Photo by Bob Baikauskas
Lincoln Hills
Photography Club
Why you should consider post processing your photos
Today’s modern cameras and even the latest smartphones take really good pictures ......most of the time. It's that caveat at the end of the last sentence that tells us why our photos sometimes need some post processing. Even the best photographers cannot setup their cameras to take the perfect photograph under all lighting conditions. Modern cameras, as good as they are, simply cannot always reproduce what our eyes see. If you are one of those photographers who doesn't own any photo editing software I would ask you these questions.
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How often have you had to “trash” a photo because it was over or under exposed? Exposure is a simple fix for photo editing software.
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How often have you had to “trash” a photo because your subject was in the shade with a bright background behind them and your subject was to dark? This is similar to but different from the exposure problem but is often fairly easy to fix with photo editing software.
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How often have you taken a really nice photo only to discover when you look at it on your monitor there are distractions in the photo? Distractions can be anything from a piece of trash on the ground to another person or object(s) that detracts from the photo. This can be a simple problem for the better software programs to handle.
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How often have you looked at someone else’s photos like those displayed by group members and wished your photos could look that good? I would say that most if not all of the photos have gone through some post processing. I believe your photos could look that good if you learned and applied the techniques of post processing.
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Have you ever had the urge to take a photo and turn it into a work of art? Post processing software allows you to do that even if you have no ability whatsoever to paint or draw. If you can imagine a final image post processing will help you realize that image.
Over the years I have used post processing techniques to “rescue” many photos. Below is an example. It is a photo of my grandson taken on Castle Peak near Donner Lake by my son in law with his cell phone. My daughter sent me this picture and asked if I could lighten his face. After a little work with some post processing software I produced the second image which lightened my grandson and the foreground without washing out the background. Did I lighten his face too much? Perhaps but my daughter was happy she could see her son’s face.
Here is another example. It is a photo of my grandchildren. I tweaked it a little by removing objects in the background that I found distracting. I also lightened them and tweaked the color some. This was done in 2012 and I have learned a few things since then and while looking at it now there are things I might have done differently but I think the second photo is still better than the first one.
Then there is this photo I took of my granddaughter’s dog. The original is on the left. A little cropping and some tone mapping using HDR software resulted in the photo on the right. I’ll let you decide which you like best.
Another project was a photo I took at one of my granddaughter’s dance recitals. My daughter liked it but wanted to know if I could crop it so only my granddaughter was in the photo. After some work in Photoshop I produced the second photo. Admittedly it’s not what anyone watching the recital saw but my daughter was thrilled and has framed it and hung it on the wall.
Sometime you would like to create art. But if you are like me and have trouble even drawing a decent looking stick figure then there is software to help you out. The first photo was taken along the California coast near Monterey. For the second photo I opened the original in Photoshop and then used the Topaz Impressions plugin to create the second image which is supposed to look like a color pencil drawing. I like it and it is something I would consider making into a canvas and hanging on my wall.
Finally this is a photo restoration project that I demonstrated at a Photo Enhancement SIG meeting. This is a photo I found on the internet and used for the demonstration. To do something like this yourself you would first have to scan the image. Then you would open and work on it in a photo editing program. I used Photoshop but other programs such as Photoshop Elements, Photo 10, and others are capable of doing this kind or restoration. More could have been done to improve the final photo but we ran out of time in the meeting to do any more work on it.
There are the purists who think photos should never be touched but they forget or discount the fact that many of the greats like Ansel Adams and others used their darkrooms to enhance their photos. What you see in their prints is not always what came out of their camera. Today we use computers and software.
Look at the member galleries on this website and you will see many photos that have been taken by our club’s members and enhanced and in some cases transformed. Then decide if that is something you would like to do. If so you can search YouTube and learn from the hundreds if not thousands of videos that discuss various aspects of post processing photos. Some of the better ones will be featured in our Learning Resources Center and in my bulletins. You can also join us at the Photo Enhancement SIG meetings where you can ask questions and get answers and advice from our resident experts. You can even bring a photo and we can work on it in class.
