When you all post your pics on this site for view, are they coming straight from your digital slr cameras or do you all run them through programs on your computers to sharpen them and such? I guess what I'm asking is are they modified at all?
Most of us that shoot in RAW are making adjustments to levels and saturation (among others) in Photoshop. When saving for the web or preparing an image for printing I sharpen the image using Unsharp Mask (USM) or the Smart Sharpen tool, without sharpening most images will appear a bit soft. Keep in mind that sharpening is usually your last step and you would not want to save your original with any sharpening applied.
The original files have far too many pixels to display on a monitor and this site (and all other sites) have pixel size restrictions in order to control their database size and to have some uniformity. Therefore, one type of processing that HAS to happen is to shrink the original image to the required size. As an example; my original files are 3888 pixels by 2592 pixels or 10,077,696 total pixels. To meet the size requirements for this site I have to shrink the original to a new size of 720 pixels by 480 pixels for a total of 345,600 pixels. As a result, I have lost 9,732,096 pixels or 96.6% of the original image. Its almost hard to believe that the new image even remotely resembles the original. Needless to say, the shapes in the image have lost most of the pixels that made up their edges. Since its the edges that define shapes, you have lost most of your definition. Sharpening is a process that looks for rows of pixels that appear to be edges and rebuilds them by changing the colors and brightness of the pixels to make them stand out more, thus somewhat restoring the definition of the shapes. This makes your image look a little more like your original image despite being 97% smaller. Most of the other processing, such as color, brightness, contrast, etc. if done at all are usually performed prior to shrinking the image for display. The type and amount of other processing is, of course, entirely up to the individual and there are exactly as many opinions of how much and what type is appropriate as there are individuals.
I shoot in raw, and therefore HAVE to run them through software so they can be seen or used by anyone. I use PShop and Bridge by Adobe. It is possible to simply convert raw files to TIFF or JPEG without making any changes to the file. But how well that works depends on what camera settings you use. As a professional, I want maximum control, so I have all my camera settings set to do as little in-camera manipulation of the image data as possible.
Since it sounds like your new, and I was just as new only a year ago - let me make an analogy.
Think of your picture as food. If you have the camera set to do all the thinking for you, and you shoot in JPEG, it's like buying a frozen dinner and popping it into the microwave. Once the oven beeps, you can add a little salt or pepper, but for all intensive purposes you're pretty much done.
If you shoot in RAW, it's like going to the grocery store and geting all the ingredients to make the same meal, except now you decide how much of this, how much of that, add more of this, etc.. Then when you're all done mixing the ingredients (exposure, color balance, saturation, sharpening, etc.) you put it in the oven, and with a quick conversion - viola, out pops your custom adjusted TIFF or JPEG or PSD.
Of course, shooting in RAW means you spend a lot more time in the kitchen. (read: computer.)
Not trying to start any waves here, but isn't computer manipulation of photos kind of like cheating?? After all, when you're finished with the photograph it's not at all what you saw through the lens as far as color and the like. Just a thought, seems like a picture that was taken all natural would be more sought after?
Guy's article on art is a very good point but even if the goal is to simply record nature exactly as you saw it the camera (whether film or digital) is not a perfect tool for the job. No camera or film ever created (past or current technology) is able to recreate exactly what your eyes saw. Film and digital sensors register color differently and imperfectly and they are not near as sensitive to the same range of light as the human eye. In addition, the lenses distort the image and the camera's aperture and shutter speed settings affect the lightness/darkness, the range of focus, the color, etc. The bottom line is that pushing the shutter release on a camera in no way, shape or form will ever "exactly" reproduce what you saw. In fact, it can be a complete lie. If you have ever taken a photograph then you had to have been frequently disappointed that it was much darker than the scene you saw with your eyes (under exposed) or the clouds were flat white instead of gray (over exposed) or the colors weren't at all what you saw with your eyes. Are clouds really, flat & solid bright white? When you were looking at the sunset, was the ground in front of you really solid black with no detail? When you saw your family posed in front of the window, were their faces really so dark that you couldn't recognize them? When your friends posed in front of the new building did their skin really have a strange blue color? That is the type of things that you get straight out of a camera with no post adjustments. Does that mean that those distorted images really are "true" images, just because you didn't do anything to them after they were taken? From my experience in shooting landscapes, the camera has never given me anything that "truelly" represents "exactly" what my eyes witnessed. If I were to send someone the raw photo and tell them because I didn't do anything after it was taken, it is exactly what my eyes saw, I would be lying. On the other hand, thanks to modern computer technology and digital images, I can raise the light in the dark part of the image BACK to the levels that my eyes witnessed, I can adjust the color tones BACK to the colors that my eyes witnessed, I can adjust the brightness of the whole scene BACK to what my eyes witnessed and so on. The end result of my manipulations is that the image now is much closer to truelly representing what I saw. If you were to hold up the raw image in front of you while looking at the real scene you would see clearly that it doesn't look very much like that scene. If you were to hold up my "manipulated" image in front of you while looking at the same scene you would be amazed at how closely it represents what your eyes are seeing. So if in every sense and every detail, when directly compared, my manipulated image looks far closer to the real thing then how can you say that the raw image is more "true"?
I live in a place (Alaska) where the sky is clear, the shadows are dark and sharp and there is brilliant white snow in the same scene as almost black spruce trees. I had been frustrated for many years because of my inability to take pictures of the beautiful scenes that I live amongst and share them with friends because they never looked anything like what I was seeing. If I showed the bright snow in all its glorious detail with the subtle textures, shapes and shadows, the spruce trees were solid black and the bright colored flowers in the field in front were dark and dull. If I shot the picture so that the flowers and spruce trees looked normal, the snow was now a big flat pure white mass with no shape, shadows and textures. Three years ago I discovered digital photography and computer software that can adjust the light and color levels of digital photos. Now, even though the camera is incapable of re-creating exactly what my eyes saw, I can adjust for it's inadequacies with the computer software. Now I can show all my friends and strangers the TRUE beauty that my eyes actually witnessed. When you look for truth, be sure that you look for the most accurate representation of it, the first representation you get may actually be the furthest from the truth.
