A question for you all!

[LeeroyB]

Just getting into photography and was wondering whether the majority of photos that you all post up are straight from the cam, or have been played with in photoshop or another similar programme?

Just wondering how close to the real shots they can be from the relative cams.

 

[denno75uk]

Just had a look at my flickr ones and I'd say it's about 60% PP. The ones I've altered are the ones I want to show off. The ones I leave are OK as is for the shot/subject. There's also a vast range of PPing on mine, from a miniscule boost of contrast to a tweak of everything including colour, brightness, contrast, hue, sharpness etc. I think it depends how particular you are and how well you know your camera.

If you're a proficient photographer then you'll probably get a higher proportion of shots that you'd be happy with straight out of the camera.

Mortals can usually see something about the shots they'd improve and fortunately with digital that's pretty easy to do.

I'm trying to be more proficient but am still very, very mortal.

 

[Tobers]

I generally take a bunch of photos on a particular outing, then dump them all on my PC when I get back (deleting them from the memory card so its clean ready for next time).

Then I'll browse through them and discard all the useless ones.

I'll then pick the best ones that I want to keep. I'm down to about 10-20% of the original shots by now. As I want to keep them, or even put them up on this forum for comment, critique etc, I want them to look their best so usually do some tweaking in Photoshop.

I might just do some minimal changes (such as levels, brightness etc), or go a lot further with black & white conversion, borders and so on.

 

[rickus]

This question was put by a "new to slr" photographer ,the other day,and she said that if the cameras where so good,why did everyone "cheat" in putting there work through editing progs when in the days of film you just sent the film away and got it back untouched. ,,A very good reply was put by a long time photographer, Whom said, " When you sent your film away to the lab,there where and are sevral processes that it goes through and contrast and colour are played with and sevrall other procedures.So the only difference today is "you" have the choice of doing ,or not,as the case may be, yourself.

So there is more controle over the pics by the taker.

and it,s a very big debate ,how far you alter them and when you go beyond that point ?that turns into artistic license,instead of art...
PS, I tweak the contrast and must admit,the clone tool can get rid of some intruding objects very nicely.

 

[Radiohead]

Any SLR can be set up to output punchy images that won't need any PP - but they still need the photographer to expose correctly and capture the shot with some technical ability.

I prefer to shoot RAW and take control of the final output afterwards.

 

[senu]

The idea that photographs which have had PP is "cheating" is a bit simplistic.

In the heyday of film from negative to print some enhancement occurred
Similarly even if your give your unaltered images to a printshop , the software may " enhance" for best print quality

Many Cameras do have in-camera processing of Colour (saturation), Sharpness, Contrast ....as such these settings affect the way an image looks even right out of the camera.
Many DSLRs have "picture styles" , image parameters etc which alter the image before it even leaves the camera
The idea is not "cheating" . It is enhancement. this is largely legitimate because sometimes the camera fails to record an scene the way out eyes perceive it and PP helps to correct that somewhat. Knowing how to use your camera to get that last bit of detail, recognising its limitations and PPing is IMO a skill worth aquiring
As is well known, most digital cameras apply anti-aliasing to images "out of the box". This means that any correction of that by USM in PS to give a better image is worthwhile ( IMO)

 

[jonnypb]

90% straight from the camera for me, but thats only because i'm a newbie to dslr and PP - once i get more spare time i'll learn PP and would expect more of my pics will be PP than straight from the cam in the coming months

 

[Bursar]

I've only recently started to look at what cameras can do besides setting 'landscape' mode and clicking the button. Now I'm getting to grips with apperature and shutter speed, I can also appreciate what can be done afterwards.

I'm still definately at the beginner stage, but if tweaking a photo helps make it a more pleasing image to look at (or more accurate to what was photographed) then I'm all for it