Edit or not to Edit

[xpatUSA]

I was told to download an editing programme which I did and watched a few tutorials. My dilemma is do I want to take photos or produce pictures. Would like to know if someone else has the same thoughts as me.

Similar thoughts but, with me, there are always less simple considerations:

Your dilemma is expressed in the form of an 'exclusive or' i.e. black or white and no grays, dammit.

In my world, the degree of post-production is highly dependent upon the quality of the capture, and equally upon the viewing output intended for the image. Only rarely do I get a shot that needs no processing at all.

With my cameras, the raw converter does not even have a cropping facility. So, if I perchance shot a rare sea-monster off Holyhead at 50mm (max FL for my kit zoom), surely some cropping would be necessary? Further, suppose that shot was taken hastily in the evening but accidentally with "overcast" white balance set, would it not be nice to correct the color balance in "post" (post-production, as it were)?

Then, some shots lend themselves to black and white (or grayscale or tinted or monochrome i.e. sepia) if you're into that. Shots like that, which may look OK in color tend to need quite a bit of processing to get that B&W quality.

I would say that there are very few here who go out and snap away thinking that it can all be fixed in post-processing and vice versa there are many here who, like yourself, would prefer to get it right straight out of the camera. Haven't managed that very often, myself. Even el famoso Ansell Adams is said to have spent a fair bit of time in darkroom messing with this and that

[Donald]

What a lot of baloney ... I rarely shoot raw and I edit every photo I take ... what the 'tech' choose is simply the starting point. But then in my distant working life mostly I was an editor, so perhaps I am biased

Of course you can further process a JPEG to your heart's content. I think the important point is that given significant processing has already taken place and a lot of the data discarded, all within the camera, the material you have to work with is severely limited when compared to working with a RAW file.

[Manfred M]

Of course you can further process a JPEG to your heart's content. I think the important point is that given significant processing has already taken place and a lot of the data discarded, all within the camera, the material you have to work with is severely limited when compared to working with a RAW file.

100% correct. In theory.

Like John, I find that in practice I end up with excellent results with edited jpegs. Many of the images I post here are edited jpegs. The only time I find that I do find that there is a noticeable problem is when the image needs significant amounts of correction, as an example a badly overexposed image or an image where I am pushing the sky (this is the only time I've run into colour blocking).

[Manfred M]

Of course you can further process a JPEG to your heart's content. I think the important point is that given significant processing has already taken place and a lot of the data discarded, all within the camera, the material you have to work with is severely limited when compared to working with a RAW file.

100% correct. In theory.

Like John, I find that in practice I end up with excellent results with edited jpegs. Many of the images I post here are edited jpegs. The only time I find that I do find that there is a noticeable problem is when the image needs significant amounts of correction, as an example a badly overexposed image or an image where I am pushing the sky (this is the only time I've run into colour blocking).

[Rider in the Sky]

I was told to download an editing programme which I did and watched a few tutorials. My dilemma is do I want to take photos or produce pictures. Would like to know if someone else has the same thoughts as me.

Hi Awstin, I guess the general consensus is " it depends on what you want............................"
For me, I just love to take pictures. Editing? depends if I'm in the mood. hehehe.....

Just have fun and enjoy Awstin

[jcuknz]

Years ago when I was starting out with this wonderful world of digital [ only just over a decade actually ] I read a comment that the difference between jpg FINE and tiff is that the jpg FINE has culled the info that is not really needed.
Then when I explored raw originally it appeared to me to be a complicated process with no finite end and like tiff I ignored it and today see no point in using it because it has, and the arguments people advance for its use, no relevance to the subjects I take. Since I am colour deficient it just needs to look 'nice and acceptable' to a CD person that's me, and I am interested in what firstly the image tells us.
As a learner using B&W I was indoctrinated to aim for the highest standards, but experience has taught me that the message is the important aspect in photography and that the small differences that raw would enable are not worth the effort.
To Awstin I would suggest that if he is lucky enough not to be CD then he could well use raw, I assume GIMP can handle it, if he is capable estimating the fine differences it enables. But it is just one of numerous silver bullets needed at different times for great photos.
At lunch time today I caught the start of a radio programme on colour and the comment that males are twenty times more likely to be CD than females.

