Community poll forum: How much do you edit in your digital photos?

I have a nice camera that does really good but the photos I save, I do check out the brightness, clarity and sharpness of all and change about half of them at least a little.

When I used 35mm and sent the film to be developed, the developer always advertised that they color corrected and enhanced the photos so what's the big deal. We can now do the same thing they used to charge us for.

I recently lowered the brightness of a photo to suite the mood I wanted to project with the photo better. I decided to have it printed at a local photo shop. When I got it back, they had color corrected it back to the origional. What's with that?

I count on cropping and lighting/contrast adjustments to rescue me from bad shots. It works, more often than not.

I sharpen many of my pictures, other than that, they usually only need occasional cropping.

I find almost all of my images need a little boost. Jpegs out of camera are a bit flat. Sometimes I add a minimum sat in camera but most not. Depending on the lighting (I mostly shoot sports, so I'm not in control of the light) I add a curves adj layer, sometimes a 5-8 amt of saturation. Crop if I couldn't get close enough or to eliminate conflicting element in background like a advertising sign or crew member in bright red shirt taking your eye away from my subject.
Then sometimes I do full tilt boogie with composites, text etc for fun. Jock

I think of Photoshop as an extension of the camera. I take many photos with the express intention of using photoshop and many of the available plug-ins to to enhance them in an artistic way. Sure, I take pictures for customers such as Pro sports or Corporate events with little or no editing, but for myself, I use the camera and photoshop to creat art, not just photos. I think that is the advantage of Digital vs. Film.

IMO it's the only thing you can't really plan for without a decent flash.

I never crop or re-balance as more often than not I feel this gives an artificial aspect to the picture (I hate oversaturated colours) and in some cases you tend to lose a lot of fine detail. I think if I were to start using my PC to fix bad shots I would just become very lazy when taking pics rather than learning to use the settings properly.

If I think my pics aren't up to scratch I'll take a few and pick the best one when I get home.

I use Adobe PS Elements to "fix" photos to my liking by correcting color, contrast, light/dark and cropping. I don't mess with the content often except to possibly remove detracting items like power lines or dirt. Occasionally a line or building needs to straightened for proper effect.

I edit mostly red eye photos. Sometimes color.

I bought my old Minolta SLR in 1961 for $300 in NYC. I miss not seeing thru the lens with my Canon G2. But that's about all!

1: I try to frame shots better - IN THE VIEWFINDER -- looking for left to right motion, diagonals and lines, and subjects on Golden Means
2: I bracket all shots -- tending to prefer the more underexposed images
3: I rarely shoot in RAW as JPEG is fine for screen shots.
4: I touch up all shots for colour saturation, colour balance, levels, contrast (individual channels), sharpness (once for small detail and once for larger detail.
5: I select and feather portions of shots for custom alteration.
6: I try to reduce noise via individual "problem" colour channels
7: When time permits I take a look at the "Luminous Landscape" for inspiration and technique

But ....

Overall I would say that digital has taught me that there are shots within shots that -- rather than crop -- ought to be subjects in themselves. So I tend less to shoot an entire garden -- add shoot instead a bee within an individual Lilly!

And as others have said -- its all free! Hurrah for digital.

Since I have gotten my Pentax Digital SLR I have not had to do as much editing of the pictures. I have a HP Digital camera and I had to edit almost all of the images. It was either to crop the image, change the exposure, or color balance. The SLP seems to do better. Since I have zoom lenses on the SLR I do not need to crop the pictures.

I edit always. My Canon Digital Rebel is just a smooch soft in the sharpness. So I always use the Paintshop Pro unsharp tool. I don't believe I'm alone in thinking the Rebel is soft: I've read that newer Canons have "fixed" that.

On top of that, I almost always crop the images. I'm not a sloppy photographer. I grew up using a Nikon F where the viewfinder image was 100% accurate. The Digital Rebel puts more into the image than shown in the viewfinder. So I have to go back and crop to restore my original vision.

Also, I shoot with a Canon A95 sometimes (backpacking, canoeing/kayaking, diving, etc). It's aspect ratio is too large for a 4x6 print. To ensure that I get a good image, I crop every image taken with that camera.

mark d.

http://members.cox.net/mddoiron

http://www.summitpost.org/object_list.php?object_type=3&contributor_id=26307

Yes, I edit almost every digital photo I take. No matter how much I play around with the controls (white balance, contrast, light sensitivity) it never meets my expectations. On the other hand, I still shoot film when it's an important event (I am a part-time wedding photographer and official family historian) and altho I get every photo taken on film also scanned to a CD, I find I never have to ''fix'' any of these. And no, the camera store that develops them does not fix them for me. I always ask to have developed as is. While digital does free you up to make mistakes, it also creates more work. I also don't believe in changing the photo you took after the fact. It's no longer the photo you took, you're depending on the skill of the computer to fix what you as the photographer lack. Bottom line is, the different mediums take pictures differently, no matter what the manufacturers claim. Digital can enable you to learn from your mistakes faster, and is ultimately less expensive in terms of supply costs. However, look at the history of the technology to date - vinyl records, 8-track and audio cassette tapes, and even VHS cassettes are already obsolete in my own lifetime - can you guarantee that today's digital files will be readable in 10 years? As I said, I still use 35mm for anything important. I have a feeling there will always be a demand to print from a negative. But I guess that's really a subject for another opinion poll.

I'm just finishing an unpaid photojournalism internship at a local newspaper, and I shoot up to 200 photos at each assignment. Of those 200, I'll edit about 10 for submission to the newspaper (OK, that's actually only 5%). An image that's designated for professional printing must be high res, well-focused, and have good lighting - all opposing factors in capturing pictures on the run for photojournalism. I don't have time to set up a tripod, use the timer delay, meter the scene, etc. I often shoot in continuous mode to get action shots. Once I select the usable images (good focus/good composition), I use Photoshop/Bridge to convert raw to tiff, boost the contrast and saturation, enhance the edges, and sharpen. I save time by running 4 or 5 actions on batches of opened pictures, and then examine each to make individual adjustments to that action's layer. I can open up the shadows if needed, and often use a neutral gray filled layer to dodge and burn (I admit that I'm really bad with flash). If there are major hot spots, I usually use "replace color" to soften them to a very light gray. Outdoor (natural light) pictures need far less manipulation than indoor flash photos, and I try to take a good picture in the first place to minimize the need for fussing with it later. In photojournalism, getting the picture right has been the exception rather than the rule due to the nature of the shooting. I don't discard the remainder of the raw images, just store everything on CDs. Since I started my college photo curriculum I'm no longer satisfied with just "point and shoot." :o)

Mostly cropping and composition - which I almost always do with most photos in the darkroom on the film side. Less regularly do I digitally edit with Photoshop CS2.

I have the same problem if I use regular AA batteries. I use the Photo AA batteries. They last much longer. I am very happy with them. To save battery life I do not ever transfer images from the card using the camera. I use a card reader to do it. I can capture 400+ images with the photo batteries when I do not use the flash.