Need advise~ to PP or not to PP

[jenovacux]

Hi~ this is my 3rd attempt on landscape photography and played around with the PP function on my mac air iphoto..
I only PP the photos with saturation, contrast, sharpness and some shadows.

My question is it legit to PP? or best to leave it OOC and learn to take "perfect" photos OOC?

Below are some OOC and PP samples of my attempts. Please advise and critique for improvement accordingly. Thanks!

OOC:


PP:


OOC:


PP:

 

[jenovacux]

OOC:


PP:


OOC:


PP:

 

[cks2k2]

Your camera does some degree of PP (even in RAW for some cameras) so your question isn't valid.
The better question is: how much PP is too much?

 

[Achim Reh]

Your colors or off for some of your editing . I would say maybe over-saturated .
There is generally nothing wrong to edit photos in photoshop....at least form my point of view. It's like the darkroom in the old days, and there, we did a lot of work as well, crop, color, soften or harden , lights an shadows. And for negative development, we also increased or decreased sharpness and contrast. So, nothing wrong with photoshop. BUt , as in the darkroom, learning to use photoshop is a long process. ;-)

 

[jenovacux]

Thx Reh!

Ya.. i admit i am guilty of bumping the saturation to max to make it more "colorful", although at the same time i felt its rendered the photo unreal (like a painting esp for the sunset shot..)
How do i est the right amount of saturation? Using the color histogram?

 

[brapodam]

Who cares if it's "legit" or not? Ultimately when we look at photos, we look at the end result. Doesn't matter whether or not you PP. If it's nice, it's nice. Not nice means not nice. If something comes out of the camera and is not as good as you expected, don't use the "I don't PP" excuse to cover it; it doesn't work.

There is no rule saying that you can't PP your photos. Just because you can get better photos straight out of the camera but worse end result doesn't make you better. It's like saying you spent more time studying than anybody else but you fail the exam. The end result is what matters.

By the way if you want to judge if it's oversaturated, just see the photo and judge for yourself. If it appears unnatural, then it's overdone. Simple as that. A better way to boost the colours of a photo without oversaturating is using the Vibrance tool instead. Vibrance increases the saturation of the muted colours in the photo. Saturation increases the colour saturation globally.

 

[photoart]

I think it's a matter of personal taste. There's no right or wrong

Same as in the case of cooking;

Some people think fish is best eaten raw (sashimi)
Some like steam fish
Some like sweet sour fish( but some people think the original taste is covered)



Check out this thread for some examples of pp power
http://www.clubsnap.com/forums/digi...ur-before-after-post-processing-pictures.html

 

[robin-ang]

Who cares if it's "legit" or not? Ultimately when we look at photos, we look at the end result. Doesn't matter whether or not you PP. If it's nice, it's nice. Not nice means not nice. If something comes out of the camera and is not as good as you expected, don't use the "I don't PP" excuse to cover it; it doesn't work.

There is no rule saying that you can't PP your photos. Just because you can get better photos straight out of the camera but worse end result doesn't make you better. It's like saying you spent more time studying than anybody else but you fail the exam. The end result is what matters.

By the way if you want to judge if it's oversaturated, just see the photo and judge for yourself. If it appears unnatural, then it's overdone. Simple as that. A better way to boost the colours of a photo without oversaturating is using the Vibrance tool instead. Vibrance increases the saturation of the muted colours in the photo. Saturation increases the colour saturation globally.

I was agree with this to...there are no right and no wrong..it is depend on you,how does you see your art work, each another people have there different taste as another bro said some like raw some like steam fish..

I at the 1st I also same like you don't know how to process then always pull max the vibrance and the saturation make the whole photo colour more enhance but actually make the photo more worse, but what was I did is I always see another people photo and often to shoot and edit it learn from YouTube or ask another senior.

I believe the senior on Cs is very kind there will share with you

Enjoys

 

[snowc]

Personally for me, it's definitely OK to PP. What matter most is the end result. As one of the seniors pointed out, your camera already does some degree of PP for you.

 

[jenovacux]

Yeah~ thanks everyone for all the helpful replies and photoart's thread.

Thats led me to read up more on this area, interestingly jpeg format itself already have in-camera sharpening PP to certain extends, hence if I shoot raw and dont do sharpening.. it may turn out worst than jpeg version!!

