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Photo taking Vs Editing.
As I sit down to go through a huge amount of photos from a shoot the other day, one thing that seems to be coming clear to me, but may seem a little odd. I am finding photo taking, particularly the more artistic side (framing, composition etc) quite intuitive so I find picking up the technical side (camera settings etc) quite easy. However, there is no part of editing is intuitive for me, so I really struggle to learn even the most basic of technical skills - even doing such seemingly laughably easy stuff like adjusting the brightness and saturation. Is this just me after spending the last 35 minutes raging at one picture, or is this somewhat common? Jan 30 23 01:43 am Link Before digital editing was...... a bit harder. So I/we toke more pains to get it right in the camera. Now with digital, editing is MUCH easier. Mostly I just crop to a standard print size. True, there are times I spend minutes or even hours getting that one shot just right. It comes with the job, not hobby. Jan 30 23 05:24 am Link Obviously, getting as much right in camera is preferable. There is a definite learning curve to Photoshop (I don't use LR though I probably should). Fortunately, there are a ton of resources out there to teach editing skills, many of which are free (YouTube is your friend!). Jan 30 23 05:55 am Link I started digital editing back in the days of PhotoStyler, before Adobe bought out Aldus; but I shot film up until 2008, when I grabbed a Nikon D700. Prior to that, I was shooting with an Olympus OM-4T and digitizing my film with a Minolta DiMage 5400, and I still remember the feeling when I picked out some mediocre shots that had been commercially developed and printed, digitized them, and edited them myself: when I saw the result, I said "So THAT'S why I took those shots!!" I've never looked back and if I spend four or five hours getting one image just so, it's time I consider well spent (and that I have enjoyed spending). My best Photoshop tip (one I still use extensively) is: duplicate an image as soon as it is opened; convert the duplicate to LAB color space; create a new layer in the original from the background layer (not an empty layer) and add a layer mask; then select the mask, go to Image / Apply Image and use the L channel (luminosity) of the LAB version to fill the layer mask. Now duplicate that layer, invert the second duplicate layer's mask, and you have perfectly complementary masks on two layers: one for editing the light end of he image, and one for editing the dark end. Jan 30 23 06:15 am Link I think it can be beneficial to thinking about the outcome you envision for your photos before you start editing and then work backwards. For example if you envision a clean and contrasty commercial look you might start by increasing the brightness and contrast, then evaluate the colours in your image and mute/shift any one that's distracting. Or say you want cool pastel tones, you might start by reducing contrast etc. Jan 30 23 06:55 am Link Does the guy with the 60k camera and 100k studio set up edit? Yep. I find the photo's I "really " like from well known photographers have all been edited. The one thing I have seen watching a lot of these guys on UTube is they know their editing programs as well as there camera gear if not better. I tried photo shop and admit it's redundancy is only outmatched by its complexity but after a couple of years working in Lightroom I can achieve at least something that is close to what I would truly like as a finial product. It's like a lot of things in life when you ask, How long do I have to do this ? Best answer: Until you like doing it. Jan 30 23 08:07 am Link My suggestion is to start thinking in terms of workflow….you do things ina certain order and some things like exposure and color correction can be batched. Capture one organizes the default tool view into a workflow framework. From left to right the have Capture / Import, image grading, basic correction, filters, metadata, export. (I’m leaving a few things out because I’m not sitting in front of it) but the concept is you go left to right) and by the time you are exporting all edits are done and exports can also be batched. Lightroom or Photoshop can be set up much the same way but the thing is to just find a workflow that works for you and make it as repeatable as possible. Same thing really applies to both video and audio post production…it’s all about workflow for best productivity. Jan 30 23 09:07 am Link I've always looked at it as, "Can you take an amazingly beautiful photo without any editing at all?" And the answer is of course, "Yes." But, I've grown up with Photoshop, started using it in high school and have grown to see it as a necessary part of my workflow. Even images that I look at in the camera and think, "Wow, that's a great shot." I know I can always improve in Photoshop. You can never get everything perfect in the camera no matter how hard you try, so I think Photoshop just gives you the tools to fix all those little things that you feel detract from your image. Of course you always try to get your shot as good as you can in-camera and that can cut down on your editing time, but so far I've never had a single image I've taken that I didn't feel could be improved with some editing. I agree with the other people here that suggest YouTube as a good source to pick up new Photoshop skills. As much as I know about the program, I'm always learning something new. Look up PiXimperfect on YouTube. He has some amazing tutorials. Jan 30 23 09:21 am Link MatthewGuy wrote: Step 1 is a process. Jan 30 23 09:47 am Link I hate editing and I'm terrible at it. I try to get 99% in-camera, cut keepers to the bone, and do minimal adjustments, re-using profiles if possible. 