{"id":42,"date":"2011-03-08T11:30:24","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T11:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markdavidscott.com\/?page_id=42"},"modified":"2011-05-07T08:02:38","modified_gmt":"2011-05-07T08:02:38","slug":"amateur-photography-processing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/markdavidscott.com\/?page_id=42","title":{"rendered":"Photography for Non-Photographers – Processing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the second in an intended series of thoughts on a workflow intended for an amateur photographer (like me). \u00a0There\u2019s lots of advice on the web and in print from a more professional perspective, where the goals might include getting a set of contact prints to a client on the day of the shoot, or having the right color space management all the way through the print process. \u00a0I think the goals of an amateur photographer often differ quite substantially from those of a pro, and that workflow consequently should too. \u00a0I\u2019ve collected my thoughts on this as follows:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Shooting<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Processing (this page)<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Storage<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Backup and Sharing<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What’s Processing – and why bother?<\/h1>\n

    Processing (sometimes called post-processing) is the step in the workflow that comes between taking the picture with your camera, and showing it to the world – whether the latter refers to making prints, sharing the photo via the web (using Facebook, Flickr, or any number of other services), or just storing it on your computer for later viewing. \u00a0At this point, anyone that’s already serious about photography is saying “well, duh, why I am even reading this?”, and a whole bunch of others are thinking “I just copy the pictures off my camera and it works fine, what else could I possibly need to do?” \u00a0Much of this page is written for people in the latter crowd – a crowd that I was very intentionally a part of for at least the first year after I started taking pictures!<\/p>\n

    Besides actually copying pictures off your camera or other device, processing refers to any adjustments that you make to the images that come out of the camera. \u00a0Indeed, sometimes no adjustments are required at all, and the better you get at photography, the fewer adjustments needed after the fact (unless you make shooting-time decisions, like UniWB or expose-to-the-right on the Shooting page, which force you to process the pictures afterwards). \u00a0Me personally, I’m still at a skill level where lots of adjustments seem to be needed.<\/p>\n

    So what kind of things do you typically wind up adjusting during the processing phase? \u00a0Some of the major ones are as follows:<\/p>\n

    Cropping and Straightening<\/h2>\n

    Cropping refers to adjusting the borders of an image, often to exclude things from a picture that you didn’t really want to be there. Very helpful if you get a nice picture, but didn’t notice the garbage can right next to the people you were taking the picture of. \u00a0Straightening is generally the process of making the horizon level in a photo; if you didn’t hold the camera perfectly straight it often won’t be, and sometimes that can really negatively impact the picture.<\/p>\n

    Here’s an example; after lunch in Taiwan, we went home by foot and my daughter and in-laws went home by motorbike. \u00a0Because we had a head start, by chance, as we were waiting at an intersection, they pulled up also – a perfect chance to get a shot of the crazy (locally) accepted notion of kids riding around without helmets (or even having three people on a motorbike at all, if you’re not used to the idea)! \u00a0Traffic lights certainly don’t hold still, so I had just a few seconds to whip the camera out and get a shot off; I wound up with this:<\/p>\n

    \"\"
    Olivia sandwich on a motorbike<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    The picture wasn’t terrible under the circumstances (by my rather relaxed standards, anyways), but it wasn’t framed particularly well. \u00a0But as you probably already noticed – and it’s so obvious afterwards that you wonder how you missed it at the time – there’s a somewhat distracting billboard<\/span> on the right side of the picture! \u00a0Thank goodness for cropping:<\/p>\n

    \"\"
    Olivia sandwich on a motorbike, cropped<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    You may notice in this example that the aspect ratio of the picture is different; the top is the 3 x 2 aspect ratio that’s native to the camera; the bottom is a more square 5 x 4 aspect ratio. \u00a0Different pictures look better with different aspect ratios; sometimes you want a square, sometimes you want something very long or very tall. \u00a0Turning your camera just gives you a choice of two; cropping lets yo go with whatever works. \u00a0The banner image for this blog (at the time of writing) is a series of baby\/toddler bottles lined up on the kitchen counter (because we had so ridiculously many of them); but the cropped out parts are terribly cluttered and uninteresting.<\/p>\n

    Exposure and Brightness<\/h2>\n

    The page on Shooting already gave an example, in talking about things you can do with RAW that you can’t do with JPEG (at least without heavy quality loss), of adjusting the exposure level of an image. \u00a0But you can get beyond just having the “correct” exposure; for example, the image may be bright enough, but whole areas of the image may just look black (e.g. areas in shadow) even though your camera may have captured some detail there. \u00a0Or there might be bright areas that are getting washed out that you want to bring back some detail on. \u00a0Many tools allow you to adjust these kinds of things.<\/p>\n

    With some tools, and if you have a little more time, you can selectively<\/strong> adjust the exposure of only certain parts of the image, a process known as “burning and dodging” (from the film days). \u00a0It sounds like – and can be – a lot of work, but I can’t even count the times where I messed up a shot because the background was bright and the foreground (people’s faces) were way too dark. \u00a0The professional solution to that is assistants that use reflectors to bounce some natural light back up on your subject’s faces. \u00a0The practical solution that I sometimes forget is to use fill flash – but that doesn’t always work either and rarely looks too natural even when it does. Local exposure adjustments don’t always look good especially if things were too wrong to begin with, but can definitely help. \u00a0Here’s an example, on a bright day, shot in front of Niagara Falls:<\/p>\n

