Opinions on Post Processing

Genoma

Genoma

Genoma

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Didn't want to derail another posters thread with this question. I was going to ask D.P (and now everyone else too) as he mentioned his PP style is to try and keep things closer to reality as possible. Not knocking that BTW D.P. your results speak for themselves! :)

I however find myself doing the complete opposite to that, either to find a new look for some photos or to learn new PP techniques. OK in some cases I'm trying to make a bad shot better which I know goes against the grain but hey, it's fun to play too.

I'm starting to wonder whether I'm doing this due to lack of experience, in search of a style and experimentation. Take my Cosford set for example, I really like the look of the engines with my own PP added to them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajyoung/sets/72157635320754342/

So my question is what do people think about the artistic value of PP?

My view is that if the result is something you like it doesn't matter how you achieved it. The fact that digital tools make things easier is IMHO not an issue. If it was, well; then there is a argument that more effort is always better, which doesn't make sense to me :)
 
I agree with you entirely. What ultimately matters is the results and if you are happy with them (and if you are doing something commercial whether your clients and customers are happy).

I really don't understand the viewpoint some photographers have about doing no processing "to keep things natural". This is absurd because you are not making an exact replica of reality, you are choosing decision such as which camera, which lens, where to stand, what exposure, what white balance, what aperture and what shutter speed all the time. You are just deciding how to collect photons. The camera then makes a load more decision for you and does its own filtering. Then you import the photo the RAW processor will do a load more filtering and magic.
So what you start with is no where near some concept of a copy of reality. It is a representation of a scene that is already heavily processed and manipulated and distorted from reality (e.g. if you do a long exposure to make the water smooth).


Photography is also an art form. You can process your photos to varies extents until the point it has little bearing on what the scene originally looked like. You can cut and paste parts of multiple images into a final piece of art. Is this a photograph, not really, but that doesn't matter. When it comes to landscapes I see people doing things like cutting out a moon shot at 300mm and putting it in the wide angle image so the moon looks huge. I don't like to do such trickery and keep to a simpler processing. The scene elements already have to be in the image for me, I just manipulate settings.

The style I personally like for my nature work is to represent what I saw and felt and interpreted the scene to look like. This usually involves A) trying to get the best lighting possible (which is very tough) and B light processing but with a little more punch. This doesn't preclude things like pulling the shadows right down to make a silhouette, pulling highlights in to increase DR closer to that of the human eye, saturation boosts and WB changes to make image have the warmth and tones that I felt when I took the photo. But I also hate sitting at a computer and post processing so doing the minimum is my preferred option. This also means I try to get the photo as perfect as possible in camera so minimal changes are required in post. I want my out of camera jpegs (or default LR processing) to be good enough.

Different genres often work well with heavier processing. I really like your photos on flickr!
 
In general I believe editing should be done with as light a hand as possible but if your say shooting at say a night club you normally need some pretty heavy editing to bring out the real flavor of the subject.

Your museum shots are while moderately processed mostly fairly tastefully done to show off the essence of the subject of the shot. Theres nothing worse IMO than say heavy HDR saturated landscapes just because it looks "cool" or someone just found the effect button.

Ultimately depends what you goal is though - I detest "artistic" for artistic's sake, nothing wrong with adding your own interpretation to something however.
 
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I just process how I see fit, be it light or heavy editing and I don't care whether it looks like the original or not.
I have a few presets in LR that I've created myself over the years and generally I apply one that I deem suitable and tweak it from there.

Don't worry about editing, apply want you and use the tools available to you to get the image you like the style of.
If a shot is 25% photography and 75% edit so what, its yours do want you want with it.
 
I'd go along with everything that has already been said, post processing is a personal thing ans the aim is to produce something you (or if you have one your client) is happy with so listen to what others say and take advice you think improves your shots but remember everyone's opinion is just that.

Personally I'm in the minimal post processing camp purely because I hate spending time in front of a computer, I have my camera setup so that using one of my preferred picture styles usually produces something I'm happy with and I'll only tweak those pictures that I want to use for something.

Looking at your flickr feed I like your style and the processing certainly suits the subject for me, sometimes a shot needs that added pop to bring it to life I think the flat origionals of your engine shots for example would be pretty dull but the processed versions really pop.
 
