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Duncan Fawkes

Australian Landscape Photography
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10 Ways to Improve: Post-processing

August 1, 2012

This post is one of ten appearing in the series 10 Ways To Improve Your Landscape Photography. For a long time I felt that the old adage "get it right in camera" meant that the image should be perfect when you copy it onto your computer. What I've come to realise is that leaving the camera to make the post-processing decisions is equivalent to leaving the camera on Auto in the first place.

For our our images to really say what we want we need to take control of that post-processing. David duChemin sums it up best for me when he says "there are three images that go into making your final photograph. The first is the image you visualize – the story you are compelled to tell. The second is the scene you capture with the camera. The third is the image you refine in post-production."

I've now come to realise that "get it right in camera" doesn't mean finish the image in camera. It means optimise the image you carry forward for refinement. That means getting your crop right (or at least, not getting it way wrong!), getting a good exposure, getting focus right, making appropriate use of aperture, shutter speed and ISO, to name a few.

My images have become much stronger since I started being more aware of post-processing and the choices I could make in the darkroom (Adobe Lightroom in my case) to emphasise what I saw - or in fact "feel" - in the field. For many "Photoshop" and post-processing have become a bad word associated with cheating and garish creations that bear little resemblance to the original, and with some justification.

However that does not undermine the rest of us using these tools to make often very subtle improvements to our images that the tiny microprocessor in the camera is unable to predict and apply. So I would encourage you to become proficient with basic post-processing skills. The judicious use of white balance (if you shoot RAW), levels and colours will make an immediate impact on your images.

To summarise be aware that post-processing is happening regardless. In the same way we don't want the camera to control our aperture and shutter speed, we shouldn't want it to decide how to process the final image either.

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