Post-processing to perfection?

[mikemorrellNL]

FWIW, I didn't suddenly dream up this thread. It's based on a recent PN thread.T

This thread is not about professional photographers and/or 'post-processors' who shoot and/or post-process photos and video shoots for whatever commericail reasons.

 I hope to share more on whether and how we - as amateurs - post-process photos (or not) . If you use post-processing tools, I'm not so much interested in which ones as in why. If you don't use post-processing tools, I'm interested in 'why not'.

Above all, I'm interested in the 'level of perfection' you strive for in your photography and how (perhaps) post-processing helps you in this.

[Niels - NHSN]

I try to find a setup on my digital camera as close to my preferences so I can make do with the Jpeg and can avoid wasting time in front of a computer screen messing with the raw file.

imperfection is increasingly a quality in an AI world.

[samstevens]

I post process to get the photo I want. Rarely do I think about "perfection", except as a negative. To me, "pure" is a cousin to perfection, and I'm not much interested in purity either (except when I buy Ivory soap at 99-44/100th percent)!

My introduction to post processing came with my introduction to taking photos, so I see it as part of the process. I don't see it as a corrective or an add-on. Sometimes I know in advance a photo I take will need lots of post to get the result I have in mind, sometimes I'm led to post process once I review the photo after taking it, and some photos seem to want very little post processing. Someone key to my photo development talked about post processing like a painter's brush strokes. Refinement, nuance, expression. That doesn't mean my photos try to imitate painting; they generally don't. It's just the sensibility that I apply to the medium I've chosen and I'm happy and inspired, with certain photos, to spend hours to nuance and refine the image as I want. 

[mikemorrellNL]

Just to kick off the conversion, I'm very much a 'light' post-processor. If needed, I digitally adjust exposure, shadows, highlights, clarity, and vibrance, etc. in Lightroom. For 95% of my photos. For some 9low-light (high ISO)) photos I use a 'de-noise' Photoshop plugin. For photos where the subject is not completely in focus, I apply a 'sharpening' plugin

I should add that I post-process and resize photos for 2 other (voluntary) photographer. I just have better tools (and more experience) than they do.

But to get back to the topic of this thread, my belief is that any photo (with or without post-processing) just has to be 'good enough' (to the photographer and viewers) without necessarily being 'perfect'. especiaaly through post-processing.

 

Opinions?

[Leslie Reid]

Post-processing has always been a fundamental part of my photography, starting with dodging and burning in my Dad's home darkroom. What the brain sees and what the camera sees are two different things, and I post-process to make the second align more with the first.

I also work in watercolor and pen-and-ink, so in a few cases what my brain sees might incorporate a bit more of the potential of a scene, and post helps me bring that potential to life.

In both of these cases, I have no idea what “perfection” is, so it simply doesn’t enter into the picture. So to speak.

I’ve also done a lot of photography in support of various research projects, and in this context I use post to ensure that the illustrations accurately and clearly convey the information needed. In this case, I’d equate “perfection” with “accuracy,” and I do indeed strive for it.

Then there’s the issue that post-processing is so dang fun—that’s the joy of the Post Processing Challenge threads, where any kind of experimentation is fair game. I’ll happily work for hours to set up a photographic fender-bender between an orbiting Tesla and an orbiting Uruguayan pick-up truck, for example. I’m not aiming for perfection, since here, too, I don’t know what it would look like. The most I can hope for is something that looks right to me. Even if it's really, really wrong.

[samstevens]

5 minutes ago, Leslie Reid said:

The most I can hope for is something that looks right to me. Even if it's really, really wrong.

Love your post. Building on this, some of my favorite photos (both of my own and others) are ones that actually looked wrong to me at first, sometimes because they were something new or contrary to molds I had in my mind. Once I let go of my preconceptions, though, they no longer seemed wrong. Some, honestly, still look wrong. But they're wrong-looking in a compelling and intriguing enough way, that I accept their wrongness. Right is so late seventeenth century! 😊

[PapaTango]

I have concluded for me, JPG is a nice alternate for "stuff", but not for things that "I See."

As Leslie wrote, many images are more in my mind--and how I think about them in a print.  This does not mean that there will ever be a print.

If my BIL wants the big family gathering photos, I am happy to batch them as JPG.