[rachel]

Since I am colour deficient it just needs to look 'nice and acceptable' to a CD person that's me, and I am interested in what firstly the image tells us.
As a learner using B&W I was indoctrinated to aim for the highest standards, but experience has taught me that the message is the important aspect in photography

+1 to this.

[Black Pearl]

What a lot of baloney ... I rarely shoot raw and I edit every photo I take ... what the 'tech' choose is simply the starting point. But then in my distant working life mostly I was an editor, so perhaps I am biased

I shoot both and edit both - but - I do so for a reason and the reason is important.

If I use my DSLR then its set to raw - I can't think of a single reason not to as it offers the most flexibility with no downsides.

If I use my iPhone then I get either a JPEG or sometimes a TIFF - because the apps I use don't have an option for raw output.

There is nothing inherently wrong in choosing jpeg over raw but if you tend to edit your shots then starting with a raw file gives you more data to work with and that data is less compromised. I use Lightroom and it doesn't really make any difference whether I feed it a jpeg, tiff or raw file I get pretty much exactly the same tools which on the surface operate in the same way. It is under the hood that matters and the end result from feeding a raw file into the software will be of higher overall quality than the results when starting with a jpeg. Admittedly the differences may be minimal at times but they are there so if you have the choice it makes sense to start with the best data you can.

[Irene M]

I too got editing sofrware mainly to sharpen raw files but struggling to get to grips with it. I would love a set of simple must do to raw files instruction sheet for Photoshop elements.
To be honest I try to get it pretty much right in camera

[Mike Buckley]

I haven't taken the time to read any posts in the thread but want to respond.

My dilemma is do I want to take photos or produce pictures.

I don't see that as a dilemma; instead, it's simply a choice. As with all choices, it's best to make informed decisions.

The choice we make about that mostly depends on how we want to spend our time. Secondarily, it depends on whether only taking pictures (without post-processing them) meets our needs.

Almost all photographers choose only to take pictures, but that fact should have no influence on the choice each of us makes.

[Manfred M]

I too got editing sofrware mainly to sharpen raw files but struggling to get to grips with it. I would love a set of simple must do to raw files instruction sheet for Photoshop elements.
To be honest I try to get it pretty much right in camera

I wish it were that easy. If you ever read Jeff Schewe's highly regarded book "The Digital Negative" or Jeff Schewe and Bruce Frazer's "Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom", you will quickly understand that this is not possible. Remember you have to view your image at 100% magnification to sharpen and once you start doing that the whole process becomes much more self evident.

Sharpening is (unfortunately) not a one-step process. The image needs to be sharpened before you start any serious work on it in order to overcome the limitations of the digital capture process specific to your camera; most notably the impact of the camera's anti-aliasing filter.

There may (will?) be parts of the image that require additional, local sharpening (in-process sharpening). This step is often ignored by many people who do sharpening, especially for images that will displayed on a computer screen

The final step of sharpening occurs once the image is ready for output and has been resized. The upsampling or downsampling operations impact image sharpeness and some tweaking will usually be required. If the image you are editing is already at output size, this step is not necessary. If I print on 17" x 22" paper, the native output from my camera is so close I can get away without this step.

If you have a series of shots that were taken in the same place and under the same conditions, a batch import sharpening process usually works.

[DanK]

I too got editing sofrware mainly to sharpen raw files but struggling to get to grips with it. I would love a set of simple must do to raw files instruction sheet for Photoshop elements.
To be honest I try to get it pretty much right in camera

I think this misses the main point. If there were a simple menu of must-do things that are independent of the particular capture and the particular effect you want, there would be no reason for editing software. You could simply bake these into the camera's firmware so that they are done in creating the jpeg. The reason for editing is to take control, to respond to the specifics of the capture, and to make the image look more like what you want. In other words, IMHO, the main reason to do the processing yourself is to avoid a fixed recipe.

