The Opposite ot Post-Processing: Pre-Processing

[Mike Buckley]

See this brief article about the future of image editing.

[davidedric]

Thanks, Mike, interesting stuff. Coupled with street view creating compositions, maybe we should all go home!

But, I don't think so. It's basically "Autotone" applied before pressing the shutter, which isn't too challenging since all the data is there.

Dave

[billtils]

Used to do lots of pre-processing back in the days of film ...

[Mike Buckley]

Used to do lots of pre-processing back in the days of film ...

I'm confused, Bill. Please clarify perhaps by giving an example or two.

[Shadowman]

I like how the comments section below the article turned into a frenzy of "been there, done that". The comment that I agreed with was from someone called photodoug who said "Why won't they develop something that auto removes exit signs."

[Mike Buckley]

I agree that the comments shown below the article are humorous. However, on a more serious note, they also seem to be written by people who aren't acknowledging that the technology is aimed to make better photos automatically when the people making them otherwise might not be able to do so due to a lack of knowledge.

[billtils]

Mike - figuratively speaking!

In the pre-digital era we had to pay attention to composition and exposure before pressing the shutter. Now we can correct a whole host of mistakes or compensate for problems that would have been impossible to deal with "back in the day". For example the shot of the small white butterfly I posted in this thread is far from perfect but would have been hopeless without all the trickery available in PP because it was fired off at settings meant for an entirely different purpose. A somewhat different example can be seen in my post in this thread, where the set up was deliberate but the DoF achieved is entirely due to being able to focus stack a set of images.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Bill!

[Manfred M]

Mike - figuratively speaking!

In the pre-digital era we had to pay attention to composition and exposure before pressing the shutter. Now we can correct a whole host of mistakes or compensate for problems that would have been impossible to deal with "back in the day". For example the shot of the small white butterfly I posted in this thread is far from perfect but would have been hopeless without all the trickery available in PP because it was fired off at settings meant for an entirely different purpose. A somewhat different example can be seen in my post in this thread, where the set up was deliberate but the DoF achieved is entirely due to being able to focus stack a set of images.

Carefully said Bill - we could do some of these corrections in the days of film; so long as we had decent skills in the "wet darkroom". Terms like "dodging", "burning", "adding a vignette", "Unsharp Mask" all come from those days. There were chemical treatments to enhance "thin negatives", etc.

I know one (former) Air Force photographer who blew the focus of a VIP visit who told me he spent a week rebuilding the image using the traditional the unsharp mask technique.


All that being said, I definitely prefer the "digital darkroom" as I don't miss the smell and mess associated with the wet darkroom. It takes minutes and seconds to achieve far better results than what sometimes took hours in the "old days".

[billtils]

All that being said, I definitely prefer the "digital darkroom" ... It takes minutes and seconds to achieve far better results than what sometimes took hours in the "old days".

I prefer it too!