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Chlorin8ed
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10/28/2014 08:09PM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
First of all, I am NOT accusing anyone by any means, but some of these pictures are just unreal :-), they are awesome. So I am just wondering, do must of you touch them up, photo shopped a little, or are they just natural from the camera?

The pic's are amazing!!!!
 
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hobbydog
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10/28/2014 08:51PM  
I think digital darkroom is a better term. There are lots of post processing techniques that enhance photos.
 
10/29/2014 06:18AM  
I post a lot of photos on this site in various places. Some are "au naturel" or just how they were shot, but I would say that the majority of them receive basic editing or tweaking. I don't own Photoshop but use a free and basic program called Picasa most of the time. The tweaks that are most common have to do with the lighting (contrast, shadows, highlights) and occasionally sharpness although that generally doesn't seem to do much. Cropping a photo to adjust composition is pretty standard too. Rarely do I do anything with color or saturation. When I return from a trip I really enjoy sitting down at the PC and reviewing the hundreds of photos that I usually take, and doing some very quick and basic editing to enhance them. Not a lot different than some of the tweaking that occurred with film back in the day. Not sure how everyone else feels about it but I don't think it's cheating.

What I don't do and where I would draw the line is using a sophisticated photo editing program to transform a picture into something totally different than what was shot with the camera.
 
10/29/2014 07:23AM  
I bump up the contrast, and work with shadows and highlights also. I do not own or use photoshop.
It's NOT cheating.
 
redoleary
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10/29/2014 08:09AM  
I use Lightroom, photoshop's little brother. I shoot RAW so if I took the photo's right out of the camera they wouldn't look like much. When a camera, p/s or dslr takes a jpeg it automatically adds the manufactures "secret sauce" to it, baking in a certain amount of saturation, white balance, etc. etc. With raw I can make my own sauce. So I do a certain amount of cropping, contrast, some dodging and burning ect. (the electronic equivalent thereof) but I do not do any compositing where I take the backgound out of one photo and attach it to the foreground of another.
 
bbrown6057
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10/29/2014 10:01AM  
quote redoleary: "I use Lightroom, photoshop's little brother. I shoot RAW so if I took the photo's right out of the camera they wouldn't look like much. When a camera, p/s or dslr takes a jpeg it automatically adds the manufactures "secret sauce" to it, baking in a certain amount of saturation, white balance, etc. etc. With raw I can make my own sauce. So I do a certain amount of cropping, contrast, some dodging and burning ect. (the electronic equivalent thereof) but I do not do any compositing where I take the backgound out of one photo and attach it to the foreground of another. "


+1 Lightroom and on special occasions I'll run an action or two through Photoshop
 
SteveElms73
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10/29/2014 10:06AM  
I edit all my digital images using Lightroom. Some images require just a touch of sharpening or noise reduction where others get a lot more attention. It all depends on the look you are going for and the style. I like my pictures to have a dramatic look to them. It's not to everyone's taste but it's kind of my style and it's what I like :)That's the beauty of photography!
 
10/29/2014 12:57PM  
i also use picasa for touch ups and sharpening and cropping.
this very comment popped up in my mind the other day as i was looking at my photos and thinking that some looked wonderful just the way they were and the vast majority needed "work". so then i started of thinking of ways i could shoot a good photo right from the get-go.

learn more about my camera! i'm not big on reading manuals cover to cover but realize i should do this for my cameras.

i would be interested in a thread where we showed the original photo and then the touched-up photo, maybe explaining the why of touching it up and what processes were used.

it seems quite a few members of this forum are professional photographers which can be daunting for someone like me. however, i have learned quite a bit from studying those photos so i'm curious about the process.
 
bbrown6057
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10/29/2014 02:46PM  
Do you shoot in RAW mode Sheryl?
 
hobbydog
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10/29/2014 04:36PM  
quote SteveElms73: "It all depends on the look you are going for and the style. I like my pictures to have a dramatic look to them. It's not to everyone's taste but it's kind of my style and it's what I like :)That's the beauty of photography!"


Very true. Like any other art you can do what you like and others can like or not.

I like to play around sometimes. My artistic ability is quite limited so I cheat sometimes. After some basic edits Lightroom I will sometimes take a picture that might get deleted and use a plugin call Topaz Adjust. There are lots of creative presets that might make a certain picture do something else. Below are a couple examples. In this one I had about 100 pictures of the rats on the edge of the ice. They were being very photogenic. There were several I liked but wanted to try some thing different with one of them. I liked it a lot, my wife didn't.



This was a shot from the some day. The ice was going out and there were some nice light angles and reflections. A 100 shots and some cool pics but nothing popped. Ran it through the Topaz plugin and got what I was looking for. Not sure what others think but it is the ice out picture I was looking for while paddling around the lake that day.



 
bbrown6057
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10/29/2014 06:23PM  
right out of camera with no adjustments


ran through LR. Adjusted exposure, shadows, highlights and other stuff.


