Post production and photography

[kobafett]

I thought this might make an interesting discussion or at least give me something else to think about until Monday night.

Photo retouching or post production has been around probably as long as photography has but with the digital age it has become increasingly easier. The mysteries of the darkroom have been replaced with home computers and photoshop. Everyone is now able to adjust their photos in someway. A phrase I hear a lot while shooting with others is 'don't worry you can fix it in photoshop' and I know I have been guilty of thinking this too. Is this thinking causing us to 'fix' photos that probably should have been deleted instead of only selecting our very best? Are we processing the final image so far that we are losing the realism of the original photos? At some point does it become less like a photograph and more like a digital painting?

These questions seem to come up a lot in discussions with other photographers. Some feel that digital post production is ruining photography. I don't believe this. Like anything you always will get the good and bad. Many photographs are ruined from over processing but there are many photographers who are getting it right and producing amazing photographs that wouldn't have been possible without digital post production.

So what do you think?


Of course we can't have a thread about photography without some examples. So here are a couple I have done recently where I have done way more post production than I would usually.







Feel free to post your own photos that you feel have good post production or that you feel are better straight out of the camera. Maybe explain why you made the choice you did.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.
Ansel Adams

[Stranger]

Love the 2nd one.

[kobafett]

Since the thread is about post production its probably better if I show the before photos.

[JohnnyB]

I think this is an interesting question. My personal view is that post production should be embraced as part of the art form.

When I was younger I used to do a lot of painting, drawing and working with clay. At that time I always thought photography was really just borderline art, as it lacked an aspect of the artist creating an image that was all their own. I saw photography as basically being a process of capturing what is already out there in the world, and the only creative aspect about it was finding the way to capture the world at it's most beautiful or interesting. It struck me as more posing as art than being art.

Getting into photography really changed my perspective though. The more I learned about the processes involved in creating a photograph the more conscious I became of the fact that photography is an active form of manipulating light to create an image. Whether it's the type of film you want to use, adjusting aperture setting, degrees of saturation and white balance or the lens it's being filtered through, the process of taking a picture is not one of capturing reality so much as taking light and manipulating it by filtering it through various controls in order to produce something new and unlike the real world. That is the sense in which photography is a creative art.

Post production through digital manipulation seems like a wonderful extension of the artistic aspect of taking pictures. Once you accept that no photograph is true to reality and that manipulation is a natural component, using programs like photoshop to extend the artists range of creative tools is utterly appropriate. Of course a photographer may choose to present their image in a way that looks more true to life, but I see no reason why an artist should choose to limit their creative possibilities for the sake of a stigma.

[JohnnyB]

Although I can't find the original picture right now, here's an example of one of the most produced pictures I've made. The original was shot at a high shutter speed that made the image dark and unappealing. Without digital post production it would have been a throw away pic, but it's one of my favorite pics after digital manipulation. To me it would be a real loss not to have been able to make this image.

[SebC]

In my opinion, good post-production is where you can tell it's post-production (or that there's something "off" about the photo). I prefer photos that retain a natural look. Beyond that, you start moving away from photography and into another form of art. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not my preference.

[FurnaceFace]

It's a debate that's been circling for a number of years, however I don't see it as something which should be so controversial.

Photographers have traditionally altered their shots through the use of darkroom and film effects. You could superimpose, use a blind to mask out a bright light, use colour film and process as black and white, paint the image or negative, and a number of other effects. Were these considered inferior because of the heavy hand played in the darkroom? I don't think so.

Today we have simply replaced the darkroom with the computer. I've found it helpful to consider the shot out of the camera akin to a negative and processing it through an editor is the darkroom of today. Simple adjustments such as levels, colour adjustment, and cropping improve the original and often make it a closer match to what the photographer saw with the naked eye. I think most in the industry have no problem with this. Even the addition of elements such as the train and fog in your example above most would not have a serious issue with as you've heightened the mood of the image.