Otherwise, I am shooting RAW/RAF to the card.

If I was in a hurry for anything, photography would not be my pursuit...  🤔

If I had a dollar for every 'meh' photo was found to be a gem a year or so down the line, maybe I could actually afford a full tank of gas.

Edited August 16, 2023 by PapaTango

[ericphelps]

When I started out in the darkroom a few years ago after several absent decades, the goal was to 'ever' produce ONE B&W print that came close to those heroes of the thirties - forties, wasn't gonna happen.

Then I picked up a Fuji X100F, got on Lightroom and paced for an hour after working the sliders first time, wondering how did they do this?? It was possible with just some very minor tweaking to get, as Leslie said, just what I saw, or wanted to see.

It still feels a bit like cheating.......Sam Abell says that any amount of editing makes one an editor not a photographer, perhaps yes, but it's fun to play not admire.

[za33photo]

I do not shoot RAW files and do not do any post-processing  , although I will sometimes (very occasionally) do a bit of "sharpening" using Irfanview , but nothing else , I try to use "straight out of the camera" JPEG files when using digital cameras.

The same thinking applies when I am using Film , scanning the Negative as a JPEG without any post processing at all.

If a picture looks good to me , fine , and if it does not look so good to me , so what!.

Agonizing over the quality of a picture is counter-productive and a waste of time in my opinion.

Photography is our hobby so don't sweat the small stuff.

If you have to earn money with your camera different criteria will apply.

 

 

 

[samstevens]

1 hour ago, za33photo said:

Photography is our hobby so don't sweat the small stuff.

There are many non-professional photographers who consider photography something other than a hobby, though hobbies are great and I admire people who enjoy them, as I do. Many non-professional photographers consider photography an art, as I do, and I think of art in terms of finesse, quality, and personal expressiveness, among other things. Other photographers could speak to what they consider photography to be for themselves. Care for quality, detail, refinement is not necessarily *agonizing* over it. Though Michelangelo might accept the description readily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Agony_and_the_Ecstasy_(novel)

Edited August 16, 2023 by samstevens

[PapaTango]

These last three posts resonate--but at different order harmonics!

The 'tail end' of my wet darkroom life found its pinnacle in 2007 with the creation of my "dream darkroom" in 2004.  Here is a curious capture of time and what happened (as headlines now proclaim), and the factors that led to its being:

https://ae1pt.com/newdark/index.htm

What I did matter in very controlled outcomes.  Has anyone printed and then overlain a tissue paper and sketched out burns, dodges, and handwarming in development?  And then refined a second or third time?  🤪

Check out this article:

https://fotofora.net/ams/magnum-and-the-dying-art-of-darkroom-printing.33/"]Magnum and the Dying Art of Darkroom Printing

Now I can do things unimaginable in the fullness of wet chemistry.  Multiple versions?  No problem, just another PSD layer.

'Straight' workflow has its strengths, and folk who enjoy that practice.  Digital workflow can lead to better expression of intent.  Both have a place...

Edited August 16, 2023 by PapaTango

[AJG]

For commercial work I do as much as I need to so that clients are happy.  This usually isn't too much since most of my commercial work happens in my studio and I have control over lighting, etc., and I come from a background of shooting large format transparency film which is far less forgiving than any digital camera that I have used.  I don't shoot a lot of digital for personal work since I prefer film cameras for that, but when I do I still shoot raw since I'm used to doing that and I want to have as much quality available as possible if I'm really happy with something. I agree with PapaTango that Photoshop makes possible things that were impossible in a wet darkroom, but I still prefer the look of a B&W silver print to most of the inkjet prints that I see.  This is my personal prejudice, I know, and others will certainly feel differently.

[rconey]

I print up to 13x19, although could print larger per my pixel count. This weekend I was in a river canyon in the morning, so high contrast. I did not want to blow out the blue sky, but wanted the shadows to have detail (but be shadows).  It is just within the dynamic range of the camera, but it takes some work to develop it, and keep it looking natural (as I saw it). It does not usually take more than a few minutes per image, and after I get the scene under control I can batch some of it. Plus I bracket a scene so have to pick out the one that is framed best. I don't think I could set up the camera to capture these so that they are "correct" without manipulation. And it is fun. Do I sometimes get an image that is correct without manipulation, sure. But not often.

