Thursday, August 23, 2012

From Camera to Post-Processing the Final Image

There is quite a bit that may or may not go into a photo 
once it's been uploaded to a computer. 
I have often heard gawkers looking at images saying 
the phrase, "Oh, that's Photoshopped!" 
Usually in a negative connotation. 

There is a big difference between Photoshopped and over-processed!

News Flash: Every photo that is digitally taken these 
days is "photoshopped" regardless of what software 
one may use. Ex. Lightroom, Aperture, iPhoto, etc...

This is no different from the days I was shooting 
film in high school/college and processed the film canisters 
of chemicals, took it into the "dark room" to an enlarger, 
where I "dodged and burned." Layered negatives for a composite 
and then dropped the paper in more chemicals to get my result. 

Granted we have much more flexibility with 
what we can manipulate through the means of 
computers than we had through a dark room, 
but that shouldn't necessarily mean that 
everything is over-processed to the point of 
where it doesn't look natural with the human eye. 

The first image is straight from the camera.
I've laid out the actions I took to take this from what 
I would call a "Point and Shoot" image to the final 
image below it that makes it really pop and look the way 
it did our natural human eye would see the scene.


Final Image