to photoshop or not?

Joves · Feb 26, 2009

Hell I used to post process my own film back in the day. Now it is much easier and takes up less space.

JerryPH · Feb 27, 2009

When it comes to the question of should one post process the picture or not, there is one definite 100% correct answer. Maybe.

If you feel your pic stands on it's own SOOC, then don't. If you feel that it needs a tweak or two, then do. That is about as hard as the thought process should be.

I keep saying it over often, this stuff is not rocket science, it really is basic. What is challenging is once that small amount of technical is learned, pushing that photo more towards the direction of art... THAT is where the real magic lies. Whether you do it with or without post processing is only a small part of that process.

Sark · Feb 27, 2009

Photoshop Elements offers the photographer virtually everything its bigger brother has to offer at a fraction of the price.
And even with Elements, I would say it is not neccesary to buy the very latest version....Photoshopping an image doesn't have to be expensive.

Sark

andrew99 · Feb 27, 2009

All digital images need some processing.. contrast adjustments, colour adjustments (white balance, saturation, etc), and sharpening.

Beyond that, it gets into subjective terrotiry. Personally I have no problem with heavy processing, but some purirists hate it.

NateOntario · Feb 27, 2009

Just pirate it, theres no reason not to have photoshop

In before flame war

edit: Oh, I bought Elements. I'm not all bad, haha.
You'll be fine with elements if all you want to do is remove shadows from faces and mess around with levels and such. It's nice and simple

JerryPH · Feb 27, 2009

NateOntario said:
Just pirate it, theres no reason not to have photoshop

:shock:

*sound of crickets*

rufus5150 · Feb 27, 2009

I tried to use elements until I realized there was no Lab mode (this was a version or two ago, have things changed?). I suppose if you've never used lab mode you wouldn't know it was missing, but that's a pretty massive gap for me. Along with isolating channels in any mode.

To the OP, almost any digital image can be enhanced even with slight bump in contrast or sharpness, or white balance correction without harming the natural looking nature of the file. Heaven knows digitally it's going to look different on 99 out of 100 monitors that will see it and it will be different as a print depending on your vendor, the paper and the finish that is applied.

Digital cameras, even in fully manual modes, still have a lot of guesses they need to make when rendering color and such, and there's times when they don't get it right. SOOC is great and all, but I don't think even your die hard 'I NEVER SHOP MY IMAGES' is going to throw away an award winner that has sensor dust on it that can be cleaned up in 15 seconds.

Every image I 'finish' goes through at least a 30 second workflow that checks white balance, contrast and sharpness. Things you can't always control unless you are in 100% control of the light, and even then...

Both are free and I understand GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop..albeit not user friendly.

I was a GIMP user for many years (7?) before switching to the point that the 'not user friendly' aspect wasn't an issue for me. The single biggest issue (which you may well classify under user friendly, but I don't) is that you can tell that Photoshop is created with the artist in mind. The controls are designed differently. They're not any less or more effective, they just speak to a different mind set. The controls for both for me are very intuitive but in vastly different ways.

Overread · Feb 27, 2009

no lab mode in elements 6 and I assume no lab in 7 either.
However whilst I have heard good things of lab mode editing its a more specialised area of editing and one needs to know what your doing - not only to get things right but to get the advantages out of it.

rufus5150 · Feb 27, 2009

I use lab mode 90% of the time for the brain dead operation of sharpening. Very little skill required.

Theoretically you could do a very similar operation on a luminosity blended adjustment layer, but I don't think PSE has adjustment layers either, does it?

Overread · Feb 27, 2009

hmm elements 6 has layes - and I can set one to be a luminosity one - though I don't quite know what you mean by adjustment layer - do you just mean an ordinary layer?

rufus5150 · Feb 27, 2009

Photoshop has the ability to place a solitary filter on a layer of its own (with its own blending mode and such). That way you can set the opacity of a filter without having any pixels on that layer.

Overread · Feb 27, 2009

hmm I think I get what your getting at - in elemets I can set adjustment layers (such as hue and saturation; levels; contrast and brightness) and they hold no pixel data barring what they alter on over the original and they also retain their own indevidual opacity - which can be altered.
However its limited as to what layers can be done - there is no sharpening layer -though one can use a duplicate of the base photo layer and then apply sharpness to that - then adjust opacity after that

rufus5150 · Feb 27, 2009

It's only adjustment layers, not filter layers, though you have the option for smart objects and smart filters in Photoshop as well.

RacePhoto · Feb 27, 2009

Sark said:
Photoshop Elements offers the photographer virtually everything its bigger brother has to offer at a fraction of the price.
And even with Elements, I would say it is not neccesary to buy the very latest version....Photoshopping an image doesn't have to be expensive.

Sark

Positively agree. Elements could have been named Photoshop Light. For processing photos and not doing tricky alterations, Elements is all you need. You don't need to spend big bucks for something with features you most likely won't ever need or use.

When we did film, there was always post processing. The way I developed the film, the way I dodged, burned and other adjustments during printing, what kind of paper was used, and how the print was developed.

Photos have always been post processed, except straight to lantern slides, or direct positive photos. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Editing is part of making a better photograph.