    \"\"
    Aimee and Olivia at the falls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    The expressions, especially Aimee’s, were worth keeping to me, but the faces were unusably dark. \u00a0Making the whole picture brighter was easy, but not an option as it would wash out the sky and the falls. \u00a0Fortunately, it was easy to apply some local exposure adjustments, to come up with something at least somewhat usable:<\/p>\n

    \"\"
    Aimee and Olivia, faces visible<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    There were a few other adjustments above, but the most obvious was definitely lightening up the faces.<\/p>\n

    White Balance<\/h2>\n

    Our brains do a great job of hiding just how context-sensitive the concept of “white” is. \u00a0It tells us that a white sheet of paper is the same color as the white you see on a monitor, until you hold them up side-by-side (assuming that the paper isn’t being lit only by your monitor!) \u00a0These differences are just driven by the fact that different sources of light – the sun at different times of the day, incandescent bulbs, fluorescent tubes, halogen lamps, etc. all have different color temperatures that make things look different. \u00a0This is a pretty complex subject and it’s actually pretty amazing that cameras are so good at guessing what “white” should be in any given scene – but they do make mistakes, and fixing this afterwards can be pretty crucial.<\/p>\n

    The example, of the church at Sacr\u00e9-Coeur, Paris on the Shooting page highlighted this as well as any of the pictures I have, save perhaps for some extreme examples. \u00a0It also highlights how if you have multiple sources of light – in that case, incandescent lamps shining on the church, and the sky in the background at a very different color temperature – you essentially have to pick which one you’re going to be balancing for.<\/p>\n

    Sometimes, you won’t be going for absolute accuracy in setting white balance. \u00a0You could take a grey card and get a reference sample, but at least for the casual things I take pictures of, I usually adjust white balance afterwards to get the picture to look the way I remember, or the way I wanted it to look. \u00a0Sometimes, it’s just a preference thing; for example, I intentionally went with two very different white balance settings even though these two pictures were under exactly the same conditions – because I liked something about each. \u00a0The first is the camera-chosen setting of 4900K, which looked a little yellow:<\/p>\n

    \"\"
    A dangerous driver; 4900K white balance (as shot)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    In a second shot, I set white balance to a much cooler 3700K, just to get a different look:<\/p>\n

    \"\"
    Dangerous driver; 3700K white balance and much more blue<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Ironically, Olivia’s skin tones look closer to natural to me in the second shot than the first. \u00a0Still, the majority of the time, I leave white balance alone unless the camera’s choice seems “wrong” to me.<\/p>\n

    Contrast and Saturation<\/h2>\n

    While there’s may other things you might want to adjust in processing – and the tool you use will determine the set of options that are available to you – the last that I’ll mention here are contrast and saturation. \u00a0Both of these contribute to how “punchy” an image looks.<\/p>\n

    High contrast generally means exaggerated differences between otherwise similar tones; but because the difference between the brightest and darkest part of an image are fixed (whether we’re talking about a monitor with a 3000:1 contrast ratio, or around 500:1 for prints), this often means pushing some of the darker details all the way into black, and some of the lighter details all the way into white, so that there’s more “room” for midrange tones. \u00a0If you care, there’s much better explanations of this; I think it’s a preference and style thing. \u00a0If I have two similar images and want to keep both, I’ll often use a higher contrast on one than the other.<\/p>\n

    Saturation refers to the intensity of colors; black & white photos have no saturation, whereas higher saturation levels adjust colors to be more intense (by emphasizing the primary hue \u00a0of any given part of the image). \u00a0Too much saturation can look unnatural; too little can make an image look bland. \u00a0This one is definitely a personal preference!<\/p>\n

    Tools for Processing<\/h1>\n

    If you’re taking pictures so good that you never, ever run into the need to crop or straighten things, then you might have missed the clear “amateur” disclaimer used very liberally in trying to explain the intended recipient of all this material. \u00a0Otherwise, hopefully the benefit of doing a little more than just copying files off the camera is clear, in which case the important question becomes how to do all of this stuff. \u00a0I certainly haven’t used every tool that’s out there, so I’ll just share a few thoughts on the tools that I have used (or that are worth mentioning).<\/p>\n

    I will start with the casual mentions or things I’ve used fleetingly, and move to the two tools I think you should really consider – Picasa, and Lightroom.<\/p>\n

    Adobe Photoshop CS5 (or earlier\/later)<\/h2>\n

    \"\"<\/a>This is the “gold standard” for professional photo retouching, and is normally around $700. \u00a0I picked this up as an upgrade from the consumer version, Photoshop Elements, during a particular good offer for $300, in part because Photoshop Elements didn’t do a good job of working with 16-bit files from RAW images.<\/p>\n

