Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my
best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially
responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, g****r-neutral
celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within
the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of
your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with
respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or
traditions of others, or their choice not
to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also
wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and
medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the
generally accepted calendar year 2019, but not without due
respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose
contributions to society have helped make America great. Not
to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other
country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere .
Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed,
color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual
preference of the recipient.

TO ALL MY REPUBLICAN FAMILY AND FRIENDS: Merry
Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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.