How much post processing

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#1552846 14-May-2016 22:22

rayonline:

I bumped into this youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fewTszRRX2Y

Is this what is done often usually with digital photography?

Some do, but this guy spends 44 mins or so turning his shot into an over saturated pixie land image.

I wouldn't necessarily be targeting that as my final development

kiwirock

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#1552865 14-May-2016 23:58

Jaxson:

rayonline:

I bumped into this youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fewTszRRX2Y

Is this what is done often usually with digital photography?

Some do, but this guy spends 44 mins or so turning his shot into an over saturated pixie land image.

I wouldn't necessarily be targeting that as my final development

Firstly, OMG! The login verify is getting a bit too stupid now that it keeps changing the pictures. Soon I'll need to fill out paper work to sign in. It's getting a bit too geeky to for the purpose it serves no?

As for this topic. The only thing with shooting RAW and then doing post is forgetting what you saw with your eyes. I don't do any editing if it makes the final result interpreted as originally what I saw if it wasn't. The only exception is when it's very easy to see it has been edited for originality/effects.

For landscape and sun sets, I use a decent camera with enough manual options to reproduce down to TIFF or BMP what I see side by side with the screen or in the viewfinder as what I see with my eyes. Yes this requires a really good calibrated screen or having worked with a particular screen long enough to know it's traits.

My concentration is more on the composition and myriad of tools such as filters, lenses, mirrors and most important light. However I don't' like really messing with lighting in outdoor shooting full stop only indoor and only the minimum needed. I'll go find some shade where possible or go take photos on an overcast day.

The only real software tools I use are white balance, exposure and histogram (to avoid clipping or to make informed decisions about what I'm trading off if I over-expose the background) on the camera. Everything else is software controlled hardware or hardware its self.

In my eyes, post should be required only where sparingly needed. Or so to speak - less is more when it comes to editing video/photo and audio. Unless you have a crap camera with bugger all choice but to hack up a final "artwork" so to speak.

timmmay

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#1552883 15-May-2016 08:06

I've delivered around 100,000 images to paying customers - weddings. Every single one of those images has been processed. Some have been minimally processed, perhaps just white balance or a tweak to the highlights, but most have white balance, exposure, shadows and highlights, contrast, and a few other simple things done in camera raw. Around 1% or probably less have gone into Photoshop for things like eye / face swaps, removing background objects, that kind of thing.

A jpeg / print can't show the same dynamic range as the human eye, so a significant part of my processing is reducing dynamic range. The other part is correcting for exposures that aren't perfect - you can't get perfect exposures every time, no matter what you do, when you're shooting rushed events. Plus the histogram on the camera and ACR are slightly different.

I can improve any image with 30 seconds in camera raw.

rayonline

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#1552917 15-May-2016 09:07

I generally spend 30-250 seconds just adjusting the WB, curves, highlights, shadows etc. Add some sharpening. Rotate and crop.

I just came across this site. The images we see on galleries (web or in person) and magazines, brochures ... some of the images like that could have been captured with a smartphone and then photoshopped up. I have some of those average like images back in the years with my 6MP dSLR. Dunno, maybe I was foolish in believing the lot like National Geographic and those who shot medium and large format film with that dedication. Some buildings are added in to make to fill in the gaps?! Not only to enhance the shot or change the color but to add a glorious sun in an otherwise cloudy shot?!

http://www.boredpanda.com/how-photographers-photoshop-their-images-landscape-photography-peter-stewart/

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#1552948 15-May-2016 10:05

rayonline:

I generally spend 30-250 seconds just adjusting the WB, curves, highlights, shadows etc. Add some sharpening. Rotate and crop.

I just came across this site. The images we see on galleries (web or in person) and magazines, brochures ... some of the images like that could have been captured with a smartphone and then photoshopped up. I have some of those average like images back in the years with my 6MP dSLR. Dunno, maybe I was foolish in believing the lot like National Geographic and those who shot medium and large format film with that dedication. Some buildings are added in to make to fill in the gaps?! Not only to enhance the shot or change the color but to add a glorious sun in an otherwise cloudy shot?!

http://www.boredpanda.com/how-photographers-photoshop-their-images-landscape-photography-peter-stewart/

One can photoshop all they like, but there is a difference to those stunning post processed photos.

1. They are composed to perfection.

2. They plan and wait and wait and wait for the best lighting.

3. They are exposed correctly.

4. Then the post processing makes an art piece from the first 3.

floydbloke

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#1553301 15-May-2016 20:30

Some stunning results to be had with good PP, but is there a point when the image is no longer a photograph?