Horses for courses. Though I detest those that push massive amounts of PP into something that shouldn't have so much PP. e.g. fashion and health/fitness magazines that shop out all the wrinkles bumps and curves that people have, burn shadows for muscle definition that just isn't there, or even completely change their eye/hair/whatever colour and shape.

Likewise for journalists that manipulate the "truth" of their images, which is not only limited to PP but there is certainly a large amount of it knocking around. Seeing last year's winner of some competition using a heavily manipulated war-time image from Syria was cringeworthy.

If you are documenting something, PP should be as near to zero as humanly possible. White balance and exposure changes only in my opinion. If you're doing something artsy, then PP away. Noise reduction and contrast - meh. There's room for it but there's only so much you can do before it ruins the image anyway, so I don't care if someone uses it or not.

For my own photos, I like to think I am documenting when taking pictures of an event or people, so I like to keep post changes to only be compensatory to my inability to get it right in-camera - i.e. change exposure settings, white balance and if it's really noticeable, the lens distortion.

Plus I'm quite lazy and PP bores me :D
 
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In general I keep things simple, just try and make things colourful and pop if I can. This is mainly because I don't have a lot of time to PP. I did spend some time working out my own B&W preset (in duo tone just to annoy AE :D), and I have picked up free presets and bought some so I can play around with things.

I don't think you should limit yourself in PP, just be honest when posting up your results. Not declaring a composite is a bit misleading for example.
 
Thanks guys, good to hear I'm not going over the top then, and good to hear from your opinions on this.
 
With the millions of other photographers out there, if you want to stand out it's getting more and more important (and more difficult?) to find your own style - whether that's in your composition, post-processing, subject-matter, being a fantastically awesome photographer or something else - I don't think how you do it matters. Sometimes I'll see a photo in my Twitter stream and I'll know who took it before I've seen their username - it'd be awesome to achieve that (albeit I don't follow many photographers yet). I may have gone off on a tangent there...

I agree with D.P. - if photography is a hobby you should do whatever pleases you instead of trying to follow trends or please others. If you want to get better it's important to experiment - and who knows - you might discover a post-processing technique that you love now but hate in a year - it's all a learning process.

Your photos don't look over-processed to me, and the engines do look cool. Some "over-processing" I don't like (e.g. HDR), but some of my favourite photos are probably processed beyond reality, so I can't criticise those who do extreme HDR (I need to remember that, save being a hypocrite). ;)
 
Thanks it's really good to get some feedback from you guys. As a beginner sometimes I'm questioning what I'm doing, but I did really enjoy taking the Cosford set and the results, was also my first shoot with the 10-22 which was great fun and really useful in the museum as everything was so close up and so big :-)
 
I'm a big fan of keeping photos as close to reality as possible, and personally prefer the mood of a photo (currently) which is why I'm mainly doing things in black and white at the moment.

There are fads that come and go, but if you stick towards a real looking image, you will most likely find that you wont look back and think "christ, what was I thinking?" :D

Essentially you just need to find a style that you like and that suits how you see things, then work on a processing style that benefits your images. Once you've done that, as long as you stick at it chances are you'll still be doing it years down the line.

You only need to look around at various forums that had so called photographers using gimmicky processing, etc, that have totally disappeared for one reason or another. As long as you're happy as a hobbyist then keep on doing it, and maybe if you fancy doing more at least you'll get the experience by concentrating on progressing to a level you're always going to be happy with :)
 
^^^ That is a god point about fads, fashions and styles.

If you heavily process an image now, then in the future you may strongly dislike that processing style, or other peoples opinions might have changed. More subtle and natural processing wont ever go out of fashion really.
 
Ha, no. I mainly do gig photography and find a black and white image holds the mood a lot better than colour. Obviously depending on the venue, as some stages are really cool, with well done lighting. In the main though, you'll find that small pub/club venues have overly harsh lighting that is just there as more of an attraction rather than creatively lit. In most gigs I've been to you've got a band, two walls and a window. There's only so much you can do with that scenario so I started looking for ways to find a processing style I liked. I've always preferred black and white, going back to the 70s when my dad used to be a photographer and it was cheaper to buy black and white film :D My aunt was an artist and I do have a style of colour photography I like, but I've rarely had the opportunity to use it based on what I do currently. My uncle is an architect and he used to have an awesome eye for composition with people, using the lines of structures around the image, which combined with how my dad processed things, is pretty much where I get the way I do things now. Strangely it took me the best part of 10 years to put it all together though. No idea why.
 
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