Great advise on vibrance too! Fully agreed that over saturation gave the inital bang feeling.. but upon closer look theres color-clipping, detail lost and unrealistic etc.. haha will experiment more on it and definitely wont bump saturation to max again

One more question, should I adjust exposure vs shadow/highlighting? Which one result in lost on details.. I read something like excess usage of shadow/highlight cause shadow/highlight clipping..

 

[snowc]

Yeah~ thanks everyone for all the helpful replies and photoart's thread.

Thats led me to read up more on this area, interestingly jpeg format itself already have in-camera sharpening PP to certain extends, hence if I shoot raw and dont do sharpening.. it may turn out worst than jpeg version!!

Great advise on vibrance too! Fully agreed that over saturation gave the inital bang feeling.. but upon closer look theres color-clipping, detail lost and unrealistic etc.. haha will experiment more on it and definitely wont bump saturation to max again

One more question, should I adjust exposure vs shadow/highlighting? Which one result in lost on details.. I read something like excess usage of shadow/highlight cause shadow/highlight clipping..

Depends on your adjustment, both exposure & shadow/highlighting may result in lost details. Not sure about iPhoto but for Adobe ACR there is a recovery tool for recovering mid-tone details from blown highlights. Personally, I will adjust exposure first and then move on to shadow/highlight to boost the contrast.

If you already had the intention to PP, my advice is to shoot RAW. A Raw file contain much more data than a JPEG file so you can have maximum detail and control over your image.

 

[jenovacux]

Yea~ I was shooting jpeg+raw, now I decided to simply shoot raw since iphoto PP function is convenient.
Its functions are very basic compared to lightroom and ps, but just the right pace since i gonna shoot more and take pp slower (newbie shooter anyway )

Yea~ theres recovery tool in iphoto. Is there any issue with just bump max recovery? Since my understanding is it recover details.. please correct me if I am wrong

 

[grandmaster33]

I would say go ahead and make ur pics look nicer if it really does.

So long as the results looks appealing, natural.

 

[robin-ang]

I would say go ahead and make ur pics look nicer if it really does.

So long as the results looks appealing, natural.

Yup agree..
What you like may not be our like...so it is depend on your eyes

 

[chrlimsy123]

I like this discussion on PP and would like to pickup the skill. Anyone can advise where to start? Thanks in advance.

 

[brapodam]

I like this discussion on PP and would like to pickup the skill. Anyone can advise where to start? Thanks in advance.

I'll just suggest a few

-Youtube
-Lightroom Killer Tips
-Google
-Photoshop Killer Tips

 

[catchlights]

Hi~ this is my 3rd attempt on landscape photography and played around with the PP function on my mac air iphoto..
I only PP the photos with saturation, contrast, sharpness and some shadows.

My question is it legit to PP? or best to leave it OOC and learn to take "perfect" photos OOC?

Below are some OOC and PP samples of my attempts. Please advise and critique for improvement accordingly. Thanks!

OOC:


PP:


OOC:


PP:

let us take food as an example to illustrate the PP thingy.

the content of a photo is like the taste of the food.

PP is like garnishing the food you have cooked.

if the food is nice itself, little garnishing will do. too much garnishing will draw the attention away from food itself.

but if the food taste is bad, no amount of garnishing can save the food.

now, do you get the "picture"?

 

[snowc]

Yea~ I was shooting jpeg+raw, now I decided to simply shoot raw since iphoto PP function is convenient.
Its functions are very basic compared to lightroom and ps, but just the right pace since i gonna shoot more and take pp slower (newbie shooter anyway )

Yea~ theres recovery tool in iphoto. Is there any issue with just bump max recovery? Since my understanding is it recover details.. please correct me if I am wrong

Although recovery help to recover details, it comes at the cost of reducing image contrast. If you are interested, i would advice a visit to the "Digital Darkroom" section of this forum.

 

[jenovacux]

I'll just suggest a few

-Youtube
-Lightroom Killer Tips
-Google
-Photoshop Killer Tips

Although recovery help to recover details, it comes at the cost of reducing image contrast. If you are interested, i would advice a visit to the "Digital Darkroom" section of this forum.

Yea~ will check it out
Haha so many food and fishes, yea~ gonna cook more food to improve

Again~ thx everyone

 

[joshua182]

It's the "feel". Let your artistic and creative direction guide you.