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just wondering how many post process their photos?...seems for myself the most I would retouch is in the form of cropping or resizing or at most auto levels if overexposed...so just curious of other members.

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Having a digi cam have allowed me to shoot at every available moment and perspectives.

I sotta flooded my PC with JPEGs and RAW files

Due to time constraints, normally I'll just touch up the obvious keepers and leave the rest alone.

Normally I use the following combination....Despeckle, USM, saturation, contrast and curves.

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Yes,
Most of the time its after I crop a pictrue and there is a telephone pole or something sticking out in the shot that draws the eye to it.

I normally stamp tool the image out or airbrush it out...

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It depends. When I do people (mostly wife and kids) I dont find I need to do much to the pic. Every once in a while I may adjust the lighting / contrast a bit, but not much else.

I also enjoy photographing "stuff" such as my knife and flashlight collection (hey, we all have a strange little hobbies ). For those I do quite a bit of re-touching such as completely altering the background and lighting and color adjustments on the object itself. Also if I find a flaw on the object that I did not notice before I will use my software to fix it.

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thanks for everyones answers...unique and very interesting...

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I do retouch my photos because my skill is still young.

For sure I will do some shapening after resize the photo to regain its original sharpness.

I will do auto level if the explosure is a bit out.

I will use curves, layers and other methods to save my photo if the explosure is far out.

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There are two types of photographers :-

The crowd that trusts, depends on and follows the camera's vision and those who trust themselves and make the camera to follow and capture their vision.

I am working hard to join the later group.

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i try to retouch most of the pics i post cos I am not really proficient in shooting yet.... (neither am I in PS) I haven post any here yet but u can see some over at http://yappiez.smugmug.com/

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I have been trying to focus on geeting the right picture from the camera, rather than digital darkroom tips. However, for the keepers 95% of the time there is some sort of retouching involved. Typically it includes:

1. Cropping, if needed, but always keeping a 10x8 ratio.
2. Noise reduction (limitation from my 3.14 megapix Coolpix 995).
3. Resampling to get 260~300 ppi @ 8x10 in using bicubic interpolation (I've found that the difference between PS bicubic, PS Step-Interpolation and Genuine Fractals is not noticeable when upsizing to print 300 ppi 8x10in from my 3.14 MP camera).
4. Remove color cast if is is too obvious. This is done via levels in PS, or using the curves + thereshold adjust mask technique from Scott Kelby's book.
5. Slight USM.

If the shot s a portrait I may apply a diffuse or soft focus filter as a layer mask on top of the picture, to reduce blemishes.

The original always get copied untouched before anything is done. Unfortunately I use PS 5.0, so Exif info is lost during processing.

For a few pictures I play with some "artistic" filters (watercolor, ink and oil, etc).

Normally out of 100 shots I keep 10 to 25 to post process. From those I print 5 or so.

Hope this helps.

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The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and seldom simple
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I retouch many of my pictures. Colour, saturation, crop, levels, etc..
IMO, there's nothing wrong with touching up your image.. it's nothing different then when photographers go in and make adjustments in the darkroom. To get the best image possible.
You don't take a photograph.. you make it. - Ansel Adams

Sometimes the result you want.. can only be acheived with post processing.

Like this one

How unsafe would it have been for me to actually go that fast ;)

Last edited by on Aug 22nd, 2003 at 04:46 PM

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Yup.....retouch just about everything.....levels, curves...add a bird or two...

bud

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warmest regards,
Bud Guinn
Nikon 5700
http://www.budguinn.com

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Yes--I usually find that doing levels and a little unsharp mask makes a big difference. There are some caases where leveling the horizon, cropping or increasing saturation makes a usable picture out of a dud.

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Regards,
--Ed--
CP5000, CP990, N80, D100

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I try not to retouch any more than I have to. I don't use digital very much, as my digital camera is a very old Agfa ePhoto 1280, which barely makes 1MP. My film camera is a Canon Rebel Ti, and I scan my "keeper" pics in. I usually crop and resize for the web, and additional editing if needed.

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Most of my digital photos are scanned from negatives, so I have to touch up the dust spots. Usually I will run the auto level but if it becomes too artificial, I will adjust the contrast and brightness manually. I am not very proficient with photoshop and it is quite a pain to play around, so I mainly stick to the basic functions. I will resize those images for web galleries and run an unsharp mask to compensate for the loss in sharpness through scanning. Anyway, I don't think that one could retouch to transform a poorly executed shots to a great one.

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Still not working with digital images (but getting to do so real soon) I scan my slides with a NIKON scanner and use ICE to do the job. After that I often have to sharpen up a bit and crop some parts away. This all happens with the nIKON scan software

Then I have Adobe photoshop limited edition which I use for adjusting levels.

In rare cases I will retouch the colorbalance with the NIKON software (graphs approach)

Have currently received PS 7 and already had the book. Wanna try out some more interesting things (picking out good parts and sticking them on top of others (layers), but so far I have never done so (I'm used to working with computers all day, so I think I will be able to do so).

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Henk Wallays

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I wanted to be able to rely on my camera to take great pictures every time. But I found out that that is an unrealistic expectation.

Photoshop can really do a number on a photo that was not correctly exposed, or was taken in strange light, or needs a little extra sharpness.

Alas, my 30-day trial just expired. I am trying to wait until version 8 comes out so I don't have to pay their huge upgrade fee.

Tim

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