you intend to keep or post.
Film:
I also see the resurgence of film shooters, including myself.
Many of them also proclaiming the posted image was not edited after scanning the neg, as if that's some sort of achievement, but it isn't.
What they did was probably get the exposure correct, which is a good thing and to be expected, but in my and many other photographer's darkrooms back before digital, a good amount of time was spent on each print, doing test strips in many areas of the print to get the best exposure in each area. Little pieces of cardboard were cut out to match a shape in a part of the image, so that dodging and burning could be used during exposure under the enlarger, to give each area of the print the optimum amount of light to produce the image the way the photographer envisioned it to begin with.
Worse still in my opinion, is the wide-spread practice of doing no spotting or hair removal on an image when posted, saying that it added to the film 'feel'. Now I'm not talking about applying editing techniques to force an 'aged' look or apply a texture for a more abstract image, just straight images.
But, from what I can recall, a good print from film was never required to be covered in crap to 'feel' right, and I don't really see it enhancing the medium.
Geez, buy a giant Giotto blower already, it saves heaps of time in editing, and if you don't care, at least the image will have less garbage on it.
The 'retro' attraction of film has also caused some people to be so happy to see any sort of an image produced on film, they will post anything, and some are truly crap, with blown highlights, featureless shadow, covered in hair, fingerprints and a bit of a Potato crisp and a drop of soft drink to round them off.
Excusable for a beginner maybe, but not a serious photographer.
And finally:
If you are happy with the images your camera produces on it's own, what do we need you for?
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