Post-Processing: How Much is Too Much?

Trenton Romulox

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I've developed a more post-process-based style over the summer and it's been met with mixed reactions. I'd say half the people that see my work like my post-processing style, and the other half hate it and think that I should go with a more natural approach. So, the question I have is: how much post-processing is too much? And what defines when too much is too much?
 
However much makes you happy. A useless answer, I admit, but the more you spend time in this the more you'll realize it's probably true.

It varies per image, per situation and per viewer. You really cannot get a heck of a lot more variability than that.

I generally don't do too much PP on my images, but every once in a while I go crazy with it... it just varies. What's more is I can show any one image I took to 50 people and half will hate it and think it's the demon spawn, and 1/2 will want a print of it on their living room wall... EVERY ONE OF THEM will cite different reasons for their opinions.

Just do what works best for you.
 
My rule of thumb is that if I'm at all conscious of the processing, it's too much. My second rule of thumb is: set it where you think it's right, then back off at least ten percent. I don't have any philosophical objection to more processing, or any notion that what the camera sees is somehow true, but if photos look processed they just don't hold up for me. Your mileage may vary.
 
My question is is it going overboard to clone out an ex-girlfriend so you have a decent picture of yourself?
 
My question is is it going overboard to clone out an ex-girlfriend so you have a decent picture of yourself?
Only if it's discernable what you've done. Otherwise, fly with it.
 
Haha, thanks for the responses guys. I'm just having a hard time finding my own style. And of course, I'd love if the style I end up developing bodes well commercially. I've found myself going overboard a lot lately. What I mean by that is that stuff looks good when I'm doing it, then it looks terrible and fake later on.
 
Go overboard then. Do what you like. You're only lost when you don't know or aren't aware of what you're doing. So if you were going overboard and didn't recognize it as such that would maybe suck - but if you knew it and did it on purpose then that's more artsy than sucky. Err, did that make sense? :p
 
Go overboard then. Do what you like. You're only lost when you don't know or aren't aware of what you're doing. So if you were going overboard and didn't recognize it as such that would maybe suck - but if you knew it and did it on purpose then that's more artsy than sucky. Err, did that make sense? :p

Yeah, haha, I think it made sense. Made sense to me at least. Haha.
 
My question is is it going overboard to clone out an ex-girlfriend so you have a decent picture of yourself?

Oh cloning... that's a bit different than just general PP work. My experience is usually anything more major than minor adjustments here and there are noticable to a trained eye. I frequently spot it even in "professional" work done on TV and magazine ads.

Course I have no idea when I don't notice it... all I can say is that I do notice it a lot.
 
When the image is no longer enjoyable to look at it's overdone. If the exgirlfriend hanging from your arm is a compositional error (as most ex girlfriends are, you come to realise) then cloning may make the image far more enjoyable.
 
A friend of mine studied to become a photographer back in the early 80s, and tried to develop her own photographic style by taking black and white photos (on film of course, digital was unheard of back then), get black and white prints, and hand-colour them. Black and white as such does not represent "nature as it is", since normally things ARE in colour, which is a first step of "processing things differently", and later her colour did not necessarily represent what was really there at the time she had pointed her camera at the given scene, but what she later felt was how she wanted that particular photo to look like. Which is a kind of post processing that you may also say went overboard since her photo in the end showed only "half" of reality, and it was obvious that something unusual had been done to the colours.

For example.

Which shows that manipulated photos have been around at all times, and often enough people also accepted and welcomed the kind of manipulation. It shows more of an artistic approach to photography than spotting a scene and pressing the button that once does (to later have a lab create the end result and that's it - or to proudly say 'This is straight out of the camera').

Now no one get me wrong, please: it is, of course, good, and actually vital, to create good photography in camera, to know all about the settings and to achieve as much at the point of pushing the button as can be. But to later look at the end result and say "I now would wish to see THIS very result even ... whatever it can be: darker/more contrasted/in black and white/with blurs and so on" is a step FURTHER, not WRONGER, or wrong to begin with.

What annoys me about post processing and its perception among the "general public" is that to admit to having done MORE to the photo than just take it is often regarded with a bit of "then at first it must have been bad, if pp was needed to make it this good". Too few people really understand the work you can do in say: Photoshop (or other software of the kind), and too often the use of post processing software (in digital times) is mistaken for "making a wrong right". Which is a pity.

And which leads to discussion themes such as this where someone who feels he likes a more post processed style better than the naturalistic approach to photography feels compelled to WONDER whether his approach is right, or too much, or even maybe wrong, unwise, not good enough.

And here we talk about photos that have been taken with the INTENT of creating something beyond a snapshot. Cloning out the ex-girlfriend in order to keep going with a nice photo of oneself is on a totally different level, I feel. Cloning out the ex might make it easier to look at the photo at the time when having been left still hurts, but does not make a previously unartistic photo a more artistic one.

And faking reality via post processing in photo journalism is a completely different kind of matter, of course, we need not even begin to discuss that, I think! We all agree that in that particular field of photography it should not be done (and we all know that is IS being done...).

But when it comes to wanting to express oneself ARTISTICALLY I should say that actually anything goes once the end result expresses what the creator of said image felt they WANTED to express. And if it can only be expressed by using MANY post processing steps, then so be it!
 

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