10min max per photo, perhaps 2min on average. Shoot raw, use RawTherapee/Gimp for post. Jan 30 23 10:45 am Link As most of you, quite rightly, pointed out, it is a matter of just sitting down with youtube, a few images I can practice on (or at least make a copy of the original, so if I really foul things up, I still have something to go back too) and just get at it. In this particular case, most of the photos I have that I want to work on, require only a very minimal tweak, they only really require a little work on the saturation/brightness, but oddly enough I am still finding this strangely infuriating. I use GIMP, so I am not sure if it is a matter I never quite learnt how each tool operates, or something else, it seems to take me 10-15 minutes to achieve a result that that I should take less than a minute to do. Though you are all correct - the more I do it, the more experience and practice I get, the better and more comfortable I get working on the area... Jan 30 23 11:48 am Link MatthewGuy wrote: I haven't tried GIMP so I cannot comment on it. Jan 30 23 02:51 pm Link In the early 80's, in my assistant days, I helped one of the later designers of Lightroom on his first digitally-manipulated photo-project. It involved the merging of two separate images to appear as one. The view-camera sheet-film was sent from Chicago to Houston to be digitized and composited by a woman named Raphael, who had spent huge amounts of money to build her own system, and who charged $2000/hr for her services back around 1984I! I began my own digital editing with a program called "Digital Darkroom", which came out a year or two before Photoshop existed, then switched to Photoshop at its debut. (Back then, the updates were FREE!). I continued using it through v.5, then skipped all the way to v.11, but soon dropped that and began using Lightroom exclusively when it came out. However, I ditched both of them sometime soon after everything went into "the cloud". In my estimation, PS tried to become"all things to everybody", and thus became hugely bloated, very confusing, and once I ceased doing much graphic design work, relatively useless to me personally. From what I have heard from others in recent times. LR is now MUCH easier to use, even though it seemed pretty simple to me in its earlier CD-versions. You might try using that –IF you don't mind Adobe controlling access to all of your work, and paying them forever for that access! The tip above regarding PS-Elements also sounds worth exploring. If you noodle around awhile, exploring the extreme manipulations possible, it will teach you a lot of how the various parameters interact, and you might find yourself loving some of your extreme results. I created a whole portfolio of psychedelic night-time exposures that way. Have fun first, and the skills will come as you play with the tools more. Jan 30 23 03:14 pm Link Wandering Eyebubble wrote: Yeah, do you use RAW? That fixed one of my problems a long time ago. That, along with the use of the exposure adjustment, really sped up my editing to where I feel ready to develop a workflow, and on getting and trying to learn to use neutral density and polarizing filters, the light meter, and speedlights or monolights to get most of it right in the camera, though I remain convinced I could never release an unedited image. I sometimes have the opposite problem now, of wondering if I should spend more than a few seconds editing images, and worry if I rely too much on a feature that allows me to just apply the settings from the last image I edited to the very next one I shot. Jan 30 23 10:40 pm Link phpcat wrote: I do shoot raw, now. Jan 30 23 11:48 pm Link Modelphilia wrote: I've been using Photoshop for many years , and CC version since they introduced it. Adobe doesn't control access to any of my work, it's all on hard drives in my home. I have RAW files and JPGs I can open in any program I choose, I'm trying out Nikon NX Studio now. Jan 31 23 06:04 am Link Red Sky Photography wrote: Really? That was the impression I had from the things I was hearing back when it all went to the cloud. There were photographers dropping it right-and-left for what appeared to be the same as my reasons. Either it changed over the years, or all those other people must have just been objecting to the non-ownership factor.. In any case, thanks for correcting me. I'll have to check that out. Feb 01 23 07:00 pm Link Modelphilia wrote: The Applications themselves live in the cloud ( you download them from Adobe cloud and get updates via Adobes console) and there are options if you want to integrate work flow with a cloud account, but it is in no way a requirement that the cloud be part of your workflow. The biggest change is that the apps form Adobe are now only a subscription, and if your subscription runs out, you cannot use the software any more. So if you want to go back and edit a .psd file with no subscription, you’d need to find a piece of software compatible with adobes proprietary file type. Feb 02 23 06:49 am Link I fu@king love editing, especially cleaning up skin, whitening teeth and just making clients look amazing. There's absolutely no joy in the world like seeing a 50 year old mom break down in tears because she, for the first time in her life, sees how beautiful she really is. When someone books a shoot with me by saying, "I'm just not very photogenic," I get excited to show them their final shots in person. They will often gasp and become emotional. There's a lot of satisfaction to be had in all steps of the process towards lifting people up and building their self esteem. NOTHING compares to that - absolutely nothing. Feb 03 23 08:29 am Link As a photographer, I feel shooting the photo and editing are part of the total creative process. I started in the days of film. As well as 35mm film I shot up to large format sheet film, developed it and printed it. I even would touch up the negatives by scraping the emulsion and filling in with dyes. I still have my airbrushes for retouching/editing prints. For me, I like to have total control and handle all parts of the imaging process, whether film or digital. Pick the parts of the process you like to be involved in. Feb 03 23 09:41 am Link Studio NSFW wrote: It seems the only way to preserve future edit-ability after dropping a subscription is to save all the best images as TIFFS, which are much larger than any others I think, so we'd need to stock up on external drives if that's what is wanted. Feb 03 23 03:21 pm Link Well, if you wanted to pick up where you left off, I guess. While it’s not really universal, I think of the .psd file as an intermediate step from the RAW to the final output .jpegs or .pngs or Tiffs (depending on usage). I seldom have gone back to .psd files after a job is finished, but it has happened. The GIMP claims to be able to edit a .psd, so you could embrace open sores software and go that way whilst shaking your fist at the sky about Adobe… For me, personally, if Photoshop was not part of a the larger, widely used creative design suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Premiere and AfterEffects mostly for me) I probably would be more interested in alternatives. But it is and so I am not. Feb 04 23 08:55 am Link |