The only area in my view where digital editting should be critically looked at is photojournalism. These images are looked upon as "real" and as such adding or subtracting elements from the image for particular commentary, political or otherwise, should be discouraged.

I also believe all the post production in the world cannot save an image if the basics of photography are not followed. Nothing can save poor composition, the selection of poor subject matter, or an unbalanced image.

[Russic]

I'm a bit of a photoshop freak so I'm obviously going to bring a biased opinion that favors post production. Something Kobafett mentioned rings very true, and that is that the "I'll just fix it later in photoshop" attitude can be dangerous and time consuming. I'm going through the natural progression of really bad photographer to less bad photographer, and the "I'll fix it later " attitude I think is something people just need to go through sometimes to really learn the proper method. You can read about how bad of a habit it is all you want, but I think it's just a mistake you have to make to understand. Getting it right in the camera first can save hours or days.

I have an example. I just came back from a wedding in Hawaii. I don't like it when people encroach on the photographers personal space so I tried to stay out of the way as best I could. Many times the photographer would be clearly in the middle of one of my shots and I just thought that I'll remove her later. Today I'm going through hundreds of shots ... there are about 5 without the photographer in them and about 200 with her in there. I pretty much eliminated all 200 in one mousestroke because the 5 without her was great on their own.

The debate about digital post production seems silly to me. It seems like some people are getting increasingly annoyed that the methods are easier to perform than they used to be and it somehow makes the pros less elite. The fact is that while programs like photoshop, lightroom and aperture open up the realm of photo editing to everybody, poorly done photos still will never break through and become mainstream. This is just one of those situations where the cream will continue to rise to the top.

I will also take this opportunity to proclaim my love for Lightroom 2. I have been avoiding shooting in RAW for way too long and I never understood what Lightroom even was. Now that I'm shooting at a higher volume I'm finding that a program like this to be nothing less than essential to me. Like I said above, I just came back from a wedding and I found that I have multiple (and I'm talking multiple) shots of the exact same thing. Lightroom is so damn good at helping you compare collections of photos like that it's increased my productivity like crazy.






I know I went a little crazy on that one ... but I really wanted a kind of over-the-top Sports Illustrated kind of look to it.

[Cowperson]

You might remember Dean Bicknell of the Herald getting into a spot of trouble when he removed The Great Swinging Dick of a streaker at the Saddledome in what was an otherwise wonderful shot. The shot is at the link below:

http://imgs.sfgate.com/n/pictures/20.../streaker2.jpg

The truth couldn't be published but the truth could be removed . . . . . and, if I remember rightly, it caused a magnificant stir in the journalism community because the alteration was unannounced, meaning newspapers had unwittingly gone along with it.

Meanwhile, I'm not a photoshop expert at all. Barely know what all the buttons are for. But I have dabbled a little at turning photo's into paintings.

This was a badly underexposed shot, fairly useless most days of the week, that was turned into something useful, a watercolour of one of my dogs listening intently for mice on a snowy day.



A few months ago, I was asked to contribute something to a charity auction and offered up a matted and framed version of the image below, altered to look like a painting. I was rather surprised it fetched $200.



Just to see if that was a fluke, we had a different painting-altered picture in another charity event and it sold for north of $200.

So, right now, I've got nothing against altering pictures!!!

(The unvarnished original of the above)



Maybe someday I'll learn how to add and subtract things like Kobafett has done. And I've heard nothing but good things about Lightroom, and hope to add it with my next computer upgrade.

My knowledge of the tech side is pretty rudimentary . . . . . . so the original image better be in the ballpark because it might not be getting much help.

Cowperson

[Jayems]

Anyone mind sharing some good post production techniques? Specifically, to increase contrast/sharpness.

[BlackEleven]

Originally Posted by Jayems

Anyone mind sharing some good post production techniques? Specifically, to increase contrast/sharpness.

There are two methods that I generally use for sharpening.

