I think I am on pretty much every photo processing software email list that exists. Today I received the usual promotion for, in this case, OnOne. The picture attached is to encourage readers to enter a competition. I cannot help but notice that the image is heavily post processed . . . Even by my standards; and I usually have no issues with surrealism. It seems that many of the software producers feature this “look” in their advertising rather than a more “natural” approach. Has this become the new standard for photo processing? Are we likely to see a new generation of photographers who believe more is better?
Each to his own taste. I just think we are being shown a new standard for what a landscape should look like.

I have heard many here state that they use Adobe Camera Raw as a plug-in prior to further editing in Photoshop. I have no real first hand knowledge of this program and it's functions, but I believe Camera Raw to be a basic raw file editor and file conversion program. My question is this: can it be used as a stand alone program to do basic exposure based editing, cropping, file conversions, etc. Frankly 99% of my post processing only requires this type of exposure based editing and I did quite well using Canon's DPP until I bought my Pentax K3. I am now using Raw Therapy on the Pentax DNG files and it's okay, but I'm not really thrilled with it. It just doesn't seem to pull the detail out of the shadows like the Canon software did for me and I'm not sure the de-noise routines do much of anything, at least not that I can tell. I guess I'm thinking that maybe "Camera Raw" might be a big improvement and would appreciate any info or feedback this forum might be able to share on this subject. Good luck and good shooting to all.

Recently, another member posted a very good photo and attributed the results partly to the nice saturation he had achieved by slightly underexposing the image. He mentioned that he had learned this technique during his Kodachrome film days.

I also used this technique when I used to shoot film and initially did the same in my early days of shooting digital. I never do so anymore and have come to believe, however, that this is not necessary and perhaps counterproductive. In post-processing, it is easy to change exposure and there are many other possibilities to change saturation – not only the saturation and vibrance sliders, but also a combination of adjustments to highlights, shadows, white point, black point, contrast, clarity etc. Also, underexposing narrows the dynamic range that could be achieved by correctly exposing or overexposing (expose to the right).

Am I correct?