Out of interest, my Bells photo was taken with a polariser. I take most of my landscapes with polarisers. I definitely don't regard it as post processing, and the decision to do that was made before the shot was taken!
Printable View
Out of interest, my Bells photo was taken with a polariser. I take most of my landscapes with polarisers. I definitely don't regard it as post processing, and the decision to do that was made before the shot was taken!
I written about PP because I have the impression that many people believe that PP is "manipulating: the image beyond reality.
Unfortunately there is not one camera in the market that have the power to capture what the human eye can do and no to metion the emotions that have the artist/photographer at that particular time. So the images do not reflect100% reality.
We are aware of that and for that reason we select, lens, filters, camera settings and other equipment and or options before we take the shot.
IMO there is nothing wrong with PP as long as the image reflect something close to what the photographer saw at thet particualr time.
If the photographer feel that the image captured does not reflect his emotions, also there is nothing wrong with PP manipulation beyond the basic adjustments as lon as the author mention that in the photography or classfied it as an "abstract" or "digital art" We do that in the photo forums where is a section for that particular type of photos.
Not withstanding what Chucaro said about WB and exposure, and not knowing what camera you've got, have you tried playing with the in camera settings to compensate for deficiencies in the lens ?
The D70 for example lets you adjust all sorts of things in camera including saturation and hue. I only know this cos I've just read the book, amazing what this camera can do if you can figure it all out.
Deano
Deano, it is important to know that if you process the nef or any other image from Nikon with Adobe Camera Raw, the settings of the camera are deleted.
If you like to keep the Nikon settings use Capture NX instead of Adobe,
Cheers
Deano,
problems with the lens can be corrected (not 100%) in PP but it is important thet the original image have the much information posible.
JPG will eliminate a lot of parameters or information in the image which will be lost.
If you are worried to start taken shots in raw or nef only what you can do is use more memory card but shot on dual mode nef/Jpg
Allways save in a separate file your nef files because even if they are bad today in the future when you developed more understanding of PP you will be able to recuperate a lot of images.
When you open the processed image from ACR in PS work in tiff format and save your copy in tiff as well.
While you work on your tiff image
do the following:
Go to layers and duplicate the layer so you do all the adjustments on the duplicate layer (image) and do not apset the original file.
Only do your adjustments in "new adjustment layer" wher you will adjust firts the levels and then work in curves.
In this way you do not destroy the original information and you can delete the layers if you are not happy with the result.
I recomend to you to get a copy of Photoshop for Nature Photographers by Ellen Anon and Tim Gray. It is an excellent book and easy to follow.
Please do not hesitate in asking questions, that it is why we are in this forum to help each other ;)
I use lightroom and what I like about this is you can set it up with the before and after photo side by side while you work on it...if I don't like then I just click on the history back to the original image.
I prefer to work in lightroom much more than PS.....but you need PS for things like touch ups and getting rid of more complex blemishes in the image etc....I often only need lightroom as it pretty much does everything I want it to unless I start getting arty