    My advice on this? \u00a0For processing, avoid Photoshop CS5 at all costs<\/strong>. \u00a0It’s a great tool for professionals, it’s incredibly flexible, and it will completely amaze you with features like Content Aware Fill (which can rather magically make some things disappear). \u00a0I got sucked in (and $300 got sucked out) because of those truths, when I should have realized that I might use Photoshop once in a while for editing<\/span><\/strong> (which is its primary intent), or when other tools I was already using (Lightroom) just made a certain thing really difficult. \u00a0If you don’t already know Photoshop, it will take a lot longer than any other candidate tool to learn; even once you learn it, it’s great if you want to spend the effort to really tune up a photo and remove every last spot for publishing professionally – it takes way too much effort to tune up the 200 photos you took at a party over the weekend.<\/p>\n

    More information:\u00a0http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/photoshop<\/a>; $700<\/p>\n

    Adobe Photoshop Elements<\/h2>\n

    \"\"Almost all of the complexity of Photoshop, with a roughly equal time investment, in a cheaper package. \u00a0I got Photoshop Elements together with Premier Elements (a consumer video editing tool) in a bundle for $80, which I think was a pretty good deal. \u00a0Now, I should have realized that if I wasn’t using Photoshop Elements to modify my pictures, I wouldn’t use CS5 either, but “saving $400” just seemed like such a “deal” (and it was – for Adobe).<\/p>\n

    Note that if you do want to do “creative” things with a photo, like making a collage, or blending multiple photos together, or adding labels and what not, then indeed you might really need an editing tool like this. \u00a0And I’m by no means saying that these are bad tools, just that you probably won’t use them everyday.<\/p>\n

    Elements does have an “Organizer” function that CS5 doesn’t, but I didn’t find it particularly appealing – certainly not enough to switch from what I was already doing.<\/p>\n

    More information:\u00a0http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/photoshopel<\/a>; $80<\/p>\n

    Nikon View NX 2<\/h2>\n

    \"\"<\/a>Nikon View NX 2 is a tool specifically from Nikon, that works only with Nikon cameras, and is specifically intended as a raw processing tool. \u00a0View NX 2 is very basic, but it’s a free download that gives you the ability to adjust any of the basic things you could have adjusted when originally taking the picture. \u00a0It’s also handy for producing JPEGs that look essentially the same as what would have come out of the camera, so if you are RAW-for-fixing-problems-only person, it’s not a bad way to go. \u00a0And again, it’s free.<\/p>\n

    I never used this too seriously, because (a) it wasn’t a solution for the Canon PowerShot S90 that I carry as a compact camera (and which shoots in Canon’s CR2 format), and (b) it was really, really slow to work with. \u00a0But if I wanted to stick with free software, I’d probably use this in those situations where I wasn’t satisfied with the camera’s default JPEG output. \u00a0It’s nice that this tool just works with your files on disk as they are, and doesn’t need to maintain its own database, etc.<\/p>\n

    There is a paid version with more options, Capture NX 2, but even professionals seem to recommend against using it in its current form.<\/p>\n

    More information: http:\/\/imaging.nikon.com\/products\/imaging\/lineup\/software\/viewnx2<\/a>; Free<\/p>\n

    <\/a>P.S. Nice logo.<\/p>\n

    Apple Aperture<\/h2>\n

    \"\"I’ve never used Apple Aperture. \u00a0However, I’ve often seen it compared to my favorite tool in this category, Adobe Lightroom, with people that argue for either but what seems to be a general agreement that they are comparable tools.<\/p>\n

    When I was originally deciding what tool to use when I wanted a little more than Picasa could provide, online research suggested that Aperture would be a good contender. \u00a0However, the issue with any Apple product (except perhaps iTunes and Quicktime) is that you basically need to buy into the entire Apple value chain – that is, throw out my Windows PC and replace it with hardware, software, and perhaps even power cords from Apple. \u00a0So it’s pretty much all-or-nothing, and so far, I’ve chosen nothing. \u00a0Which is a shame, because besides Aperture, other Apple software products like Keynote really do look first-class.<\/p>\n

    Still, if you’ve already gone the Apple route, it’s worth considering Aperture. \u00a0As long as you know you’ll never switch back to a PC (which means you’re pretty much counting on Apple to provide the best computers, forever – which perhaps they can indeed do).<\/p>\n

    More information:\u00a0http:\/\/www.apple.com\/aperture<\/a>; $200<\/p>\n

    Google Picasa<\/h2>\n

    \"\"In my opinion, Picasa is an outstanding free tool<\/strong> that I strongly recommend. \u00a0If I’m helping a friend or family set up their system, it’s the default thing that I install for managing photos; it’s so stunningly better than Windows Photo Viewer that it’s embarrassing.<\/p>\n

    The processing options in Picasa are limited, especially with respect to the level of control that is provided, but all the basics are there, and work decently. \u00a0Cropping, straightening, red-eye, white balance, and lighting are all present, and you can adjust color and contrast to some extent also. \u00a0There’s some limited integration with Picnik, an online photo editing tool that Google acquired, but that was also excellent for the amateur in comparison to Photoshop’s complexity – and also free.<\/p>\n

    Picasa is no longer the tool I use for primary processing, for several reasons:<\/p>\n