On the other hand, does anyone care as long as the picture looks good?

Did Eric Clapton really think she looked wonderful...or was it after the 15th outfit she tried on and he just wanted to get to the party and get a drink?

timmmay

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#1553308 15-May-2016 20:49

In the NZIPP professional photography awards they pretty much turned into Photoshop awards, to the point they had to introduce "classic" categories. That's around the time I gave up the NZIPP.

So long as an image is pleasing I don't see any problem with processing.

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shortcircuit

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#1553310 15-May-2016 21:02

floydbloke:

Some stunning results to be had with good PP, but is there a point when the image is no longer a photograph?

On the other hand, does anyone care as long as the picture looks good?

If you think of taking photographs as an art form then no amount of post processing beats a good camera, lenses, practice and patience.

If you want to add in a sunset or get rid of power lines then it's just real estate photography... you're now trying to sell something that it wasn't to begin with.

99% of my photographs come out of the camera untouched, a few get a bit of adjustment. Any more than that and I might as well just paint a picture, which is quite funny because if I paint a landscape it would turn out looking like a photo!

In the end, each to their own I guess. My only gripe is that I think PP that changes an image significantly should be disclosed to the viewer

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#1553315 15-May-2016 21:13

In the age of the internet, nothing is real or unreal anymore. They're all just stuff that's out there. I know of people who sit in front of their gaming machines 24/7 if they can help it, and they have 700-800+ friends all over the world. Or do they.

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#1553316 15-May-2016 21:14

Sorry a bit philosophical there. Got carried away.

Jaxson

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#1553347 15-May-2016 22:01

floydbloke:

does anyone care as long as the picture looks good?

This is me. I don't care if it doesn't look like it did on the day. I only care what it looks like when I view it.

crackrdbycracku

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#1568718 9-Jun-2016 14:57

I'm seriously in two minds about this.

On the one hand I take photos to remind me of what I saw. So I want the photo to be as close to the original as possible. This is particularly true if I am shooting people. I want the photo to assist my memory in capturing the moment.

Like this, https://www.flickr.com/photos/132952159@N08/shares/CW6v5S

On the other hand some of my favourite images are nothing like how the scene would look like in 'real life'.

I love this image but it isn't a representation of how the scene would have looked to the natural eye.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/132952159@N08/shares/2p9979

There is no way my vision would have blurred out to white like that. It does't matter, I think it still looks very cool

What am I trying to say?

There are times when a photo should be 'realistic' as it stands in for the real world in some way. There are times when the image stands alone and doesn't need to be a true representation of anything, it's art on it's own.

Which is the right way in any particular case? Up to the person pushing the button.

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#1569193 10-Jun-2016 10:03

crackrdbycracku:

There are times when a photo should be 'realistic' as it stands in for the real world in some way. There are times when the image stands alone and doesn't need to be a true representation of anything, it's art on it's own.

That's correct and from my perspective, there are literally no rules around this, unless there are.

If you're entering a competition or journalistic publication with specific rules around the image, then there are clearly rules.

If not, then there just aren't.

Batman

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#1569197 10-Jun-2016 10:11

crackrdbycracku:

On the other hand some of my favourite images are nothing like how the scene would look like in 'real life'.

I love this image but it isn't a representation of how the scene would have looked to the natural eye.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/132952159@N08/shares/2p9979

There is no way my vision would have blurred out to white like that. It does't matter, I think it still looks very cool

I hate to break it to you, but the reason why the bit is white is because of the limitation of the (any) camera due to overexposure of the highlights due to the camera trying to preserve the shadows of a scene with very high dynamic range.

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#1570636 12-Jun-2016 19:23

Here's some of my recent "cheating":

Originals (on right) are out of camera converted from raw, with a very flat "neutral" setting in raw converter.

Top "cheat" is just closer to what my eyes saw.

Middle - the glow from the sun was golden - not white, the glow in the tree could be seen.

Bottom - the foreground wasn't amber coloured, the sky did look menacing, the bit of blue in the sky annoyed me, and the glacial fed lake was very blue. That needed to be cropped or scaled so the print would fit a large frame, so I cheated by scaling the image rather than cropping it. I feel no guilt about that, as it was shot at 18mm on 35mm format with a rectilinear corrected ultra-wide angle lens, so the original is full of distortion anyway. There was also some white stick under the tree - road marker or similar - it had to be cloned out. I have no guilt about that - when you print large (as opposed to web-size images) flaws draw the eye.

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