Post-Processing

[patrickt]

What's the difference between using the camera's software to set contrast or the computer's software?

Just out of curiosity, do you use colored filters to set white balance or is software, but only in the camera, good for that, too?

 

[ksmattfish]

Compare a photograph to reality.

1) Reality has at least 3 dimensions of space. A photograph has 2.

2) Reality is experienced in a continuous flow of time. A photograph is time stopped.

3) In most cases reality is a lot bigger than photographs.

4) Reality goes on and on and on.... Photographs have defined edges where they end.

To me these are such radical and obvious manipulations of reality that quibbling over the minor adjustments people making in processing seems silly.

Why is digital processing called post-processing anyway? Doesn't the "post-" mean post exposure? Doesn't film processing take place post exposure? Here's my theory why we need a new word to describe something that has been a vital step since the very first photograph was created. Several generations of film photographers have grown up thinking magic elves abra-cadabra their film into photographs. They are almost completely ignorant of film processing, and it's easier (both in effort and on the ego) to pretend that the photograph is created and finished when the shutter closes. To their world view the lab is an inconvenient incidental where nothing much important occurs. Home processing of digital is waking photographers up to the fact that photographs aren't anywhere near finished when the shutter closes, and that there is still a lot of work to be done to create a photograph.

Also it might help put photo manipulation in perspective if people actually bothered to study some of the history of photography. Before the F/64 Group pushed "straight photography" (and anyone who's read Ansel's darkroom trilogy detailing extensive image manipulations has to laugh at the idea that it's "straight") pictorialist photography was the rage. Nothing anyone is doing these days with Photoshop is new; much of it was commonly done over 100 years ago.

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/robinson.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictorialism

 

[Overread]

Camera software makes a change (such as contrast) at a fixed amount, thus that amount is applied to all photos regardless of if they need it or not. Also the software programs in a camera are generally less powerfull than those in a computer - ergo you can get better quality with computer results than with camera results (this is very true in sharpening and noise removal situations).
So whilst the camera can give acceptable results, many amateurs and pros will edit out of camera for that added control and quality.

Further many people shoot RAW which does not get any of the auto edits applied to shots anyway = so editing out of camera is essentail for such shots