larryepage Loc: North Texas area

I am primarily a documentarian, but have worked a bit with folks on this site, folks in my local photography club, and with the three art teachers and a few of the students at the school where I substitute to develop a little more of an artist's eye and hand. The jury is still out on how that is going, by the way.

My interest is still more in realistic images than on abstract or "constructed" images, but my vision is beginning to open up a bit from the engineering and scientific view that has defined most of my life. Still, I am not yet at the point of altering the fundamental content of images. As an example, at a workshop last summer, during a post processing session, our instructor was so audacious (in my mind) as to clone out a mile marker from a post-sunset photograph looking down a highway. To him, doing so improved the artistic composition of the photograph. To me, it removed a very important indicator which provided important "sense of place" to the photograph. Is one of us more correct than the other? No. Rather, we had different visions and intentions around that photograph. Of course, in my mind, I am certainly more correct than he is.

I save both JPEG and raw images when photographing almost everything. I also work very hard to use adjustments available in my cameras to pre-process exposures to be as correct as possible. These adjustments include white balance (I've found that Auto White Balance makes a bland mess as often as it gets things right), saturation, sharpness (much cheaper to get right at exposure than later), and other parameters. My software uses these adjustments as starting points and makes post processing a lot quicker and easier.

As a railroad photographer, I do quite a bit of HDR (exposure stacking), which requires processing later to assemble the images. Railroad equipment has a lot of overhanging parts and structures rendering a lot of critically interesting detail in the shadows. There are a lot of ways to make it visible, but HDR is just about the easiest and most reliable. By the way...I do a lot less of this now than in the past. My subjects seem to have a lot less variety, and the focus on security has made everything a lot more complicated and a lot less fun.

Since discovering custom printing, I've learned that it is folly to present a file that has not been adjusted and expect optimum results. So everything that goes to the printer gets processed at least through LightRoom. As a documentarian, I don't alter the content of my images, at least not yet. So to this point, at least, pixel-oriented editors like PhotoShop have not proven valuable to me. PhotoShop is available on my computer, but rarely gets fired up. There is a photo titled "Jack's Bus" that is posted in the gallery. After strengthening the stars and reducing noise from the heat of the ground, the image was pretty good. But the tires and wheels, as well as some of the details on the bus, needed to be lightened in order to be more interesting. LightRoom handled that task just fine.

It has been interesting to learn that judges in photo contests pretty much expect and require seeing some evidence of post processing. I have a personal favorite photograph of the old Terlingua cemetery taken during blue hour that was entered in a local contest. It's posted elsewhere on this site, as well. I lightened the foreground to provide better balance against a really strong sky, along with a few other adjustments. The judge liked the photograph, but complained that "the ground needed to be lightened." Oh, well...

I do not spend time editing images that were taken as snapshots, nor of shots taken at family gatherings nor of test shots taken to determine or understand camera capabilities, unless I'm trying to learn how to do something specific. And (HORRORS) even a few general interest railroad shots have been posted or shared just as exposed.

To sum up...most cameras today are capable of producing very good images in most situations if set up and adjusted properly. But as many have said, it is almost always possible to improve images in some way via post processing. The decision is simply whether doing so is called for based on the intention when the exposure was taken and the ultimate purpose the photograph is intended to fulfill.

Abo

Love the Raptor-Snow image. Awesome Linda.
Was the bird on the branch or did you "shop" it there?

And to the OP:

Assuming by "photoshop" you mean any photo processing program
and not just the program developed by Adobe; there is a school of thought
that all digital images are "shopped"... the processor
in the camera "shops" the image into what it thinks the picture should look like
to create the JPEG (or other file formats) we see on our displays and prints.

If the photographer shoots in "raw" mode then the image must be "processed" ie
photoshopped one way or another as well... to be a viewable image.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

With every SOOC image you have the option to optimise it using PP. You are at liberty to decide what the term "optimise" means to you.

Personally I like my images to look like well taken photos, which means I like to retain a high level of realism. However, I don't have to depend on what the camera and circumstances have provided. I know what the shot would have been like if it had been taken under better (or even ideal) circumstances and I can use PP to push the shot in that direction. It's up to me to develop the PP skills necessary to keep my edits looking realistic, but within that remit I don't have to settle for bland results. I would describe editing as bringing out a shot's full potential, as determined by my personal preferences.

Other people have other preferences and I don't have a problem with that. In fact I'm glad there's a variety of editing styles to be enjoyed by myself and others.

Photocraig

It is your choice.

To use your film analogy---YES, every image needs to be processed. It could be a machine processed In Camera jpeg--like the machine processed drug store prints, or Capturing the RAW image with ALL te detail like your negatives and the smelly CUSTOM soup/developed/ enlarged prints of yesteryear.

So, the term 'photoshopped" seems to be a generic term for digital image processing. Did folks over do it in the Darkroom--for sure. Do they do it in the Computer--certainly.

But, just like in Jr. High, "if Johnny jumps off the bridge, it doesn't mean that you have to do it too."

You will find that an easy aesthetic touch to your well exposed photos, using the RAW capture format will yield great finished prints. The jpeg capture format yields pretty good standard results and leaves you less room for adjustment--which is needed sometimes to adjust for white balance (AKA color temperature) of exposure. highlights/shadows (dodging and burning), toning, cropping and straightening and all the stuff we did to make the best presentation. Only NOW, it doesn't stink, and you can do all of what you did to your B&W's in LIVING Color!

And, take heart, it is so easy even I can do it!
enjoy,
C

wetreed

I think you should do as much as you can in the camera. Sometimes post processing can not be avoided and can be a blessing.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

There are no rules for good photographs, great photographs have just one: the photoshop work is exquisite.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

The optimum exposure followed by the optimum post processing. That describes the sort of workflow that we should all be aiming for.

In both cases the meaning of the word "optimum" is determined by the photographer's intention (some refer to that as their "vision").

SonyBug

I used to think the same way. But then I came to understand that the camera can "see" and record much better than my eyes. So, I now want the best representation of the scene possible. That would include some PP to bring it out.