We all know how Windows love to "update" our Windows programs. Did anyone notice the changes to the Photo program included on Windows 10? Why did they take off the SAVE tab. Now all they offer is the SAVE AS, which means you need to go back and delete the unimproved photo as a separate step. Might not sound like a hassle, until you multiply it times thousands of photos. Any input in how to get the unimproved former version back would be appreciated. Or what photo program I should buy?? Thank you.

Of course, accurate exposure is important- it's bordering on silly to think otherwise. If you are serious about your photography you need to understand all the basics and essentials and exposure is definitely part of the basic and essential technical elements.

Think about this- You have a beautifully composed image which is perfectly focused. The exposure is seriously incorrect so you have badly affected the dynamic range of your image. Important details and textures in the highlights or shadows are missing. You put the file into your software and you now need Houdini to try and resurrect a decent image quality. You then spend hours on your computer and the image never appears as you envisioned it.

So many folks say, as photographic artists, we are "painting with light" and the appreciation of light is more important than exposure. That makes no sense! So...if you were a painter would you not need to understand the technicalities of mixing and applying paints, proportions of colors and pigments, measurements of quantities of pigments, vehicles and methodologies of application. As an artistic photographer, shouldn't you fully understand how to measure and quantify light and how it effects and affects the film or the sensor in your camera?

Come on folks, the exposure triangle, or whatever theory you like, ain't rocket science. An exposure meter or the metering system in your camera is not like the controls on the flight deck of a jet aircraft. Basic daylight exposure can be learned from an instruction sheet. The more sophisticated situations require some study, practice, and experience. Practice is important. Even a simple method of bracketing exposure and assessing the results is a great learning experience.

Yes, there are times when expression, grabbing critical action and circumstances trump exact exposure. Otherwise, what's the rush- if you are shooting a landscape, still life, or a formal portrait- what's the rush- why can't y'all take some time to get the right exposure settings. Once you get the hang of it, it will become second nature. You do not have to become so overly preoccupied with exposure that you miss out on everything else. When you are good at it- it will come easily.

With today's photographic technology, there are many wonderful automated functions that help us achieve technical excellence. If you understand the rudiments of exposure, you can learn how to best apply all of these features, you will know how to override and modify them when necessary and be able to operate your camera in manual mode for full control.

As I alluded to in my first paragraph, "SERIOUS" is the operative word. If you just want to enjoy your photography in a strictly casual manner, and there is nothing wrong with that, the fully-automatic modes will work for you- so just set it and forget it.

This business of professionals "worrying" about time etc. is utter nonsense. Professionals and experienced amateurs don't need to "worry" about anything. We understand, light, time, art, and composition. Good amateurs want fine results as do professionals. The only difference is that if professionals don't consistently deliver fine results, we don't eat!

Instead of the "Exposure Triangle" of my yesteryears, my current digital photography "triangle" is relatively equally weighted: = Focus / Exposure / Post Process, all done to achieve my intended situational Composition (what's in "my mind's eye") and frame filling, captured vision of the selected scene. I love SOOC, and all forms of "Auto & Scene Recognition", but more often than not, each time I come back to an SOOC/Auto shot, I'm tweaking it in PP, to polish/finalize the capture.

I shoot mostly Manual, followed by AP - Why? I grew up on film and manual cameras, understand composition and light, know what my intent is, so it just feels natural for me - YMMV. Do I use the rest of the dial when the convenience is helpful, or situation begs it, of course, as well as all the other features and capabilities of my equipment that fit the situation. At this age/stage of my development, Composition is ingrained and it seems my eyes/mind know what the light meter is going to tell me, where "auto" is going to take me, what shutter speed I need, etc. etc.

There is a plethora of great insight in this thread (and many others over time), when you read and digest the information, and put together all the better points and explanations (without naming and quoting all the great contributors), the question is answered (to me).
mike

Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement within the borders of the continental United States. The city served as the capital of Spanish Florida for over 200 years. It was designated as the capital of British East Florida when the colony was established in 1763, until the British colony was ceded back to Spain in 1783.

St Augustine Pier by Paul Sager, on Flickr


Kodak Portra is a family of daylight-balanced professional color negative films originally introduced in 1998 and made primarily for portrait and wedding applications. The color negative film offers a smooth and natural color palette that is balanced with vivid saturation and low contrast for accurate skin tones and consistent results. The film is also well-suited for nature, travel, and outdoor shooting with moving subjects, or when the lighting cannot be controlled. Online sources recommend shooting at ISO-200 rather than 400.

Officially named the St. Johns County Ocean Pier, the St. Augustine Beach Pier is located on Anastasia Island in the city of St. Augustine Beach. It is located on one of Florida's most historic coasts.

St Augustine Pier


Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1819, and St. Augustine was designated the capital of the Florida Territory upon ratification of the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1821. Florida remained an organized territory of the United States until 1845, when it was admitted into the Union as the State of Florida.

St Augustine Pier


Henry Flagler, a co-founder with John D. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Company, spent the winter of 1883 in St. Augustine and found the city charming, but considered its hotels and transportation systems inadequate. Flagler had the idea to make St. Augustine a winter resort for wealthy Americans from the north, and to bring them south, he bought several short line railroads and combined these in 1885 to form the Florida East Coast Railway

St Augustine Pier


In 2015, St. Augustine celebrated the 450th anniversary of its founding with a four-day long festival and a visit from Felipe VI of Spain and Queen Letizia of Spain.

