rond-photography wrote:
This is my first "new topic", and it may come across as a little bit of a rant, but I hope it helps guide some newbies.
Post Processing is dismissed by some as not being pure; the detractors feel that only photos coming out perfect in camera are acceptable.
I disagree, and I base that on over 40 years of shooting (so, yes, I have shot film!).
When I got my first SLR in 1971, I started shooting as much as I could afford - it cost money to buy the roll of film and money to get it processed (no option except to post process when you shoot film).
I was usually disappointed because my pictures never looked as I remembered the scene. Mostly, at first, I shot color print film. Skies were blown out. People were weird colors, etc.
It took me a while to figure out that part of the problem was the way labs processed the photos. When I shot transparencies (the jpeg of the film world - because it was pretty much whatever you caught on that slide was what you were stuck with, ala jpeg), I found that the camera actually could produce good photos, but the issue of color prints still bugged me.
Shooting black and white, then sending it to the lab, was no better.
Over the years, I came to find out that the award winning images that we see everywhere are NOT always Straight Out Of Camera. When I made my own darkroom, I found that there were tools such as dodging and burning that were commonly applied in a darkroom to almost every good print. Test exposures in the darkroom were the norm - you didn't just set the timer for 10 seconds and expose the paper - you made a strip test to see how long you needed to expose for the best overall image, and you saw where parts were blown out or under exposed and dodged or burned those areas, maybe even applying a vignette.
Color was trickier since home processing was less forgiving than black & white, but I tried it, and had moderate success (color correction was tricky and I never spent enough time or money to get that perfect).
Ultimately, I found that certain labs (not my corner drug store) could produce excellent prints from my negatives and stuck with them from then on.
In the digital world, we apply the term "Photo Shopped" to many images (but it should be post processing, since we don't all use PS any more than all photocopier machines are Xerox copiers). It is often used in a derogatory manner, sometimes deservedly so. It is definitely possible to over process a photo and make it look unnatural. This can be done to advantage for some subjects, but if every photo you take looks "crunchy", you might be overdoing it.
It is better to keep it simple and just use the techniques that were most often used (and most easily understood) in the analog darkroom.
I contend that you MUST post process. Otherwise, you will get those blah photos that the film users among us have seen again and again.
As the photographer, you owe it to yourself and your audience to process those photos in the best lab (your own), and not just take what the camera produces.
It is rare that I have taken a photo and simply exported it as a jpeg without it first requiring exposure, shadow, highlight, white balance, and sharpening adjustments at a minimum.
There have been several, out of about 100,000 digital images I have, that were good without any adjustments, but that is extremely rare.
In the digital darkroom, we use the same techniques used in the analog darkroom - dodging, burning, adjusting for the best exposure, etc.
I am a huge advocate of LightRoom because it most closely matches the analog darkroom - terms are different, but the results and techniques are the same.
PhotoShop, with masks, becomes more complicated, but also has those simple tools embedded in it, so keep it simple and make great photos,
but don't dis' post processing - it will improve your photos immensely.
This is my first "new topic", and it may... (
show quote)
This argument sets up a
straw man so it can rip him apart: purists who believe that "only photos
coming out perfect in camera are acceptable." I've never encountered any such person.
I don't remember ever hearing any complaints about dodging and burning. Least we forget, these were:
* hands-on
* controlled by the photographer, not a computer
* manual, not a secret algorithm
* only used where necessary
* no software or software bugs
* can't lock up or cause "the blue screen of death"
* won't fill up your hard disk
* not promoted as a cure-all
* not requiring product registration or a license key
* not a product being aggressively marketed to photographers
(or worse as a subscription!)
Most photographer made their own dodging wands and burning masks. I always did.
The fact of the matter is that optical manipulation of an optical image and algorithmic
manipulation of a digital image couldn't be more different. What's easy to do optically
is very hard to do algorithmically, and vice versa.
And computers impose limits on mathematical computations (finite, limited precision).
The ways around this (e.g., FFT arbitrary precision arithmetic) use a lot of resources.
The algorithm that gives the best result may not be feasible to use.
No one could seriously argue that color correction isn't better done in post-processing.
Color correction optical filters always were a guessing game.
On the other hand, optical post-processing never introduced any digital artifacts, nor
were extravagant claims made for it. It was 100% hype-free. And photography is
inherently optical, whereas it's only digital or chemical if you want it to be.
Neither digital nor optical processing can evade the laws of information (signal)
theory (which are similar to the laws of thermodyanmics). Information that the
lens didn't captuer is gone forever--there's no getting it back. So is information
that got lost in post-processing.
It's very hard to visualize what an algorthim is doing to your iamge file.
Unfortunately, seeing is
not believing unless you are looking at the final print.
What looks good on the screen may look horrible when you make a large print.
Sadly, the companies selling processing software usually do not explain the downsides
or side effects of digital filters --- they don't even tell the users whether or not a given
filter loses information from the image. For example, they don't tell you the bad
things that "sharpen" does to your image--the price you pay for that phony sharpness.
In the movie industry, "we'll fix it in post production" is a laugh line. All experienced
film makers know that certain things can be fixed in post-production, while other
things can't. Post-production is no miracle cure or substitute for good cinematography,
good sound recording, good directing, good art direction, good acting, etc.
A typical strategy of propaganda is to substitute a straw man for the real facts. That does
everyone a disservice. It is neither helpful nor productive.