little help? :(

[Gregry254]

Do all pictures need to be touched up in PP or am I just really not getting this photography gig?

I was driving through glencoe in Scotland today and took a few pictures BUT they all seemed slightly off, quick 2 second auto corrections in photoshop and they look so much better! anyone know what I could be doing wrong? they were shot on shutter priority except the duck one which was on aperture.

Original

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Original

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And here is a duck that seemed to have no fear

 

[KmH]

The auto edits leave a lot to be desired.

If you have the file type on your camera set to JPEG the original photos have already been edited to one degree or another, contrast, saturation, and sharpening.

If set to JPEG, at a minimum most of the color data (75%) was discarded to reduce the file size by converting the pixels into 8x8 pixel; squares and avering the color information.

In other words, if you have a 10 MP camera, all but about 2 MP of the image data was discarded.

Digital image sensors have several filters in front of them, most notable of which is the low-pass (aka, anti-aliasing) filter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing_filter

 

[Gregry254]

Is this where I realise RAW is really the much better option?
I always thought you have to convert it back to JPEG on the PC anyway? so wont it lose the quality then anyway?
Or am I missing something else?

 

[Taylor510ce]

Could be lots of things, but it seems you are having contrast issues.

Could be any of the following ( and I am sure others could add more to the list )

- cheap lens

- cheap filters/using the wrong filter

- shooting without a lens hood

- wrong exposure


One thing I notice in common in both pics is the fog. Fog almost always tricks your cameras meter. Others can elaborate on better technique, I don't shoot fog often.

Forgot to answer your most basic question. If you shoot in RAW you will almost always have to Post Process. ( probably 99.999999% of the time ) Thats my opinion atleast.

 

[dak1b]

ya the original look washed out imop.

the edits bring out a lot more contrast and color. make sure your light meter is correct.

 

[Derrel]

Dark rock or land against a foggy,white sky is a very long stretch for the dynamic range of most digital sensors...the optimal exposure for the sky tones is rather brief, the optimal exposure for the land is 6 to 8 stops "slower", so a single shot of a peak like those against a white,foggy sky will look rather drab straight out of most cameras. Like a bunch of poultry,vegetables, and water....the soup ain't been made till the chef has done the cooking...

You are the chef!

 

[Bryce]

You load them into the edit program as raw. Once in the computer there is nothing to auto edit your JPG. It is the program in the camera that does it. If you use Raw it is left more natural and once in the computer you make the changes then change it to JPG or save it as a raw file. Outside of you edit program you computer may not recognize a raw file. Some edit programs don't recognize raw but photoshop does. If I post to the internet I save the raw edit as a jpg then post on the internet and you can save the raw file for using later.

 

[UUilliam]

Well...
conditions and stuff you know.

My metering mode of preference is Spot metering as I can be more exact to what I want to meter (close to 18% grey) which results in a "correct" exposure.

It is all determied on how you meter the scene,what it is like and stuff, If it were myself, I would have set the metering to spot metering (5% of the frame gets metered aka centre dot.)
and placed centre over a bit of green on the mountain.
and set the EV to -2/3rd (set your camera to allow third incriments, some only allow 1/2s)
but yes, the majority of times, you will need to edit.

I almost exclusively shoot RAW (because I am comfortable with photoshop and generally the photographs are take with the aim of editing them.)
the only reason I shoot jpeg (jpeg + raw) is for college as their version of camera raw does not support my RAW file.
and if I am taking photographs for someone who wants to see photographs straight after the shoot.
it means I can only take 200 images per card (4gb) but thats okay, I have plenty. (shooting RAW alone I can get 300-400images, Jpeg I get about 800 i think.)

 

[KmH]

Is this where I realise RAW is really the much better option?
I always thought you have to convert it back to JPEG on the PC anyway? This is true. so wont it lose the quality then anyway? Not necessarily, if it was edited before conversion to JPEG
Or am I missing something else?

All RAW images need to be post processed to one degree or another.

Use RAW if you want the best possible image quality.

For many people, the JPEG as it comes out of the camera is more than sufficient since the JPEG file was designed to be a finished, ready-to-print file type. It is also why JPEGs have so little headroom for editing (they only have an 8-bit tonal depth, RAW files have a 16-bit tonal depth).

I did a quick edit (3rd one):

Original

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I used ACR, CS5, and Topaz Adjust: (click the bar to see a little more detail.)