St Augustine Pier


These images combine scanned results from Kodak Portra 400 in an EOS 1v and digital images from an EOS 5DIII. The EF 35mm f/1.4L and EF 50mm f/1.2L lenses were used interchangeable between the two camera bodies.

The images are sized to fill your wide-screen display. Try using <F11> to maximize your browser window for the full effect. If the images overshoot your display, such as a laptop, just click on the image or the URL link and they'll resize to your screen from the host Flickr site. You can click a bit further into the image details on the Flickr page, if desired. EXIF data is available from the host Flickr pages as well. On the Flickr site, use your <L>key for Large and the <F11> for the full-screen.

If the images are not filling your widescreen display due to recent UHH changes, follow this link and update your UHH profile: https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-572300-1.html

If you read my very long post, you will see I am in substantial agreement with RG who is one of the very best contributors here. He does mention two important things. The HSL panel is great for modifying colors. I refer to it as the poor man's polarizer because it does such a great job on skies. The other point is that once you get used to editing raw's you will hate doing jpg's. They have such less latitude because they have fewer data that the raw's. That is why I do not shoot them unless I am traveling and want to share immediately.

I tend to leave the saturation alone. I usually get what I want through clarity, dehaze, tonal range and contrast. You can go overboard very quickly with saturation. Vibrance tends to be gently and more natural. Some people may use saturation to adjust color balance but I do not.

Welcome to the glorious world of post-processing. I am delighted to read a post about post-processing and from someone who wants a good, direct picture. Knowing where you want to go is extremely important. You need to develop your own photographic sensibility so look at many, many pictures, even ones that are a century old. You will learn a lot.

You can simplify your workflow. Forget about the Nikon software and jpg's. Take your raw's directly into PSE. I disagree slightly with RG and I will get into that in my specific response to his post. Here is my workflow with LR. I file my raw's by date: Year>00 month year>shoot number for the month and subject. Once imported, I assign keywords immediately. These include location and subject such as person, object and event. No one likes doing this but it sure helps when you are looking for that needle in the haystack. Apply the right camera and lens profiles.

Unlike RG, I first straighten and take a preliminary crop. Then, I am back on track with RG.

PS Color balance should be inserted here. I use the XRite ColorChecker or ExpoDisc and then apply to all similar lighting situations.

1. Exposure, clarity, tonal range, contrast, dehaze and similar controls. Raw's are usually flat compared to SOOC jpg's so I first add clarity +30 and medium contrast tonal range. A bit of dehaze may also help. These are merely starting points. You must figure out what works best with your equipment and personal style. I also use my own presets but do not know if PSE has them.

2. This step involves local adjustments. My most often used tool is the radial filter then the linear gradient, adjustment brush and spot removal tool. These are the real power of LR and, I presume, PSE. Once you are comfortable with the global adjustments, learn these.

3. Straighten non-parallel lines.

4. Remove noise and sharpen. I do not do a lot here but just in case. My go-to sharpening tool is the shake reduction filter in PS. I do not know if PSE has it. I also like the high-pass filter.

5. Review the edits and redo as appropriate. Recrop, if necessary, to the final aspect ratio if printing. Do not otherwise resize.

6. I often apply a slight negative vignette, usually between -10 and -20, to make the subject stand out more.

7. If I am exporting, I usually increase the exposure by 2/3 of a stop since my jpg's are consistently a little dark. I export either to a folder called email which I use to send to friends or to the print folder.

I also assign stars to track my progress. 1, reject, and move to the reject folder under the shoot folder. 2, unused. 3, to be reviewed again later for processing or rejecting. 4, done. 5, either outstanding or for printing. You can set LR to advance automatically after setting a star.

Between RG and me, you should be off to the races. Be patient and post your pictures here for advice. Good luck and enjoy.

Basic editing can be condensed into four main areas:-

1) Brightness levels and contrast.

2) Colour and saturation.

3) Sharpening and denoise.

4) Cropping and straightening.


1 to 3 are the sort of editing that jpegs get in-camera.

As a very general rule the adjustments should be done in the order given. Some might say that cropping and straightening should be done first, but sometimes the ideal crop doesn't become apparent until the edit is under way, so it's best to leave your timing options open. However, colour strength changes as brightness and contrast levels change, so it's a good idea to get brightness/contrast sorted first. Sharpening/denoise can interfere with your ability to make selections, so there's something to be said for leaving sharpening/denoise till late on in the edit (they should always be done together).

Beyond that you have things like cloning, changing backgrounds etc (which I would describe as a step beyond basic).

WB and Tint can be used to make global colour adjustments whereas the HSL tool can be used to adjust individual colours. Saturation can be adjusted globally, or each colour can be adjusted separately in the HSL section.

Many adjustments can be applied locally to specific problem areas. For example, extra sharpening and/or denoise can be applied where they're needed. Another common example is areas which require extra brightening of the shadows or darkening of the highlights.

With #4, cropping and straightening are the only two geometric adjustments that are likely to be a recurring requirement, but there are other less basic possibilities such as perspective/lens distortion corrections, stretching and tilting.

As a starting point I would recommend concentrating on 1-4. Since you've expressed a desire to know about PP I would recommend working with the raw files. The down side is that they need to be edited from scratch whereas jpegs can often be OK straight out of camera (SOOC) because of the in-camera processing that they get. However, when you edit jpegs you spend a lot of time dealing with their more restrictive limitations and annoying jpeg artefacts. Hope this helps.