Post Processing - How to Know When to Stop?

[suenewbie]

Wow! So glad I joined this forum - I've learned so much from just this one thread!

Thanks, again, everyone, for both the great advice/comments and for a great welcome to CiC.

[Manfred M]

I generally only post-process images that have "photographic merit". Some images get posted / used Straight Out Of the Camera (SOOC); there are some images (usually related to my job or things I post other websites (Facebook, etc) that fall into the "snapshot" category and do not get any more attention from me apart from resizing them for their intended purpose.

When it comes to "serious photography";I find that there are at least three distinct directions that I tend to take when post-processing an image:

1. Standard stuff - basic almost automatic work where almost all of my effort occurs during the RAW conversion process. For 90% of the images I probably spend no more than a minute or two at most working on them. Many of the images I have posted here on CiC fall into this grouping.

This would be a typical shot that falls into this category:




2. The "good stuff" - these are the images that I consider candidates for printing and mounting. These get a lot more attention because they will be displayed at a far larger size. I will get into significant dodging, burning, rebuilding weak parts of the image and other fine-tuning operations. I probably spend 10 or perhaps 15 minutes at most on one of these.

This image would fall into this second group:




3. Special Projects - Photocomposites, panoramic images, HDRI, photo restoration and other post-processing work that can take an hour to several hours to finish up. I probably spend three or four hours over several days on this one:

[suenewbie]

I generally only post-process images that have "photographic merit". Some images get posted / used Straight Out Of the Camera (SOOC); there are some images (usually related to my job or things I post other websites (Facebook, etc) that fall into the "snapshot" category and do not get any more attention from me apart from resizing them for their intended purpose.

When it comes to "serious photography";I find that there are at least three distinct directions that I tend to take when post-processing an image:

Your work is beautiful - thanks for the inspiration! And this all makes perfect sense and may come into play someday if I ever progress beyond the "hobby" stage to something more serious. However, at my current stage, probably none of my photos even approach "photographic merit," much less falling into any "serious photography" category.

And believe me, nothing is "automatic" at the moment.

Right now, photography is just something I love doing and have goals to get better via practice and study (and the great input from photographers on this forum!).

I promise, if after lots of study and practice I find I have any real talent (certainly not obvious at the moment), I'll start to categorize my photos in a similar manner.

[Richard Lundberg]

Sue, I think you have the "good eye" and that bird can be improved with focus tools to be ok. Just keep in mind depth of field (DOF) when shooting closeups. Aperture priority is is good for opportunistic shots. When light is adequate go for higher f numbers to improve DOF.
There's post processing and there's tweaking. If a shot is bad sometimes it can be saved by PP. If a shot is good it can be great with tweaks. If your camera takes good jpgs ordinarily,they can still be tweaked in a raw processor.
When I first got Photoshop 18 years ago, I had a picture of myself sitting in my field office under fluorescent light taken with daylight film, you can imagine what it looked like. PS fixed it with one click. This was an epiphany. Now I have about eighty imaging editor apps.
I learn and relearn every day. I'm currently struggling with documenting my purchased art work in situ. This is much more difficult than you would at first think, almost entirely lighting.
Because my equipment is nearly obsolete, I had a struggle with choosing the right app. I won't go into detail on that, but I have settled on Photoshop PSCS 5, ACDSee Pro 3 (cheap), PhotoLine(cheap), and PS Elements 11 ( inexpensive), all Mac. I open RAW in Pro Photo 16 bit. My monitor is calibrated to 1.8 gamma correction at 9300 K and covers the sRGB gamut. My work environment fairly dark with north light. My printer is an Epson six ink and my paper is Epson Presentation Matte. I print from Photoshop with "Photoshop manages colors" set, and the image is in Pro Photo at print time. I like what I am getting out of this.
My goal is to acquire a wide gamut monitor this year just for drill. I will probably move up in class to a Nikon 24 mp with a kit lens this year also if it goes under 400 USD. Colin has ordered me to.