Unfortunately, it takes a fair amount of work--at least, it took me a fair amount of work--to get the point where I could say, 'I want effect X, so I need to do Y with tool Z.'

Re getting it right in camera: I think this term often confuses as much as it helps. One meaning of this is doing what you can with the camera to optimize the capture for your purposes--choosing the right lens, the right aperture, the right shutter speed, the best framing (given the arbitrary constraints of the camera's aspect ratio), etc. The other way people use the phrase is 'trying to get what I want as a jpeg out of the camera so I don't need to edit.' They are entirely different. Editing is ideally not a way to compensate for doing a poor job with the initial capture. I always strive to do the best I can in camera, even though I shoot only raw and edit every image I shoot. Of course, after the fact, if you find that you didn't manage to optimize the capture, editing can sometimes save the day.

[Polar01]

I feel a need to comment on John's statement "What a lot of baloney...". I believe that you missed the meaning of my post as is was in response to the title of the thread, "Re: Edit or not to Edit". In my post #5, I stated that you had three options, I still believe that, either you do not edit choice #1 and #2 or you do edit choice #3. It is only through choice #3 that allows your vision to come through, it does not matter what the image format is in, only that you change what the original image out of the camera looked like, to the one that fits your own vision. By doing that your choose to Edit instead of not to Edit.

Cheers: Allan

[chauncey]

Hobby...an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure:
"Tis a tortured route you choose to take, fraught with a myriad of decisions along the way.

Whether to use Post Processing or not is but one of them...soon you'll be asking what program/
what camera/what lens, oh and by the way, what computer to progress those images.
It's kinda like flushing money down the toilet but, hopefully pearls come out.

[xpatUSA]

"JPEG" has been mentioned in this thread often but without much qualification. In reality, JPEG images can range from pure cr@p to being indistinguishable from PNG or TIFF. The range of JPEG compression options is huge:



Admittedly, out-of-camera JPEGs give you what the manufacture has chosen for you - not necessarily what you want - but if "FINE" gives you less than 4:4:4 (no sub-sampling) then you have truly "lost information" with no chance of recovery.

JPEG PhotoMetric Interpretation has not yet been mentioned. For example, FastStone Viewer offers:

RGB (yep), YCbCr, GrayScale, CMYK, YCbCrK.

Your camera probably offers you no choice at all

Here's a comparison between FastStone's worst and best possible JPEG conversions:



One is RGB, 100% Q, no sub-sampling.
One is YCbCr, 1% Q, max sub-sampling.

So, if I only say "I always shoot JPEG", what image quality would you expect from my shots?

[xpatUSA]

So, if I only say "I always shoot JPEG", what image quality would you expect from my shots?

On the other hand, if I said "I always shoot JPEG, 90% Quality, YCbCr 4:4:4" you'd have a pretty good idea, eh?

Out of interest, I compared a save at highest possible with a save at my normal settings for saving which are likely about the same as a camera's "FINE":



The comparison is at 800% a) to avoid anything CiC will do with the detail and b) to clearly show the JPEG artifacts even when saved "FINE" so to speak. Adjustments were to bring out the difference for the purposes of illustration.

If you were entering a competition here, which of these two images would you prefer to start off with?

For those who might have a problem with pixel-peeping, especially at 800%, I'll ask a different question:

You are contemplating buying one of two similar pieces of jewelry. At a viewing distance of about a foot, or maybe the standard 25cm, they look the same. But, to be sure, you whip out your 8X jeweler's loupe and, lo, now you see poorly-shaped facets and some chips on the stone, scratches on the metal, etc., on one of the pieces. Which piece do you buy?

