post processing is everything that happens to an image after you press the shutter. the post processing most everyone does: cropping, red eye removal, and maybe brightness and contrast. but that is only the very teeny tiny tip of the iceberg. every single picture that you’ve ever seen on this blog (that was taken by me) has had level adjustments, color balancing, and usually sharpening too. but even that is still the tip tip top of the iceberg. there are gaussian blurs, vibrancy controls, hue adjustments, saturation levels, color replacements, textures, exposure adjustments, chanel mixers, black and white conversions, photo filters, gradients, etc, etc, etc.
the reason i bring this up is because so many people ask me what kind of camera i use. i am more than happy to tell anyone that asks that i have a nikon d90. and i love my camera. love, love, love my camera. but i also love my photoshop. love, love, love it. and the images i post of this blog, or on facebook, or wherever are a product of the both of those combined. not just one and not just the other, but both.
some people post process a lot, and others, very little, but i’m somewhere in between. meaning every single image is adjusted to some degree. so when someone asks me what camera i have, i worry they think that’s all there is to it. that i click the button and out pops the pictures you see. it’s not quite that simple.
when photographing there are really only 3 things you must achieve in the camera: an image in focus, well exposed (not too bright, not too dark), and hopefully something well composed (although you have some cheating room with cropping during post work). also, having your white balance at least in the ball park of being correct would be very advantageous (okay, that was 4 things). but after you get all of that, you can play with the images in photoshop (or another editing program) to really make them great.
my nice, dslr camera makes nailing those four things much easier than using a point-and-shoot, but that doesn’t mean the point and shoot can’t take great pictures too. in fact, that skiing picture I posted earlier this week, was taken with a point and shoot and I think it looks great (photograph by michael’s mom with a little cannon powershot). it had all those four required things. then, I took it into photoshop and gave it just a little help to get it to my liking.
so here is the before:
(straight out of camera… aka “sooc”)
and here is the after:
or it could go more vintage-y:
or like this (i don’t know what to call it… maybe “noseless”):
not everything needs a lot of work. sometimes just a little jolt:
(sooc)
(after)
i know people don’t think about the processing work, but i can pretty much guarantee you that every photograph you have ever seen on a professional’s site or blog went through post processing. it is the same kind of process that used to go on in the darkroom and has now migrated to the computer.
sometimes photoshopping is just making something look the way you could have done it in camera but didn’t. like this:
(sooc)
(after)
this could have been achieved in camera if i had changed my settings to do so, but i did it in post processing instead.
however, sometimes the result is of its own breed. for example, this could not have been achieved in camera. it’s becoming less like a photograph and more like something else all together:
(sooc)
(after)
so what do you prefer?
images right out of the camera in all their natural goodness?
or images only slightly tweaked to give them some balance and boost?
or the in your face photoshop-artsy images?
or you couldn’t possibly care less and think this post was incredibly boring?
