An Approach to Post-Processing

[The_Traveler]

About a year ago, I wrote this article for my blog and it continues to get good viewing. After a discussion with a friend about how to get started in post-processing, I sent her a link and and thought it might be useful to post at least the first part here again.
The link is to that part of the article which contains other people's photos.

I realize this is a long - and dense - article, especially for a blog post but please try to persevere through it. I am trying to unite the ideas of seeing what needs to be done with the importance of timing and the ability to retreat from dead ends. It is only when you can fuse all these issues into 'understanding' that you can get beyond the mechanical 'making things look better' into real expression.

Thanks for reading.

Lew

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Much of the discussions of work-flow in post-processing (PPing) is aimed at the simpler images where most work is done globally and even bit-level corrections aren't ambiguous. However many images require extensive post-processing to get to the final point that the maker has in mind.

It is easy to talk about post-processing at a high level of generality and vagueness – what to do first and what to leave for last. It is also easy to talk about the mechanics of specific techniques in post-processing. But in the middle, how to look at the image, how to make decisions about what really to do and how to protect yourself from time-wasting dead-end avenues where the best path is often ambiguous.

Since I often do extensive post-processing and I hate having to redo intricate work like selections because I have taken a wrong avenue or if I just want to try different PPing techniques to see how to best finalize the image, I have adopted a work-flow that relies a great deal on making and using multiple layers to insure flexibility.

What I intend to do in this article is to talk very quickly about the generalities of my work flow and why I do things the way I do and then show two examples of how I approach any image.

Understanding and deciding what should be done to make the image looks best is the most important and the most difficult skill to acquire. For those new to this, I think it is best to take a very structured approach to diagnosing the PPing needs of any image; I have written about this before.

I always start with the few simple, basic changes - global adjustments of exposure, tint, contrast or even the slightly less obvious white balance. These adjustments require not too much knowledge or skill and even a novice photographer can tackle these because there are some external standards that can be used.

(Exposure shifts the values for the entire image up or down whereas brightness is essentially a mid-tone adjustment. The Levels adjustment is used to correct the tonal range and color balance of an image by adjusting intensity levels of image shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. )

These adjustments are often used to adjust the image back to a 'perfect' rendition of what our eye sees on a 'perfect' day.

But what if the scene isn't perfect, what if Mother Nature doesn't give the light and shadows that we want? What if there is no way to get a decent exposure of all the important parts in the camera?

What if we are not just editing to return the scene to the starting point we saw – or a bit better; what if our vision is more than that – to create an image that we have seen only in our mind's eye and for which the image as caught by the camera is only the starting point?

Then how do we proceed?

The entire 'Approach to Post-Processing' article.

 

[Aaaak]

I'm a beginner and this came just in the right time for me, thank you.

I know nothing about this all, that's the truth. I can make just silly general adjustments (exposure, white balance, saturation...) which improve my tries a little bit.
I'd like to start making some "magic" with the softwares, of course, but what concerns me is that I don't even master the basics of composition and focus and creating a worthy subject etc. So, whenever I try to start with edition I wonder if I should step back and focus just on learning how to actually take a picture. To be honest, I'm afraid to get lost and end up learning neither of them, shooting and editing.

My question to you all is: should I stick to the basics, keep just clicking till I have some maturity? Or should I try to learn both at the same time, making the best out of my current work?

Could you make a comment about that, please?

Thank you.

PS: if you wonder how newbie I am, take a look at my Flickr: Agatha Mourão.

Sent from my C2104 using Tapatalk

 

[The_Traveler]

The best of all worlds is to keep on shooting and trying to understand what is going on with your pictures that keeps them from being as wonderful as you thought they might be when you pressed the button. THen you will have a short term goal for your learning to edit rather than trying to learn everything at once.

Always, always, always be certain you know what draws you to take the picture and then compose around that.
Spend some time taking each shot so you've figured out everything, then let the pictures sit for a day or so until the fervor of the shot has faded.
Then look at each one and try to see what is distracting you from focussing (no pun) on the important thing you saw.
Get critique from others (who know what they are doing) on pictures and use that critique to inform you for the next shots.

Here is an easy one.

It's hard to tell much about focus because it is so small but there are two rather egregious problems that you can easily correct.
Your camera is using the bright sky as part of figuring the exposure and so the face and body are underlit.
When shooting a relatively dark subject against a bright background, either use the exposure compensation to add more exposure or use a smaller area to judge exposure.

Guitar players pose a real problem in framing because if the guitar and hands and head make a triangle and you can't include the hands without leaving a lots of space around the head and you can't frame to get the head prominent in the frame without cutting off the hands.

To get around this, you can shoot more from the side to collapse the width of the guitar, frame the body against a good background so that the space around the face doesn't pull the eye away.

But clipping off the hands is not a good remedy.

If you ever want critique on a picture, just let me know and I'll say whatever I can.

 

[Aaaak]

I really appreciate your help, @The_Traveler. Your counseling is valuable and I'll keep going with them in mind.
Subject. Subject. Subject.

Thanks again.
Kind regards,
Agatha.


Sent from my C2104 using Tapatalk

 

[The_Traveler]

FYI, here is another of your Flickr stream.

What strikes me, as it may have you, is that the person is almost intently symmetrical in the water.
What keeps this from being very interesting, at least to me, is that the person isn't placed symmetrically in the frame, thus emphasizing what draw you to it and the colors are too muted for my taste.

By rotating, extending the frame to make it symmetrical, adding a bit of frame, punching up colors, then the person-as-a-design becomes more apparent and it shows the viewer what you saw.

 

[CherylL]

Excellent article Lew on post processing. The examples were very good. Do you use Color Efex Pro for most of your photos? I have the Nik collection and find it is much easier for subtle changes of lighting and color than PS adjustments. My workflow is ACR to PS so it was nice to see a workflow that wasn't exclusively LR.

 

[The_Traveler]

Thanks for reading and commenting.

I do use Color Efex pro, not because I couldn't do most of them in PS with some effort, but because Color Efex makes it easy to accumulates lots of effects or edits into one layer very quickly and easily and, with smart layers, I go back and edit the settings.