[Stagecoach]

You are contemplating buying one of two similar pieces of jewelry. At a viewing distance of about a foot, or maybe the standard 25cm, they look the same. But, to be sure, you whip out your 8X jeweler's loupe and, lo, now you see poorly-shaped facets and some chips on the stone, scratches on the metal, etc., on one of the pieces. Which piece do you buy?

Ah Ted, that's not straightforward as there's two unknowns;

a) How much is each piece?

b) Is the one you are buying it for with you?

[xpatUSA]

Ah Ted, that's not straightforward as there's two unknowns;

a) How much is each piece?

Now I be forced to say "the same price each".

b) Is the one you are buying it for with you?

Excellent, Grahame! She would probably bring her own 50X pocket microscope and jeweler's spectrometer . . .

Almost a correlation between posting a shot of a watch for comment here or posting it on eBay for sale

[Manfred M]

Ted - while I understand your arguments, I would suggest that "poor" is not particularly representative of what someone would see coming out as a low quality jpeg of a reasonably recent digital camera. That level of poor quality is usually only achieved by someone who has downsized an image quite significantly and then compressed to the near maximum using some form of post-processing tool.

Anyone who is displaying an image on a "normal" computer screen, regardless of the source is looking at somewhere around 2MB of data (do the math for a standard 1920 x 1080 or 1366 x 768 sRGB display). We are throwing out most of the data (downsampling) that our camera has recorded. Use a laptop screen with its mediocre performance and its little wonder that we can get away with so much.

The flip side is printing. Again, if we do the math again. If I print an image on my Epson 3880, which has a native resolution of 360 dpi, I have to upsample a touch when I print the maximum size of 17" x 22" output. Again even here we are cheating a bit as printer manufacturers do not provide data on the number of distinct colours our printers output. I've seen estimates of around 300,000 distinct shades out of some of the lower end picture printers to something over double that when we look at high end ink jet photo printers. Billions of shades to the 16 million of so shades out of the lowly sRGB colour space seem excessive and we throw out lots of data when we print.

Theory versus reality? Perhaps...

[xpatUSA]

Ted - while I understand your arguments, I would suggest that "poor" is not particularly representative of what someone would see coming out as a low quality jpeg of a reasonably recent digital camera. That level of poor quality is usually only achieved by someone who has downsized an image quite significantly and then compressed to the near maximum using some form of post-processing tool.

Quite so, Manfred. The comparison images I posted were deliberately extreme to drive home a point and, by the same token, nobody here will get that higher quality image out of their camera, either.

Anyone who is displaying an image on a "normal" computer screen, regardless of the source is looking at somewhere around 2MB of data (do the math for a standard 1920 x 1080 or 1366 x 768 sRGB display).

Are you confusing MB with MP, or am I not understanding the math? For example, I can save two identical images at a size of 1920x1080px - one at 8bit TIFF the other at 16bit. The MB figures would most certainly differ. I am obviously missing something and would like to understand.

We are throwing out most of the data (downsampling) that our camera has recorded. Use a laptop screen with its mediocre performance and its little wonder that we can get away with so much.

Correct - but with the caveat that the image has indeed been re-sampled by the Viewer to fit the screen. However, many of us also view the image at 100%, scrolling around to see the parts of interest or presumably to examine the potential for printing large.

The flip side is printing. Again, if we do the math again. If I print an image on my Epson 3880, which has a native resolution of 360 dpi, I have to upsample a touch when I print the maximum size of 17" x 22" output. Again even here we are cheating a bit as printer manufacturers do not provide data on the number of distinct colours our printers output. I've seen estimates of around 300,000 distinct shades out of some of the lower end picture printers to something over double that when we look at high end ink jet photo printers. Billions of shades to the 16 million of so shades out of the lowly sRGB colour space seem excessive and we throw out lots of data when we print.

I'm still unsure what is meant by "shades" so pardon me if I don't comment as we have had that discussion before.

Theory versus reality? Perhaps...

. . . and perhaps not