[mknittle]

Lots of great advice here. Gotta love this board!

[Richard Lundberg]

The Op posted a jpg which when saved to my desktop was about 750 pixels wide from a 24 mp camera. I suppose that's because of upload file size restriction. Anyway if I can upload , here is the same 1st version with Focus Magic blur width 1. You will see that it is better focussed than the second sharpened version. You'll have to click on it, I haven't mastered the art of posting full size , because Upload doesn't do anything and I had to use Advanced, which I'm obviously not. I think Focus Magic would have done much better on the full image.

[RustBeltRaw]

How heavy-handed one should be on post-processing is an endless debate. The short version, as I see it, is that it depends mainly on what you want from the image, and the audience. For instance, I will be much, much more careful about my post work on a woman's portrait, because I don't want to turn her into a plasticky Stepford Wife. That's already too common. Note that I do less than what's considered "normal" for the portrait industry. Mainly because I have an ax to grind vis-a-vis the psychological and societal effects of some of that work. Both of the shots below meet my ethical guidelines, but contain vastly different levels of post work. Both were taken the same night, with different camera and light configurations.

Stephanie. Detroit Fire Collective poi and wand flow artist. Shot with a 160mm equivalent lens on a Canon 60D for natural perspective. Color and lens profile corrections, burned forehead, saturated hair highlights, selective eye sharpening and local contrast enhancement, selective hair sharpening, cloned out some stray hairs. No skin smoothing, no cloning on face, no Liquify-type edits, no local resizing.



On the flipside, I believe heavy post-processing can be very helpful in creating or enhancing a mood. In that vein, heavy, obvious post work is on stronger ethical footing than subtle edits. At least in my mind.

Charlie Ear. Detroit-based stage personality, MC, and professional crazy person. Shot with a 26mm equivalent lens on a Canon 1D mkIII for exaggerated, in-your-face perspective. Color correction, added barrel distortion, adjusted curves, adjusted contrast, selective desaturation, global sharpening, dodging and burning on face, 35% opaque NIK Analog Efex layer over raw-processed photo, 30% opaque strongly tone-mapped black-and-white layer over that.



Very different subjects and processing levels, but they both meet the most important set of rules. Mine. Yours will evolve. Look at a bunch of other people's work, see what you like and what bothers you, then try some of the bothersome stuff anyway. Give it time.

[Manfred M]

Nice shots Lex, and they both work really well. It really brings out the quirkiness of both subjects. I like the way you handled the hair in the first shot with that "firey" look and I do like the wide angle approach in the second.

Fashion shots, they are not...

[RustBeltRaw]

Fashion shots, they are not...

Mission accomplished.

Thanks, Manfred. Advanced critique is always welcome.

[suenewbie]

Lex, Ha! Most of the PP you describe is way over my head at this point!

But I am comforted by your advice (echoed by others in this thread) to look at others' work, play with PP, learn what I like and don't like, and eventually develop my own style based on what I want to convey to my audience and what I like.

With regard to the ethics and psychological and societal effects of PP in portraits aimed at creating "perfect" beauty, I fortunately don't have to worry about that now. I'm primarily interested in nature photography. However, on another forum, I got somewhat related input that seemed to imply nature photography should always reflect reality exactly "as it was." I understand that perspective, but don't always agree with it. I'm not photographing birds to go into an Audubon book. I already know what a heron or pelican or cardinal look like. I am sometimes more interested in what the photo makes me feel than whether it is an exact representation of reality. In those cases, I've pumped up color, cropped, or made other changes to help the photo evoke the feeling I want. Of course, in other cases, the PP is just to correct my budding and inadequate photography skills!

Below is one of the shots that some thought was too enhanced in PP. I'm not defending the photographic quality (since I simply can't!) but even a couple of months after taking and processing this one, I like the feeling it gives me of a bright red bird who is convinced he's successfully hiding, but how can a bright red bird actually hide?