The first is the unsharp mask on small details to make them stand out more. Like say jewelry on a woman, the numbers on a watch or something. It's quite easy to do, just zoom into the maximum and use the unsharp mask.

The other trick I use for sharpening a whole picture is to use a high pass filter. Copy the entire picture into a second layer (ctrl-J on windows). Then select a high pass filter from the filters menu. Adjust the slider so only the edges that you want to sharpen are shown (I usually use a value between 2 and 3). Then when that's done select overlay as the layer blending mode. I find this works quite well for a 30 second sharpening.

I'm no photoshop master though, some of the examples above are way better than what I can do. If anyone has any other tips, I'd love to hear them.

[kobafett]

BlackEleven, those are both good tips. When using high pass I'll sometimes use vivid light blending mode and then turn down the opacity until I get a level I like.

One of the easiest ways to add contrast is to use a curves adjustment layer and change the curve to what's called an S curve. With a proper S curve you can add contrast to the midranges of your photo without clipping the shadows and highlights.

Something I like to do is make a copy of my layer and than adjust the curve either making the copied layer darker or lighter depending on what I'm trying to do. I then use a layer mask to only paint in the adjusted layer in parts of the photo I want. I talked with Sebc about a technique similar to this with multiple exposures in the HDR thread.

I wanted to add that I'm also a big lightroom fan. I find I'm using it more and more for the simply adjustments and cropping. The best thing is that it's non-destructive so any edits I make in lightroom can be easily changed.

[shane_c]

I'm not a big fan of post production. I do a few small things like adjust the levels, curve, and unsharp mask but that is about it. In my opinion once you get into a lot of post production work it just seems like you're becoming more of a designer and less of a photographer. But that in itself is an art form.

[Jayems]

Here's a shot I took on Wednesday (Apr. 22) at a fire in Irricana. Thought I'd try some post-production to make it jump a little. Let me know what you think. Too much? Too Little? Most was just using RAW editor in Photoshop. IE: vibrancy, clarity, contrast etc.

[BlackEleven]

^ Nice work. It's a slight bit too contrast-y for my taste. Not too much mind, you, but I notice it in the really deep red of the firetruck on the right. I love the way it makes the firefighter stand out though. Overall, looks good.

[kobafett]

I can definitely see the improvement, much more pop to it now. I might bring the red levels down a little to remove some of the pink from the sky but thats just my personal taste.

[Russic]

You'll find a wealth of opinions on something like that. For instance I'm a big fan of contrast so I would leave it. BlackEleven would disagree but that's kind of the thing with art, nobody has the same opinions (thank god). I can get on board with kobafett about the sky colour though.

Great shot!

[FurnaceFace]

Found this article and thought of this thread.

Many news photographs are Photoshopped here and there to increase clarity or to optimize for print or online display. But there have been several instances with where retouching has been pushed too far, changing the original intent or accuracy of the photo.

http://www.10000words.net/2009/05/10...oshop-too.html

In many newsrooms it is unethical to pass off a retouched photo as reality. Ideally, retouching of a news photograph should be limited to basic exposure and color correction, cropping, resizing, or conversion to grayscale. Any Photoshopping that alters the meaning of the original photo should be labeled as a "news illustration" in the caption so the viewer understands the photo has been altered.

[St Loomis]

I am just starting to try post production stuff and am quite impressed by the results of the before and after shots on here. Anyways, I just got photoshop yesterday so I have a learning curve with the program (thankfully Adobe Illustrator has many similar tool bars so I'm not starting completely from scratch).

I assume for proper post production you have to shoot in RAW, correct? Is photoshop the only program worth using for a beginner? Do you generally take only one photo or multiples with different aperture settings?

Can anyone point to a good how to beginners guide for post production work?

[Jayems]

I've just started playing around with lightroom, and LOVE it. I'll post some stuff that doesn't go to print later. (which apparently I can't edit the hell out of thanks to ethics and all that mumbo jumbo)