Post production

In digital era taking a picture is just part of the process for many photographers. Most of us spend some time in front of the computer correcting white balance, doing contrast adjustments, converting to B&W, etc.

Many people ask me how much time I spent in PS working on my images, and my answer is – apart from album design, very little. I do most of my post production in LR now, which is good for global adjustments but not for “pixel pushing”. I’m not a particular fan of overworked images and “plastic skin tones”. I prefer subtle work, which looks more believable. Subtle Photoshop work can be very time consuming. I often wonder if we as photographers spend too much time in front of the computer, simply because now we have means to polish our work (polishing is different then fixing, but I won’t go there today). I know post production is not new to digital, afterall in darkroom days photographers or master printers spent a lot of time doing that too, but now it’s so widespread because it’s so accessible to anyone.

Below is the same image – before and after. This image is for illustrative purpose only and I’m not claiming it to be a great image. In fact it was rushed, Marzena was tired and wanted to go to sleep – shooting in the bedroom probably didn’t help

First image is pretty much straight from the camera, except I fixed some stray hair. Ironically I didn’t fix stray hair in the “after” image – it’s late and I’m simply too tired (”after image” was prepped first).

“After” image is too much for my taste (plastic skin), but “before” image could benefit from some PS massaging. Somewhere in the middle would be probably a good balance.

Before

After