How much post processing

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rayonline

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#195968 13-May-2016 21:27

I normally do landscapes for this hobby. Mines are pretty minor, 2mins tops in Lightroom. I also shoot the odd slide film so that does not lie, that is projected so it's not scanned and then edited. I bumped into this youtube video:

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

Is this what is done often usually with digital photography? I've attended some seminars of some pro's and they do say they dodge and burn, they photoshop out the footprints, Steve McCurry recently hit some headlines about his assistants cloning stuff out. So even with the film days, was this type of editing done also after it was scanned?

Cheers.

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#1552424 13-May-2016 21:49

What do you mean by usually.

In stunning images yes. Can't get amazing pics without being skilled in post processing.

Then you need to define amazing. For some people most pics are amazing.

Do you need to do that much pp, well it's up to you. The thing about digital photography is something needs to convert digital signal to mean something. Either the camera does it. Or Lightroom with its default settings. Or an artist.

blakamin

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#1552425 13-May-2016 21:53

Pretty much always these days..

I follow a "non-shop'd photography" group, because what interests me is what the camera sees.

I'd wait for the perfect light, myself.

Some 'shops are great, but it's not my thing.

rayonline

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#1552428 13-May-2016 22:00

When I learnt photography by reading. I got books out about metering and many used slide film. WYSIWYG. You develop your film and you put it on the light table. No scanning, no software. In terms of "usually" - in the film days wasn't that what the pro's did, you see the glorious sunrises and sunsets on the magazines and travel brochures - the photographer would have handed over their slide film or made dupes and the editor selected the shots and published them. Did pro's do this much post processing in the film days also or did the editors do that?

With my landscape hobby. I've always went out 5am, 6am, repeatedly to try and catch that glorious sight. Reading weather forecast etc etc. Have I been expecting too much.

Batman

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#1552529 14-May-2016 09:20

blakamin:

Pretty much always these days..

I follow a "non-shop'd photography" group, because what interests me is what the camera sees.

I'd wait for the perfect light, myself.

Some 'shops are great, but it's not my thing.

With all due respect, that is all nonsense that stem from the wide internet.

Unlike film cameras, digital cameras see nothing. Their sensors consist of interspersed yellow/green/red light sensors arranged in non average patterns (ie they don't space out evenly), converting into a digital signal of sorts.

It bears zero resemblance to what the guy saw when he/she took that photograph.

Someone/something needs to convert those signals and give them meaning ie - produce an image. The camera's builtin software, or your software without your help, or you direct the software to give meaning to those data.

Hence letting the camera produce what it sees - makes no sense, does not exist, and more importantly, wasn't what you saw.

Addendum:

I have to say, of all the built-in softwares I've ever come across, EXPEED, DIGIC, Samsung, ... iOS seems to produce an image as close to what my eye would see. The rest ... nope.

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#1552530 14-May-2016 09:21

blakamin:

Pretty much always these days..

I follow a "non-shop'd photography" group, because what interests me is what the camera sees.

I'd wait for the perfect light, myself.

Some 'shops are great, but it's not my thing.

What the photographer sees, however, is 100% true. Lighting, composition, exposure. That is in one's control of what the sensor then picks up.

Fred99

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#1552592 14-May-2016 14:39

joker97:

blakamin:

Pretty much always these days..

I follow a "non-shop'd photography" group, because what interests me is what the camera sees.

I'd wait for the perfect light, myself.

Some 'shops are great, but it's not my thing.

With all due respect, that is all nonsense that stem from the wide internet.

Unlike film cameras, digital cameras see nothing. Their sensors consist of interspersed yellow/green/red light sensors arranged in non average patterns (ie they don't space out evenly), converting into a digital signal of sorts.

It bears zero resemblance to what the guy saw when he/she took that photograph.

Someone/something needs to convert those signals and give them meaning ie - produce an image. The camera's builtin software, or your software without your help, or you direct the software to give meaning to those data.

Hence letting the camera produce what it sees - makes no sense, does not exist, and more importantly, wasn't what you saw.

Addendum:

I have to say, of all the built-in softwares I've ever come across, EXPEED, DIGIC, Samsung, ... iOS seems to produce an image as close to what my eye would see. The rest ... nope.

Actually the sensels on the sensor are colour filtered usually with a repeating "bayer" pattern of Red, Green, and Blue, in an RGBG pattern - two green sensels per one Red and Blue, which works out just fine because our eyes are about 2x more sensitive to colour in the green part of the spectrum. Bayer (and similar) colour filter arrays work very well indeed.

Fuji "x-trans" uses a different (not random - but repeating at lower frequency) RGB pattern with the theory that it eliminates generation of colour artifacts (moire) when de-mosaicing the image (but adds complexity to the demosaicing process as some software can't cope). AFAIK the x-trans still maintains the 2x Green to 1x Red and 1x Blue ratio. Others (kodak and IIRC Sony for small phone camera sensors etc) have added "white" (unfiltered) sensels to improve low-light sensitivity, Fuji in the past used another non-standard array with a mix of large and small sensels to improve dynamic range, and then there's the different approach of Sigma/Foveon - which I won't go in to because it's horrible.