Same pic ran through LR and added a PS action called Giant Peach from the Gatsby collection.


You can be as subtle or go as crazy as you want. It's all in what your tastes are. It's pretty fun to turn a so-so shot into one that you think looks good. This one certainly isn't anything special, just showing you an example of what can be done.
 
Chlorin8ed
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10/29/2014 08:20PM  
Thanks everyone.
I have tried Lightroom and it was really confusing to me. I am like Mocha, I learn more from watching someone verses reading manuals, so I gave up on it. I will look into Picasa.

Again, not trying to rain on anyone parade, was just really curious :-)

 
wetcanoedog
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10/29/2014 08:46PM  
remember that Ansel Adams did a lot of dodge and burn in his photos.
mine are right out of the camera chip.
 
redoleary
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10/30/2014 04:36AM  
quote Chlorin8ed: "Thanks everyone.
I have tried Lightroom and it was really confusing to me. I am like Mocha, I learn more from watching someone verses reading manuals, so I gave up on it. I will look into Picasa.


Again, not trying to rain on anyone parade, was just really curious :-)


"


I feel the same way about Photoshop as you do about Lightroom, so I use it only on rare occasions where I'm making a pano or something. Virtually everything I know about Lightroom was learned by watching youtube, and I'm sure the same could be said for Photoshop, I just haven't spent the time.

P.S. No offense taken, it's a legit question.
 
10/30/2014 08:18AM  
quote Chlorin8ed: "First of all, I am NOT accusing anyone by any means, but some of these pictures are just unreal :-), they are awesome. So I am just wondering, do must of you touch them up, photo shopped a little, or are they just natural from the camera?

The pic's are amazing!!!!"


Even untouched photos, "just natural from the camera", have been treated to the cameras own processing algorithm. Different brands/models process for different photo properties. With film cameras somebody makes a decision on final image acceptability.

If you are interested in post processing your own, free programs and pay for programs, can get you started. When I went digital format I headed straight for using raw files and working with them. I downloaded as many free trial programs as I could find, worked with ones I liked and bought the one I kept using the most.

Right now I use, Olympus viewer 3 (free with Oly cameras), for theri file system and speed of transferring files. Corel Aftershot Pro (paid for program), for it's finished image processing options. I tried Photoshop and Lightroom as trials along with other programs. Found I preferred Bibble Labs (now Corel), over all the other trials combined. Try a few, only cost your time. May just find the program the suits you best of all!


butthead
 
bbrown6057
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10/30/2014 10:13AM  
If you have problems understanding Lightroom, stay the hell away from Photoshop lol. It is a very powerful program, but the learning curve is very steep. I rarely use PS to process, I just find LR does most of what I need and it's sure a lot easier to use sliders versus learning all the tools and commands in PS. Just remember this, you can always undo things so don't be afraid to dive in and learn. You just may become a junkie like some of us lol. Youtube is great for tutorials no matter what program you chose to try out.
 
jjjds1999
senior member (91)senior membersenior member
  
01/10/2015 07:36PM  
I received Lightroom 5 for Christmas and I have been amazed at the difference in my photographs. I'm anxious to see how they look after I print them. Like bh, I downloaded the 30 day trial before buying. I've learned a lot by looking up specific actions on You Tube, but I'm still trying to figure out how to remove one command and not have to start over and lose the ones I like.

 
redoleary
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01/11/2015 07:01AM  
If you've just performed a command and don't like it hit Command and z (mac) or Ctrl and z (windows) at the same time. This will remove the last command, if you keep doing it it will keep removing the previous command.
 
bapabear
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01/11/2015 08:08AM  
Same as WCD - right out of the chip.
 
jeroldharter
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02/03/2015 10:22PM  
As Butthead said, all digital images are manipulated. If you shoot JPG images, then the RAW image from your sensor is cooked by the manufacturer in the JPG process. If you shoot RAW images, then you must adjust them - that is the idea of course.

If I go to the trouble of taking a photo, I want it to look the way I like it. No camera will do that for me, so I must use software to manipulate the RAW image. I use Lightroom for initial adjustments and then port most images in Photoshop and finally back to Lightroom.
 
halvorsonchristopher
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02/11/2015 12:22PM  
quote SteveElms73: "I edit all my digital images using Lightroom. Some images require just a touch of sharpening or noise reduction where others get a lot more attention. It all depends on the look you are going for and the style. I like my pictures to have a dramatic look to them. It's not to everyone's taste but it's kind of my style and it's what I like :)That's the beauty of photography!"

I couldn't agree more. It is also my style, which is why I love your photos.

It can be difficult to get light settings perfect in the field (especially with spur of the moment shots in the BW). Therefore it's not cheating... it's correction.

 
wetcanoedog
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02/11/2015 03:44PM  
i will admit to touching up before i take a shot.moving something out of the way to get a better photo or tossing water over rocks or moss to freshen them up.
 
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