When I bought my first DSLR back in 2010, I didn't know much about composition, basic camera settings or any post processing techniques. I was happy taking random photos and thought if I could somehow produce the pictures with shallow depth of field (making background blurry and foreground in focus), I would master the photography. As I started taking more and more pictures, I wanted to share it with more people and get some feedback. I then joined one of the leading photography community forum of that time and posted few pictures. I was expecting to get some nice comments about my photographs which I did get few but also got lots of critics and what could I do more to make it look better. They were gracious enough to take their time and pointed out my mistakes and suggest me for the improvements. That's when I realized I know nothing or very little about photography. I didn't take any pictures for few weeks and started to explore my options to learn more about photography. I started reading about composition, basic camera control and settings and apply them into practice. I slowly started understanding the basic concepts of photography and various composition techniques. As I started learning more and more, I realized the mistakes I had done in the past and tried to be aware of it in my next shoot. Sometimes, I used to manage to take well composed photographs, but lighting would go off. Sometimes, I would get well balanced picture but unwanted objects inside the frame would create a distraction. It is not always possible to re-shoot and produce the result as you wanted; you can't re-shoot the sunset after sun goes down, for example. Sometimes, distraction is a part of the frame when you compose it and there is no way to remove it during the shooting. That's when I started realizing the importance of post processing in photography. Well, post processing has always been an important part of photography even in film era but it has been completely revolutionized with the introduction of computer and software.
It might be very confusing to choose one particular software out of many available in the market. But, in my case, since I was shooting with Nikon DSLR and it also offered a professional photo editing software, I went with their editing tool, Capture NX2. Ever since I started shooting RAW and editing with Capture NX2, I realized that modern digital photography is incomplete without these post processing tools. Camera cannot always predict the right color-tone or temperature of the subject and that's when you need a software to balance it during editing. Even though most of the times I use software only to balance the color tones, straightening the pictures and crop it, I also use it occasionally to remove the unwanted objects in the photograph to minimize the distraction. Let's discuss more about the importance of post processing with this example below.
Before Post-Processing
Focal Length - 35mm Aperture - f/16 Exposure - 8 sec ISO - 400
This picture was taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington DC. It was shot at night around 2 AM and there were some external lighting sources to illuminate the statue of MLK. Obviously, I had no control over those lights and wouldn't be able to manipulate them. All I could do is shoot with an angle that gives me the best possible result. So, I went little farther from the statue so that I could extend the focal length and minimize the lens distortion. While I was waiting for the crowd to clear the area (yes, there were quite a few people even at 2 AM in the morning), I adjusted the camera settings and took the shot in a long exposure mode. I took few more shots with different angle and camera settings and left for home. Next day, when I reviewed the photographs on my computer, I found many problems with it. Some of them I could possibly avoid during the shooting and some of them I wouldn't be able to.
Lets analyze what I think went wrong in the original picture. First, his face is the most important part of the frame and yet there are other areas that are as bright or even brighter which creates distraction. And I think because of the combination of long exposure and the external light source, lots of other physical distractions are also visible. I wanted to make the statue stand out in the frame and engage the viewers without having them wandered around all over the frame. And since his face should be the center of focus, I wanted to make other parts less bright and less visible as well. However, I wanted to leave the shadows untouched because it plays an important role to reveal the form of statue. I also wanted to keep the lights in the background to let the viewers know that this is not a black and white photograph.
After Post-Processing
Now you have seen the picture before processing it and after. Do you agree that post-processing enhanced the picture or I carried it to the excess? Do you think the final image does justice to the sentiment of the photograph or post processing killed it in someway? Please let me know what do you think about it in the comment section.
When I started my journey in digital photography ten years ago, I didn't have much interest in post processing. I was more focused on learning photography techniques, know more about the camera controls and the settings and get familiar with the gears, lights and other accessories. As I started gaining more experience with the camera setup and the gears, I felt more comfortable with the technical aspects of the shooting. Slowly, I started learning about the composition technique and used my technical skills to capture the image on various situations. The more I shoot, the more I felt that the camera was not able to capture all the colors I see through the lens. This is when I started to explore the possibility of introducing post-processing tool in my digital photography career. When I was shopping around for my first full frame but third DSLR, Nikon D700, I got introduced to Nikon’s own post-processing tool, Capture NX2, and without putting too much thought into it, I started using it. Since it was my first experience with any kind of post-processing tool, there was a steep learning curve for me but I enjoyed the process. After I started using Capture NX2 for a while, I felt like I was missing a big part of digital photography by overlooking the editing process in my early days of photography. Within a couple of months of using the software, I realized that, when post-processing is applied carefully and skillfully, it can completely change the look and feel of the picture and make it more alive again. But, suddenly, when I was just getting the hang of it, Nikon decided to discontinue the Capture NX2 software and stopped releasing the future updates and the support for the new cameras. I was still able to use the software (to process RAW files from my D700) for a couple of years even after their announcement but it became completely useless when I upgraded my D700 to D810 in 2017.
I had no choice but look for the alternatives which would support the RAW files from the Nikon D810. After doing much research, I decided to go with Adobe Lightroom. It's been little over a year since I started using the Lightroom and I couldn't be more happier. It is lightweight and very powerful program which works well with the varieties of RAW files. When I download the pictures on the computer, I import the RAW (NEF format) files directly into the Lightroom library and edit them when I want to. Besides Lightroom, I don't use any other tool to process my pictures. In terms of editing the picture, what I can do with the Lightroom, I could also do with the Capture NX2 but the process was complex and time consuming. In my experience, I found Lightroom to be much faster compared to the Capture NX2 and provides various powerful tools to edit the pictures with much more ease than it’s competitors. All of the edits done inside the Lightroom are non-destructible, which means Lightroom doesn't modify the original RAW file but only adds the instructions on the file based on what settings were applied during the development of the picture and renders the image by layering up those instructions step by step. You can always go back to the previous steps and undo the changes you made in those steps. However, Lightroom being a linear program, what you can not do is; you can not undo or erase one particular step in the middle and keep rest of the edits intact. For example, after applying 10 steps of editing (changing any one setting is one step of editing), you can’t undo only the 7th step and preserve the changes made in 8th, 9th and 10th steps. If you do so, it will delete everything from the 7th step up-to the 10th step and you have to progress the future editing from the 7th step again.