The analogue signal from the sensor (unless well capacity is exceeded) is linear, in theory you could produce an image after demosaicing which was "as seen by the camera". However that image when seen by the eye may not be even close to what was seen by our visual system when viewing the real scene.

I wouldn't consider film as any kind of standard from which to measure digital sensor performance. It was exceeded years ago. Prints I can churn out from 35mm format digital are leagues ahead of anything I ever achieved with 35mm film, it's well into medium format film resolution, but with much better dynamic range and more accurate colour.

As for post processing heavily, well it's not going to stand up to scrutiny if you're involved in forensics, medical imaging, or some journalism and start cloning things out (or adding them in). Other than that, reluctance to post-process because of some kind of idea that it's "pure" or "honest" is based on myth.

Geektastic

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#1552631 14-May-2016 15:34

It's pretty rare to get perfect results from the camera every time. This is as true for digital as it was for film: professional images were comprehensively tweaked in the darkroom by skilled technicians just as they are today in Lightroom.

IMV there is a significant difference between making the most pleasing version of an image by tweaking basic parameters like exposure, contrast, saturation, clarity and so forth and using a pixel level image editor like Photoshop to actually alter the scene by adding or removing things. Indeed, Magnum photographer Steve McCurry recently found himself embroiled in a bit of embarrassment because of poor PS work done on one of his images.

Both methods have their place. What is unacceptable is dishonesty. Claiming that you saw Lord Lucan in Queenstreet and here is the photo to prove it when you PS'd him into a shot is not on. Using PS to make a nice piece of art is fine.

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#1552718 14-May-2016 17:43

Digital wise, you capture some raw stuff and then develop it. A JPEG straight from camera is this raw data processed in a certain way.

It's all 1s and 0s until you chose to make something of it. There is not such thing as 'just what the camera saw'.

In fact, especially in terms of digital video, the aim is to use the camera as a tool to capture as much detail as you want (flat picture profile etc) to give you the most leeway and data to process to the final image you have in mind.

Process to give you the image you want. Call it art, call it whatever you want, but it's what the creator had in mind. Developing a photo is nothing new.

blakamin

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#1552729 14-May-2016 17:59

I stand corrected... I used to use a film camera, I now use a digital camera. I don't post-process anything. Happy?

That's the way I like it... You do whatever you need to to make you happy.

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#1552734 14-May-2016 18:09

blakamin:

I stand corrected... I used to use a film camera, I now use a digital camera. I don't post-process anything. Happy?

That's the way I like it... You do whatever you need to to make you happy.

Your camera might well be pretty awesome, unlike mine hopeless piece of expensive Canon brick.

The reason I delved into post processing was .... the bloody iphone!

I used to have a point and shoot. Gave me pretty great pictures. So I thought aha buy a dslr and take awesome pics, and at the same time, my friends all had iphones.

My expensive brick took shots I was too ashamed to look at myself. While the iphone ... WOW effect. For years I couldn't understand why.

The expensive bricks - read Canon dslr - haven't changed a bit.

The mirrorless however, have some pretty magical software in them and the pictures straight out of the box can be stunning stuff. If you have one of those, I'd stay away from post processing. Why ... umm ... because - instagram filters.

Sam91

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#1552736 14-May-2016 18:17

This is a screenshot of the raw version and an edited version of one of my brother's photos :-p

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#1552737 14-May-2016 18:24

Sam91:

This is a screenshot of the raw version and an edited version of one of my brother's photos :-p

Can quite easily produce the photograph on the right (but better exposure) with in-camera jpeg, but you have to tell the camera what to do to the raw file.

Minimize the contrast**, increase the exposure, bingo.

Long version:

In the raw file unfortunately, the highlights have been blown. Ie it registered no colour. So after post process the highlights turn out white. Nothing you can do can add detail to them. In the raw file, the black bits have brought back to detail by moving whatever detail could be salvaged amongst some degree of noise, onto a matrix that represents a colour detail above black (black being zero).

** (contrast pushes the details towards the extreme end of the colour matrix. minimizing it in your in-camera software setting will have a tendency to crowed all the information back towards the middle of the data matrix in these high dynamic range scenes. OR just use a bloody iphone for goodness sakes)

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#1552739 14-May-2016 18:30

Sam91:

This is a screenshot of the raw version and an edited version of one of my brother's photos :-p

That's a Canon dslr camera - was I right?

Sam91

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#1552741 14-May-2016 18:49

joker97:

Sam91:

This is a screenshot of the raw version and an edited version of one of my brother's photos :-p

That's a Canon dslr camera - was I right?

Yep, either a 5D Mark III or 7D. He now has a 1DX.

rayonline

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#1552751 14-May-2016 19:40

Here is my attempt with a older photo.

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