Do you ever just get sick and tired of PP?

[flygning]

I take photos to please myself-- to capture the beauty of what I see around me. I wish I could just go out, snap a picture, and have it look exactly like what I saw. That is my dream world, of course, and I know it doesn't work like that and one has to put a bit of effort into a good photograph.

However, post processing drives me up a wall. I am striving to get my photography to a point where minimal PP is necessary, but I'm not at that point yet, and it will be a long time until I am. Even when I'm at that point, I know that PP will still be necessary. Everyone on here tells you to shoot in RAW. I've only tinkered with RAW a little bit, but I know that it takes a lot of PP. I have hundreds of great photographs that I haven't touched, that are just sitting on my hard drive collecting dust, all because they need PP work and I just plain old don't wanna mess with it. It doesn't help that my computer is borked and overheats if you so much as look at it wrong, whereupon it decides it doesn't wanna play anymore and shuts itself down, losing any work that you've done so far. But really, even if my computer was working okay, I'd probably still whine about spending my precious time in front of the computer messing around in Photoshop.

I know that PP is just a part of the work for the pros, but for the rest of you who take pictures for your own enjoyment-- Doesn't it bother you to spend so much time after you've taken a picture to make it worth showing to others? Do you ever just want to walk away from it and let those pictures collect dust? How much time do you actually spend on PP? How do you make it easier on yourselves? For those of you who always shoot in RAW, don't you ever wish you had a photograph that you could just take directly from the camera and print or email to your granny or post on a forum, and not have to worry about PP?

 

[Overread]

I agree it can take time and I too have rather a backlog of shots - I would say one way to counter it is to go through all the shots after a shoot and note down the best ones and then do the PP on them - force yourself through this as if you don't you won't come back for ages - and then get it done.
Partly though I like seeing what I can get out of a shot so for me that is part of the fun sometimes.

Though I would say that since I started with RAW it takes me less time to get through than before RAW - I mean most times auto RAW config settings work a treat (auto WB ( daylight ) setting and auto exposure (though often you have to lower brightness and exposure if it tinckers with these) and then its a levels, nosie and sharpen and its mostly done

just something to keep at - for me though its resizing that gets me - I keep full size, 1000, 720 (web posts on sites) 200 and some 600 and 100 versions for 2 other photography sites where the posting rules are different.
that takes ages and is just boring resizing and little sharpening
ps - as you get better not only does the keeper rate go up but the PP rate goes down (setting manual WB can help if you get it right then almost no PP is needed)

 

[That One Guy]

borked? that's new.

Honestly I don't do that much post work to my photos, but I like the "real" look though. My goal is to get the photo right in camera. All I do in post on color photos is a bit of contrast and sat boost.

You shouldn't spend a lot of time in post unless going for a specific effect or you are trying to correct something.

RAW does not require very much post work, at least not to me and I shoot RAW exclusively.

Technique, knowledge, and nice equip makes the job easier. Once I started using L lenses, my time in post was reduced significantly.

 

[Overread]

Once I started using L lenses, my time in post was reduced significantly.

yet another reason to go L - shame that family won't understand the argument

 

[That One Guy]

(setting manual WB can help if you get it right then almost no PP is needed)

It's called custom WB. A WhiBal (white balance card) comes in handy for this.

 

[Overread]

true - and if you shoot RAW and mess-up the custom WB (moving to a location with differnet lighting as might easily happen if you are out and about shooting) you can edit the RAW to get back to normality

 

[That One Guy]

yet another reason to go L - shame that family won't understand the argument

Color repro and contrast on these lenses are awesome. The only non L lens I use now is my nifty fifty a.k.a. fantastic plastic.

I shoot portraits for money so having superb optics was the only way for me to go. Believe me I wouldn't want to pay that money if I didn't have to, but my clients deserve great quality portraits and the L lenses help me give them that.

 

[pawdog]

flygning,
I have a suggestion for you. Photoshop is really overkill for day to day work with your photos. Download the trial of Lightroom. The learning curve is much shorter than Photoshop and you won't need so much computer, You also wont have to worry about losing work to crashes. Spend two weeks shooting RAW (Lightroom works with JPEG also) and using lightroom exclusivley and you will save your pennies to buy it.

All of your color correction, exposure correction, cropping, printing and file management can be handled in one program. I have found it to be the most used software on my computer.

I go back with Photoshop to version 4. Long before I got my first Digicam, and love it dearly. But Lightroom is like a new baby, once you get it home it will demand all of your attention. Your work will get done much faster if you take the time to study and use it.

I don't know anyone who dosent do at least some PP this is just the nature of the digital beast and the beauty.

I recommend you try as many of the raw converters as you can.They all have free trial downloads.

Oh yea, I checked out you flicker stuff. I don't think you hate PP as much as you think you do. Keep up the good work.:thumbup:

 

[Emerana]

I was about to say "LIGHTROOM"!! Get it, try it. I am in love, it is soooooo much easier to process quickly.

I like PP work, I am still learning. I always shoot in RAW. I develop in Lighroom and now if I want to go beyond (which I often dont) I go to CS3. I can PP an entire photo session in a couple hours when it used to take me a day! I also just learned about actions for CS3, bought a pack. Very much fun and an easy pass through some tedious work.

 

[Sontizzle]

the only editing i do is the "selective coloring" in CS2 and some contrast/hue/saturation. spend maybe 2-3 minutes doing that and thats all. photographers survived and took wonderful pictures for years without the aid of computer software but now people rely on it

 

[flygning]

What's the difference between Lightroom and Photoshop? Sounds like it pretty much does the same thing.

Either way, I have CS3, and if I use Lightroom for a month and decide I'm in love with it I'm outta luck because I'm not gonna spend that kinda money on a piece of software.

I think it mostly frustrates me that I have a decent camera, I spend a lot of time to set up a shot, make sure I have it exposed properly, etc etc, and I take the picture and it doesn't look good just like that. I have to play around with it on the computer. And then there are people with dinky little pocket point and shoots that know squat about photography, but they take a picture with their camera set on auto everything and their pictures come out looking good-- perhaps not content-wise, but color and sharpness and all that jazz, and they don't have to worry about fixing it up on the computer.

 

[Sontizzle]

take the picture at different apertures until you find what the sharpest is. take your meter reading in different places. not every picture you take is going to be good. heck i can go out and fire off 50 shots and get 1 or 2 good ones.

 

[Peanuts]

My key to success in cutting down in post processing was a) shooting in RAW b) shooting in manual and c) learning to use my histogram/metering (either by using a grey card, meter, or by watching my histogram when neither of the others are available). That way I can open the images in RAW, adjust them all the same (assuming the aperture/shutter speed are near identical given that it was shot in manual and I could tweak it as I went along), and poof JPEGs!

I shot a grad last night and in four hours today have everything processed and ready to go!(minus some where I have to photochop in the background because the backdrop wasn't wide enough.. yarg)

Edit: and just a side note but when I do do relatively 'heavy' editing I actually really enjoy myself. I find it somewhat relaxing since I can just crank up the music, not be bothered by anyone since I am 'working' and just go with the flow Once you get over that initial 'learning curve' it really is quite enjoyable!

 

[tim.bennett]

Most of my PP is done in lightroom. Had a shoot with a friend yesterday who agreed to model for me. We finished up headed to starbucks and got out the laptop and checked the pictures in their. Did a tiny bit of work using curves and one or two BW convs. They are now neatly sorted in my library and ready to be uploaded to the website. All in the one program.

 

[Jus7 A Phas3]

I find photoshop as an art forum in itself, however I have cs2 and i not know how to use it. I really wish i did though :/