[rconey]

An example.Earlier in the morning it was harder because the sun was less direct. By noon the sun was straight overhead and it was easy- might have gotten shots without processing.

[paddler4]

21 hours ago, samstevens said:

My introduction to post processing came with my introduction to taking photos, so I see it as part of the process. I don't see it as a corrective or an add-on. Sometimes I know in advance a photo I take will need lots of post to get the result I have in mind, sometimes I'm led to post process once I review the photo after taking it, and some photos seem to want very little post processing. Someone key to my photo development talked about post processing like a painter's brush strokes. Refinement, nuance, expression. That doesn't mean my photos try to imitate painting; they generally don't. It's just the sensibility that I apply to the medium I've chosen and I'm happy and inspired, with certain photos, to spend hours to nuance and refine the image as I want. 

I couldn't agree more. The first sentence is the key. Asking people whether they postprocess their images is the wrong question. ALL digital photos are postprocessed. The question is: "do you postprocess yourself, or do you leave it to a recipe the camera manufacturer's programmers devised?" Those recipes--the camera's styles for creating a JPEG from the capture--are often good enough for many people. I rarely even look at them. I want control over the image I create, so I virtually always shoot only raw. Sometimes an image doesn't need much work; the software's initial rendering is pretty close. Often it isn't remotely close. It's all a matter of the conditions under which the image was captured and the photographer's intent.

Some people will respond to your question by saying "I try to get it in camera as close as possible to what I want." I do as well. That's an entirely different question. The capture is the raw material, and you want the best material you can create. Then you have to put that raw material to work, and that's postprocessing.

[SCL]

After initial frustration with digital output, I accepted that manual post processing was going to be part of the workflow for keeper shots. These days it is mostly a little cropping, resizing if it is going on the web, basic color correction/contrast, all with GIMP, and perhaps some touch up sharpening with Topaz AI. That's about it. Once in a while I need to do some perspective control, but not very often. I periodically have 3x4 ft. prints made, and they take a little more time time and a finer touch than my everyday stuff. Since I still often use film, of course it has to be digitized...just another step in post processing.

[Robin Smith]

I always post process quite carefully. In color, I don't strive for perfection, because I don't know what that means. My guiding principle is that the image should look natural - also a hazy concept. I don't replace skies, nor do I generally clone out things unless they really annoy me, and not many things annoy me. If they did, I would probably not take the shot. If I spend more than, say 15-30 min on a shot then I usually know I won't like it in the end and I'll end up deleting it. Too much time PPing means it's no good anyway. As editing tools improve there is an incentive to use them. This is a slight problem, because it will mean everyone's photos may end up looking the same. However, the same issue existed with film. Unprocessed RAW files are generally no good at all as photographs so processing is required to make them even half decent. The most important thing is to have an idea of what you want or like, and some idea of how light falls and what is possible. This is just my view. Many people look for other things in their images: more surrealistic, extraordinary, "creative" expressions. Generally I am too hidebound to do this, but there are exceptions. It is easy to vanish down a rabbit hole of wild and wacky effects, which to me usually get old very quickly.

Obviously the concept of "natural" and black and white is impossible, so my approach is different and I go for what looks good to me, but I still will not spend more than the 15-30 min, on any shot.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Robin Smith

[David_Cavan]

20 hours ago, samstevens said:

Many non-professional photographers consider photography an art, as I do

The more time spent around photography the more I agree with this statement. Photography is a personal thing, and whatever works for an individual is fine with me. I do a lot of post-processing, and enjoy it. The goal for me is based on the notion that the image looks as I remember the occasion to have been. And, if that's not "good enough", whatever that means, I will change parts of the image to be how I wish it had looked. There's a phrase we used back when I worked on large IT projects, "perfection is the enemy of good enough". Photography is my opportunity to decide what is good enough, and stop there. Maybe. 

Since I quite real work, and went full-time with photography I've found that the images that sell best are those I like the most - there's something about getting a result to the place I'm happy with that seems to stand out for others. 

[paddler4]

3 hours ago, David_Cavan said:

Since I quite real work, and went full-time with photography I've found that the images that sell best are those I like the most - there's something about getting a result to the place I'm happy with that seems to stand out for others. 

