There was a time when the regulars in the PP section used to put shots up for editing on a fairly regular basis. It was a great way to learn and sometimes it actually produced something worth keeping . It would be nice to see a return to those days.

Anyway, here's a shot taken in Glen Affric. I found it during a recent trawl through my dusty archives. Apart from merging the three bracketed shots to produce the file that you see I have not got round to trying to do something with it. The exposures and the merging tool have produced an image that's brighter than it should be, but as I'm sure you already know, that's better than starting with an image that needs lightening, and despite the brightness, it's just below the point where the highlights are blown. And being a merge it should be data-rich and take a fair bit of pushing and pulling. See if you can come up with something that'll inspire me when I come to having a proper go at editing it.

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When I do layers in PS Elements and enter Nik or Topaz Simply from there, Nik will label the layer with the filter name. Topaz doesn't but I try to remember to name it. I can always see via my psd file what opacity or blend mode changes I might have made (and layer mask), but I don't try to keep track of slider changes I made while in those plug-ins. I know there are ways to save "recipes," but I admit to enjoying the surprises

Having said all that, I rarely can find two photos - such as when I want to do a cohesive series - that look the same or equally good after applying the same steps.

As a Navy pilot cruising around Asia "in support of the Vietnam conflict", I had the opportunity to collect a lot of Nikon gear at bargain prices. The Navy gave us a beach cabin near Pearl Harbor to live in. I set up a B&W darkroom in the second bathroom and subscribed to all the magazines. I tripped over a technique called "Posterization Processing" where the idea is to reduce tone levels. Ultimately, down to two! If "cooking" can be applied to bad HDR processing, this might be the origin.

I shot a fabulously dull picture of a Mallard duck sharing the takeoff experience with me. I followed the article, cooked it down to monotone and made a print. This is serious "Post Processing" to manipulate an exposure into something it was not intended to be.

The really weird part is that this is one of only four photos people ever paid me for. A fellow Navy pilot came over and offered me $20 for the print I had on the wall. In 1972 you could actually buy something with $20!

Attached here, for your entertainment, is an (automatically exposed!!) JPEG of a forty year old "Post Processed" print I dug out of my files. Is it worth $20?

Long live manipulative, creative Post Processing!