Cardinal in Palm Cropped by smolnar18, on Flickr

[Colin Southern]

I will probably move up in class to a Nikon 24 mp with a kit lens this year also if it goes under 400 USD. Colin has ordered me to.

They always thank me for it eventually, although sometimes it takes a while

[Richard Lundberg]

Maybe it's Flickr, I have never used it, but no part of that image is focussed. Focus Magic would cure that in one click. I agree with your appreciation of theme mood and content and wish it was in focus.

[suenewbie]

Maybe it's Flickr, I have never used it, but no part of that image is focussed. Focus Magic would cure that in one click. I agree with your appreciation of theme mood and content and wish it was in focus.

Ha ha - I'd love to attribute the problems to Flickr but, alas, the poor focus (and everything else wrong, photographically, with the shot) must be attributed to me. As I said, I can't defend the photographic quality, and was only using that photo as an example where I had pumped up the color and drastically cropped it to achieve the feeling I wanted it to portray.

[Richard Lundberg]

I couldn't stand it, and I wanted to try uploading an image again, so here goes with a quick fix Focus Magic blur width of 4 which captures the bird's head well. Focus Magic allows moving a selection around.

[suenewbie]

Richard,
Wow! I'm sold! I'm definitely going to get Focus Magic. While I know the goal is to get (much!) better at focusing my camera, Focus Magic looks like it'll help save or at least improve some of the images that fall short of that goal.

Thanks for the great example!

[Colin Southern]

Richard,
Wow! I'm sold! I'm definitely going to get Focus Magic. While I know the goal is to get (much!) better at focusing my camera, Focus Magic looks like it'll help save or at least improve some of the images that fall short of that goal.

Thanks for the great example!

To be brutally honest Sue, I'd invest the time in getting your focus right in the first place; it's not hard - is a lot cheaper - and you'll get much better results.

[Richard Lundberg]

Disclaimer-- I don't have any affiliation with Focus Magic. I've used it for as long as it's been released, though, and it does exactly what you say. It's a plugin and fairly cheap, available for Win/Mac. You might want to try using PhotoLine (free) and FM will be a plugin to that. Of course it plugs in to Photoshop, and any other image processor that accepts standard 8bf format.

[Adrian]

Sue

Part of the trick with photography is to get your camera technique perfect. Focus is about: being very clear what your subject is and making sure that the camera hits that spot (eg eye of the bird); getting the composition right so that you crop as little as possible (as cropping throws away data) and makes detail look worse); holding the camera properly, as weak technique is a big factor in creating slight blur; getting the settings right as if on autopilot (DOF choice, correct ISO to support your aperture and shutter speed choices); and always shoot in RAW (so that you, not the camera, decides what data is discarded).

Two things will help: a couple of days with a good tutor (well worth the investment) and plenty of practice.

I had to go back to the drawing board with my photography and work harder to get the images right at the outset. PP is pretty easy if you are working with good material in the first place. So first things first.

It is, incidentally, an excellent approach you have adopted by 1) joining here and 2) posting your work up.

My thought on your images is that you are not yet clear what you are really focussing on and you are not quite controlling depth of field yet. Be super critical of your own compositions and if possible don't rely too much on cropping to get a zoom effect. I know this is hard without expensive lenses, but even with expensive glass, good technique is crucial.

And welcome!

[FrankMi]

Sue, if you think about it, sharpening is something that has to start in the camera and although there is a place for Capture Sharpening, Creative Sharpening, and Output Sharpening in the post processing process, they all depend upon having a sharp original. You can't effectively change a blurred image into a sharp one no matter what you use.

You may find this e-book useful in learning how to get the most effective sharp images out of your camera.

http://www.flatbooks.com/tack-sharp-...-nailing-focus

hope this helps!

[chauncey]

Getting "tack sharp images" does not require genius, merely learning how it's done...check out YouTube, that all encompassing bastion of education...http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...rp+images&sm=1