New to photography...trying to understand post processing

Electroshadow

Electroshadow

Electroshadow

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12 Dec 2006
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hi

im new into the world of photography, apart from construction site and building shots used for commerical uses by my clients, presentations and like.... nothing that needed professional photos. (me being a Site and design engineer)

after purchasing a bridging camera NEX- C3 i have taken to trying to take more quality photos, mainly of the family.

now im having problems trying to get my head around this whole post processing thing.
For some reason to me it seem wrong to alter the photos after they have been taken as this wouldnt have been done on film really. I know that as with digital its easy to alter things, but should i not have tried taking many photos to get the correct picture from the camera in the first place?


with post processing am i:

trying to take a quick soso photo then correct it later?

trying to make the photo show something better than what i was seeing with my own eyes?

trying to just inhance a good quality photo to what i was seeing with my own eyes?.

also do you guys keep the originals and the post processed photos?

any help with this would be great as i just cant seem to get my head around it.
 
post processing should be used sparingly, it is never a substitute for shoddy photography.

really it all comes down to adding depth, sharpening, or changing the tone of an image, or tweaking something slightly..IMO if your having to change a lot in PP then somethings not right with how you took the shot in the first place.

just make sure you shoot in RAW and your good to go, dont PP jpegs they will come out looking worse, oh and get a copy of lightroom.
 
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Plenty of magic went on in the darkroom in the film days! (and still does I'm sure).

Post Processing can just mean running a slight colour boost and contrast adjustment on a RAW image (RAW images pretty much require PP due to their very nature). It can also mean really letting loose with all the tools available and creating something completely different to the originally captured scene. I like to do as little as possible, the most PP I generally do is for black and white conversions.

Sharpening for your desired output (web size or print) is also something that you should always look at.

There's loads of content out there, you don't need to go mad with it all.
 
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Get composition and exposure right in camera ideally. Then tweak the curves and deal with colour, white balance and the like in post processing. A good photo should be apparent without being touched really. You can correct exposure a little in post processing but you should aim not to.

I'd disagree with the 'you must shoot RAW' brigade. You should all other things being equal and there's no reason not to but RAW files are flat out of the camera generally and will *need* processing, if you need photos quickly then jpegs are usable straight out of camera pretty often if you exposure correctly.

Jpegs can be processed fine unless you want to print A3 at super high quality. If you're just exporting to flickr and facebook you'll never notice.
 
Rojin said:
Plenty of magic went on in the darkroom in the film days! (and still does I'm sure).
Click to expand...

Of course it did, Ansel Adams dodged and burned his shots (they aren't just photoshop terms, they're things you do to film in a darkroom). Something the absolute purists don't like to remember...

You should nail composition and exposure when you take the photo though, I consider cropping and adjusting exposure on RAW files to be sloppy photography, most other adjustments are fair game, particularly colour and such.
 
As others have said, plenty of post processing took place when film use was widespread.

The film itself often dictated the look of the shot - different vibrancy, different film grain. Then you have the paper, which again gave different effects, even with black and white paper.

Dodging, burning, spotting all took place in the darkroom. Cross processing as well - there are loads of different 'post processing' techniques with film.

As for taking a soso picture and hoping for improvement via post processing, well you cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Composition, Timing, Depth of Field, Shutter speed, focus and an understanding of exposure - get those right and you'll hardly need to do any post processing - however for us lesser mortals Lightroom and the equivilent programs are a godsend :)
 
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