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Post Processing
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Hope this isn't too far off topic... but I am a person who was raised in a box, metaphorically. Leaves are green, the sky is blue, period. So now, as an adult trying to get in touch with my lost creative child I have difficulty when a shot doesn't come off exactly as I saw it right out of the camera.
So I argue with that child in the box, I tell myself it's ok, alright to adjust color, tone, light to make the image closer to what my eye perceived, if not better. But the child insists, what you see is what you get, and if you didn't get it correct on the first go, it's like lying to correct it.
Anyone hear me? Feel my pain? Tell me post processing is ok, validate me!
Posted at 8:26PM, 6 June 2008 PDT
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Post processing is OK! You have been validated!
Posted 60 months ago.
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Michael J Photography [deleted] says:
not only ok but necessary for the art, if all you do is take a shot and never touch it again your missing out on a world of artistic expression and joy. Believe me there are enough people out there doing just that, and you can really tell.
Posted 60 months ago.
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Some-one made the paint, the canvas and the artist. A mind produces the art.
Process.
Process.
Process.
I am slightly colour blind ( like Constable ) so how do you know what you see is real?
:))
Posted 60 months ago.
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My mum recently bought a digital camera and I have slowly been teaching her some very basic adjustments (levels, crop, straighten horizon & curves) to do, just to add a bit of life. Now when she sees her friends photos and compares them to hers, she can see what a difference even very small, slight adjustments can make. Her friends think her camera is fantastic 'cos their pics are dull and flat by comparison!
And don't forget, most digital cameras have presets in them anyway - contrast, colour saturation etc etc so even if you don't post process, your camera is probably already doing some for you!
Posted 60 months ago.
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I find that most picts (esp with raw) need some basic PP (levels, curves, WB, ect...) just to get them to look close to how you saw them. If you shoot jpg, then most of the PP has been done in camera. Back in the film days, you would shoot different films to get different effects, then when you sent it off for prints, they would do some minor tweeking when printed.
Posted 60 months ago.
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time for a new beginning [deleted] says:
In the digital sense, why are you shooting? Because you like a certain scene? Then why not make some adjustments to match what made you take the shot in the first place.
Unlike film where different emulsions can be used depending on the desired result, digital depends on processing to provide different end results.
Process away!
EDIT: I hadn't refreshed the page for awhile, so I repeated to a certain extent. Oh well, more validation :D
Originally posted 60 months ago.
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time for a new beginning edited this topic 60 months ago.
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To begin with if you were using film the photo processor would be doing post production during printing. To their standards are not yours.
If you look at your pic before post production you will probably notice upon close inspection that their appears to be a film or fog over the image. This is common with all but the best digital cameras. This fog prevents the pic from looking like what you saw with your eye. It makes the image look dull and flat as Arty Allsorts describes about his Mum's friends pics. Post production can remove this fog.
What we see is not like taking a snapshot with our mind where everyone sees the same thing and takes an identical snapshot. An image is captured by our eye and sent to the brain. Our brain performs post production. This is influenced by many things. The way we were raised in your case, our beliefs, education, emotions, past experiences and many other things. So what you see and what I see may differ based on these variables.
Our mind is able to differentiate a much wider range of lighting levels than a digital sensor or film can. Go out and shoot a scene that has bright light and heavy shadow with variation in between. Look at the scene very carefully with your eye. Look at the detail that you can see with your eye in the bright light, light shade, middle shade and heavy shade. Now go load the image on your computer and look at the pic. Is that kind of detail their. NO. If you have the highlights right the shadows lost most or all detail and vice versa. So what you saw with your eye does not exist in the image. Even post processing will not bring it all back. But it can help enormously.
So post production does not make your image inaccurate. It simply changes what you see on the monitor or print to what your mind wants other people to see. To emphasize the subject. To show us an emotion. To show us the beauty your mind sees that ours misses. With only minor adjustments it brings the image back in line more with what our mind actually saw. So an image with no post production is really a lie. It differs greatly from what we saw in our mind. Post production is required to make it accurate.
Posted 60 months ago.
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Wow Cuulblu, (and everyone else) Thank you for putting that into perspective for me so eloquently! You've post processed my preconceptions!
Originally posted 60 months ago.
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twomoods edited this topic 60 months ago.
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All the responses above are very good. I, most of the time, process my images to look somewhat different than what I was actually looking at. I lean towards black and white, however, if the colors are particularly good I will saturate them (the colors) more and add more contrast(sometimes). Play around with your photos and come up with your own style of processing. A good example is Fred Jackson; he has an original way of processing his images.
Posted 60 months ago.
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this subject seems to pop up in every gourp I belong. I always think the poster of the question should read Ansel Adams - THE PRINT
from first page of chapter 1;
"it's impossible for a photographic print to duplicate the range of brightness of most subjects, and thus photographs are to some degree interpretations of the original subject values. " he goes on to say that his work "is frequently reguarded as "realistic", while in fact the value relationships within most of my photographs are far from a literal transcription of actuality. I employ numerous photographic controls to create an image that represents "the equivalent of what I saw and felt".
Adams had his controls in the camera with proper exposure and the use of filers and the rest were in the dark room. In the digital world post processing is done in the computer, the only difference.
Originally posted 60 months ago.
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poppaJ edited this topic 60 months ago.
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Hmm, well besides trying to recreate what you saw, there are many other reasons for post processing, such as removing distractions that you weren't able to do at the time or simply cropping to enhance the composition.
I think of photography as an artform and although I share that sense of faking it sometimes, I do find that most commercial photography that you look at in books, magazines and the web has been processed to hell. Why? Because it makes a more pleasing image. Not everyone agrees with doing that, and that's fine, but my thoughts are that you should use any tools available that help you to get across the image that you want people to see. Whether that's using the camera settings to increase sharpness, saturation etc or using software is kind of irrelavent. Wet photographic techniques allow for a lot of the manipulation that we can do in software these days, so don't get hung up on it - people have been doing this processing for years on end.
Would you disqualify a photo that used a 20 second exposure to make car trails or to smooth water? There's no post processing, but then again it's not what you actually saw at the time either, but it can make a great image!
I tend to shoot mostly 'natural' looking stuff but occasionally I like to indulge in a bit of twisting of the truth!
My advice is to forget about what others think and just go and enjoy yourself - see what happens!
Posted 60 months ago.
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I work for a newspaper and we shoot about 300 photos a week. Everyone one of those photos go through a post processing system. No two cameras shoot exactly the same. No two photographers shoot exactly the same. If for no other reason than standardization in our business you must post process. The camera is a tool and so is post processing to achieve a desired end goal. The image as we want it to appear. The people who use the camera and do the post processing are artists and an artist can only achieve the end goal if they are willing to use the tools. Those who believe that post processing isn't necessary are only denying themselves the tools to achieve the image in their mind.
Posted 60 months ago.
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I always laugh at people telling me they don't like to change what they saw. Most people don't even realise the moment they press the shutterbutton what they saw was different from what they will end up with. As soon as you change lens (or zoom in or out) you already alter the scene because suddenly your field of view is completely different from your eyes'...
Posted 60 months ago.
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"sometimes to tell the truth you have to tell a lie"
Posted 60 months ago.
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