post processing

When I started into photography, I was introduced to the idea of “getting it right in camera.” This means that you try to capture the image as close to the final product as you can; you expose correctly, use the right filters for color, crop in camera by framing correctly, and cleaning up the background. This is still a great idea but the game has changed with digital and the advent of the digital dark room, which makes it very easy to enhance images. (Note: I said enhance, not modify or change) To do this correctly you still need to capture it correctly in camera but we can now change color, and tone after the fact. Learning how to “get it right in camera” is a valued skill, there are many things you can’t do on the computer; you can’t reframe or change your perspective, timing, or angle of view after the fact. It is reassuring, that the man that made post processing popular agreed; he even wrote a book on the subject of getting it right in your camera, and then a second and a third about post processing. Below are a couple before and after images from a recent trip to California, I do not usually do this much post production (I would rather be taking photos to be honest) but I have learned how to take washed out photos and enhance them to look like how my mind saw them. I use Adobe Lightroom to mostly get color right, and adjusting the tone curve. On this trip I also played with spot correction, graduated filters and massaging the individual color luminance values to bring out details.