manipulated?

[sumit_dua]

I am shooting in raw format and now need to process images from a seven week

vacation.

 

How do most professional photographers process raw images (especially those that

are presenting it as photography and not as digital art)? I assume color

adjustment, saturation, brightness, contrast. What else? Can anyone recommend

a good source to learn raw image processing.

 

For those photographers who do not manipulate images, what is considered okay

during processing (from a purist point of view)? and When is an image considered

a manipulated image?

 

Would love to hear thoughts on this or if there is a consensus.

 

Thanks.

[photo_dark]

For a given set of images in similar lighting, I will edit a few in DPP (canon shooter here) and then take the best recipe and copy it to the rest of the photos in the same group. I then batch export them all to JPG (for personal) or 16 bit TIFF if more editing is required in photoshop.

[dangoldman]

same as David if working with a lot of images. If less than about 300images, i go through each one at a time over the course of a few days and edit each one. Saturation, contrast, brightness, curves, color tone, sharpness. Basically, it hit up everything if the photo needs it. The important thing to remember is that with any one of those functions, pushed too far, it is a manipulated image; saturation being the most easily abused function. The important thing to remember is that a RAW image is 100% flat by definition and will always need some form of 'adjustment'. Now, taking a light post out or someone's head, is obviously manipulation.

[keyofnight]

<p>I was thinking about this a lot the other day. It's pretty interesting too...</p>

<p>Honestly, once I started thinking about what is done in an actual darkroom, I relaxed

about it. Everything about the process makes the picture less pure. I'm not even sure what

a pure picture would be, but I know that editing a light post out of someone's head (like

Dan says) would not be it. At a photo lab, they calibrate the machines to fit the colors

we've decided for them to fit, and we figure out what we like to look at, or what fits our

ideals. Hell, a point-and-shoot camera does as much processing as a photolab does, but

the average joe doesn't know that raw images are essentially un-viewable (is that even a

word?) without processing.</p>

<p>I stick to editing as much as the point-and-shoot cameras do: I correct the levels, apply

a curve if needed, adjust the colors (white balance, etc), sharpen, and apply local contrast.

I manage all pictures with Aperture, and do the editing in Aperture or Photoshop. This

seems to work fine, and everything seems to flow well.</p>

<p>There are lots of communities around RAW editing programs like Aperture and

Lightroom. I would grab a copy of either of those programs and tinker with them. Both

have good documentation too, so push F1, import some pictures, and tinker around. If you

want to learn about the concepts behind what you're doing, you can check out <a

href="http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm">Cambridge in Colour</a>. I love

that site.</p>

<p>I hope this helps.<br/>Cheers!</p>

[iron shore gallery]

I agree with Dan... plus leveling, then cropping off the white.

[Norma Desmond]

It's interesting to think about purity. Many want it, for some strange reason, in

photography. Yet few of those same people would want it anywhere in the rest of their

lives. Purity can be awfully sterile sometimes.

[sumit_dua]

Thanks for the responses.

Timothy - thanks for the link. Completely agree with everything you said - I know i need to process raw images b/c the camera isn't doing it - this is what made me think about all this in the first place.

 

Fred - not really looking for purity personally (the photograph never looks like what the world is anyways - its how we want to see it for the moment), but just trying to see when I should claim that one of my photographs is somewhat real (whatever that means) and when I should say manipulated. For me it is more of a definitional thing - need to know what the words mean when others use it.

 

I did mess around with lightroom recently and now am interested in putting together a workstation to play with images. I was thinking lightroom + photoshop on a decent windows machine. Should I look at getting anything else? And any good sources to point towards workflow.

 

Thanks again.

[BrettPrucha]

Here is the <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/manipulation">definition of manipulation</a> with regards to the photo.net checkbox. It appears to have changed from the last time I read it which was a while ago. Before the definition stated that any technique that could be done in the dark room was considered unmanipulated. So dodging/burning was not considered manipulation. Apparently now it is...

<p>

It is really to each his own when it comes to deciding what they consider as a manipulated photo.

[valisk]

Is it presently possible to filter gallery searches by the unmanipulated tag?

I couldn't see a way to do so.