Discussion
10 repliesKent in SD
A good place to start learing about digital photography editing would be NPN's Digital Photography Articles and Tutorials
The original files have far too many pixels to display on a monitor and this site (and all other sites) have pixel size restrictions in order to control their database size and to have some uniformity. Therefore, one type of processing that HAS to happen is to shrink the original image to the required size. As an example; my original files are 3888 pixels by 2592 pixels or 10,077,696 total pixels. To meet the size requirements for this site I have to shrink the original to a new size of 720 pixels by 480 pixels for a total of 345,600 pixels. As a result, I have lost 9,732,096 pixels or 96.6% of the original image. Its almost hard to believe that the new image even remotely resembles the original. Needless to say, the shapes in the image have lost most of the pixels that made up their edges. Since its the edges that define shapes, you have lost most of your definition. Sharpening is a process that looks for rows of pixels that appear to be edges and rebuilds them by changing the colors and brightness of the pixels to make them stand out more, thus somewhat restoring the definition of the shapes. This makes your image look a little more like your original image despite being 97% smaller. Most of the other processing, such as color, brightness, contrast, etc. if done at all are usually performed prior to shrinking the image for display. The type and amount of other processing is, of course, entirely up to the individual and there are exactly as many opinions of how much and what type is appropriate as there are individuals.
Cheers
Since it sounds like your new, and I was just as new only a year ago - let me make an analogy.
Think of your picture as food. If you have the camera set to do all the thinking for you, and you shoot in JPEG, it's like buying a frozen dinner and popping it into the microwave. Once the oven beeps, you can add a little salt or pepper, but for all intensive purposes you're pretty much done.
If you shoot in RAW, it's like going to the grocery store and geting all the ingredients to make the same meal, except now you decide how much of this, how much of that, add more of this, etc.. Then when you're all done mixing the ingredients (exposure, color balance, saturation, sharpening, etc.) you put it in the oven, and with a quick conversion - viola, out pops your custom adjusted TIFF or JPEG or PSD.
Of course, shooting in RAW means you spend a lot more time in the kitchen. (read: computer.)
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0506/gt0506-1.html
Guy
Guy's article on art is a very good point but even if the goal is to simply record nature exactly as you saw it the camera (whether film or digital) is not a perfect tool for the job. No camera or film ever created (past or current technology) is able to recreate exactly what your eyes saw. Film and digital sensors register color differently and imperfectly and they are not near as sensitive to the same range of light as the human eye. In addition, the lenses distort the image and the camera's aperture and shutter speed settings affect the lightness/darkness, the range of focus, the color, etc. The bottom line is that pushing the shutter release on a camera in no way, shape or form will ever "exactly" reproduce what you saw. In fact, it can be a complete lie. If you have ever taken a photograph then you had to have been frequently disappointed that it was much darker than the scene you saw with your eyes (under exposed) or the clouds were flat white instead of gray (over exposed) or the colors weren't at all what you saw with your eyes. Are clouds really, flat & solid bright white? When you were looking at the sunset, was the ground in front of you really solid black with no detail? When you saw your family posed in front of the window, were their faces really so dark that you couldn't recognize them? When your friends posed in front of the new building did their skin really have a strange blue color? That is the type of things that you get straight out of a camera with no post adjustments. Does that mean that those distorted images really are "true" images, just because you didn't do anything to them after they were taken? From my experience in shooting landscapes, the camera has never given me anything that "truelly" represents "exactly" what my eyes witnessed. If I were to send someone the raw photo and tell them because I didn't do anything after it was taken, it is exactly what my eyes saw, I would be lying. On the other hand, thanks to modern computer technology and digital images, I can raise the light in the dark part of the image BACK to the levels that my eyes witnessed, I can adjust the color tones BACK to the colors that my eyes witnessed, I can adjust the brightness of the whole scene BACK to what my eyes witnessed and so on. The end result of my manipulations is that the image now is much closer to truelly representing what I saw. If you were to hold up the raw image in front of you while looking at the real scene you would see clearly that it doesn't look very much like that scene. If you were to hold up my "manipulated" image in front of you while looking at the same scene you would be amazed at how closely it represents what your eyes are seeing. So if in every sense and every detail, when directly compared, my manipulated image looks far closer to the real thing then how can you say that the raw image is more "true"?
I live in a place (Alaska) where the sky is clear, the shadows are dark and sharp and there is brilliant white snow in the same scene as almost black spruce trees. I had been frustrated for many years because of my inability to take pictures of the beautiful scenes that I live amongst and share them with friends because they never looked anything like what I was seeing. If I showed the bright snow in all its glorious detail with the subtle textures, shapes and shadows, the spruce trees were solid black and the bright colored flowers in the field in front were dark and dull. If I shot the picture so that the flowers and spruce trees looked normal, the snow was now a big flat pure white mass with no shape, shadows and textures. Three years ago I discovered digital photography and computer software that can adjust the light and color levels of digital photos. Now, even though the camera is incapable of re-creating exactly what my eyes saw, I can adjust for it's inadequacies with the computer software. Now I can show all my friends and strangers the TRUE beauty that my eyes actually witnessed. When you look for truth, be sure that you look for the most accurate representation of it, the first representation you get may actually be the furthest from the truth.