Sigh. I wish I had your experience. A few years ago, a gallery owner decided to show some of my images. She was very excited about them and even placed a huge poster of one of my prints outside the front door. 18 months later, she told me that because of meager sales, she wasn't going to drop me. When I came by to pick up my remaining prints (most of them, to be fair to her), she said she picks artists based on what she likes, but sometimes that doesn't align well with her customer base. Ce la vie.

But I'm retired and don't have to sell photos, so I postprocess to get images to look the way I want.

[samstevens]

Also, there's a tendency among some to think of post processing as the over saturation and over-the-top awfulness that seems to stand out these days when browsing through photos on the web. Now, I fully believe there's a place for over-the-top, when it's done with intention and some degree of skill and mastery. 

David LaChapelle comes to mind.

But, more often a lot of stuff that's overcooked just looks kitschy or silly or of a grade school caliber.

What many people have mentioned in this thread, though, is post processing to get a natural look. That often means spending time finessing the tools that are as likely to create unsightly artifacts as not. There's a refinement that takes place when one wants to post process yet still have it appear natural or at least more photographic than computer-graphic or bad. Ironically, or contradictorily, it can take a lot of post processing work to get something to look like it wasn't post processed, if that's the desired end.

[Ricochetrider]

Coming from a background of knowing nothing about photography, I began to get more involved with it because a handful of well meaning friends kept telling me I had an “eye” for composition. I upgraded my cameras over time, getting better ones until I finally ended up with a mirrorless with interchangeable lenses. After being more or less shamed by a friend for still shooting in auto mode, I decided to teach myself the craft of manually operating cameras. So I bought a couple film cameras and took off. 
 

So my bottom line is, and by now it’s become something of (admittedly) a cop out- I do very little post work. I honestly don’t know how. I might auto enhance light, sometimes color, levels, and curves in my Mac native software…. But that’s the limit. 
 

Mostly, my film photos arrive in the form of scans. I assume some minor work happens at the lab? My digital cameras are all set to shoot RAW, my theory, right or wrong, being to get as much info as possible into every file.
 

Usually I’m happy with the look of whatever film I’m shooting. My RAW digital photos also seem to need very little. So my entire photographic world is super simple. I intend to learn more about both film and digital photography and would dearly love to learn how to create prints. Our local community college has a whole set of courses designed for people who wish to make a career out of photography- and they begin with B&W film shooting, darkroom/lab work & printing, before moving into the modern digital realm. And they have I think a 2 tier course in Photoshop & Lightroom. By now I don’t really see a need for a full degree in photograohy- but I could cherry pick my courses and get a Certificate. All of that will require much more time than I can dedicate right now, but I have no doubt that doing all this will improve my photography overall- at some point in the next year or two, when I can afford to dedicate the time, I’ll sign up for these courses. 
 

 

[samstevens]

2 minutes ago, Ricochetrider said:

By now I don’t really see a need for a full degree in photograohy

Definitely not. However a course in spelling might not hurt. 🤣🤣🤣

Seriously, though, you do very nicely by eye and without much post. If you do ... develop ... some post skills, it will be nice to follow your progression.

[Ricochetrider]

Thanks Sam

i feel like I’m not only missing out, but I sometimes feel like I’m cheating in calling myself a photographer- knowing so little about the whole process 

[AJG]

18 hours ago, Ricochetrider said:

Thanks Sam

i feel like I’m not only missing out, but I sometimes feel like I’m cheating in calling myself a photographer- knowing so little about the whole process 

Don't worry--nobody's going to call the art police!  Photography is still an unlicensed profession, and when it comes to post processing less is frequently more in terms of aesthetic value.

[Ricochetrider]

25 minutes ago, AJG said:

Don't worry--nobody's going to call the art police!  Photography is still an unlicensed profession, and when it comes to post processing less is frequently more in terms of aesthetic value.

Whew! Bullet, dodged. 👍🏼

The reality is I actually feel pretty darn good about what I’m doing, and how far I’ve come with my photography. I try not to take myself too seriously, but my interest is strong enough to drive my desire to learn more & more about the craft.

At 66, I’m harboring no illusions about a career or even a job but that doesn’t stop me from aspiring to excellence. And excellence doesn’t come without some investment on my part.