Here are the results of an year long poll which we conduct here on APN. It’s no surprise that 80% of the users chose to add finishing touches to their photographs. About 20% of the voters do not to retouch their photos and essentially are purists. This reises some new questions — what settings do you alter? What software do you use? Do you retouch every photo or just the selected ones? As far as I’m concerned, I classify my photographs into several categories, one being “Need Adjustments”. And then I go through each of these photos one at a time doing the post-processing and adding the final finishing touches. Sharpness, color, and contrast are high on my mind. What factors do you consider when post processing? Comment.
Do you retouch/manipulate your photographs digitally?
- Yes (80%, 457 Votes)
- No (20%, 112 Votes)
Total Voters: 569
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{ 3 comments on Poll Results — Do You Retouch Or Manipulate Your Photographs Digitally?… read them below or add one }
I do a few tweaks to my images. Check levels, crop, touch up the sharpness, sometimes the saturation and/or contrast. I try to keep these changes to a minimum.
I may come back from a shoot with 50, 80 or even a hundred images. I will cull them down to a handful and work on them. This is often a matter of time as I don’t want to spend more time behind a keyboard than the camera. I’m behind a keyboard all week at work and thats more than enough for me! However I do archive them all. The good, the bad and the ugly.
On the odd ocasion I may play with an image to see what I can do with. I have used an IR plugin to see how it may look as an IR image and that can be fun to play with. Or I may experiment with other effects to learn a bit more about Photoshop.
Paul: That’s an interesting and effective approach to post-production. At times I’ve seen myself get carried away by Photoshop into experiments. I believe the more you pay attention to these things while shooting the less you have to mess with Photoshop other than the basics like sharpness etc.
While improving my skills in Photoshop would be nice, my aim is to improve my photography skills. That wont happen being stuck behind a PC more than behind a camera.
Why take a few minutes to take a picture or two and then spend ten or twenty times that to fix the silly things you were too lazy to get right when you took them.
I am trying to get to the point where I can see the image I want and not have to strain my poor aging greymatter to achieve it behind the lens. I doubt any of us really get there, but its the journey that is the fun part.