It’s not uncommon for us to see an a beautiful photo, and then say “meh, it’s Photoshopped, of course it’s pretty”. Of course, there are also cases when you see a beautiful photo, and then say “wow, you can do THAT with Photoshop?”. Most of the time, it’s really just a matter of attitude towards the whole idea of ‘a beautiful picture’.

Personally, I love doing post-processing work on my pictures. Like someone once said, “Art is never completed - only abandoned”. It’s a fact, but not one that’s openly accepted by everyone.

Now that photography has gone digital, I think that every opportunity should be taken to allow us to create that ‘beautiful picture’. Of course, there’s the image review, and the instant delete advantages, but I’m also surprised at how many digicam users neglect doing any post-processing. Okay, to neglect it due lack of skill with Photoshop is perfectly acceptable, but I’ve come to know several people who actually REFUSE to do any post-processing supposedly implying that it’s as blasphemous as doctoring the image.

Alright, alright, before I proceed, allow me to explain the difference between post-processing and doctoring an image. While both methods employ the use of Photoshop or other graphic software, they are each different in their purpose and techniques.

You see, post-processing usually involves minor touch-ups to your images. It’s like you just completed a hand-made wooden stool, and you smooth it out with sandpaper and make it shine with a coat of varnish. When you post-process your images, you remove noise, correct colour tones, increase sharpness and saturate [or desaturate] the colours wherever you see fit. It’s the little things that polish your picture and turn it into a work of art.

Doctoring, however, is a completely different story. Doctoring images are usually done to demonstrate a certain point, or to alter certain facts. Let’s look at the stool example again. If post-processing is about cleaning it up, doctoring might involve adding another leg, or a bigger platform, making into a small table instead. Doctoring an image sometimes involves [but not limited to] pasting someone’s face onto someone else body, like pasting your face onto that of a chimp licking the nether regions of another chimp, for example. Most of the time, it’s done to bend facts, or to carry a point across [usually humour :p]. However, doctoring is done bluntly, and lacks artful skill.

When adding extra images and completely altering the picture, but done with style and skill, it’s a branch of modern digital art known Photo Manipulation, or PhotoManip in short. I’ll save that one for later.

Anyway, back to post-processing.

It’s amazing to see what beautiful images you can create if you actually spend some time toying with Photoshop. Give it a soft glow for a dreamy look, or increased colour contrast for a bold appearance. Desaturate colours for a classy Noir look, Sepia for a 70’s feel. Sometimes you can add noise instead of removing them for an emotive approach, or add thin translucent scratches for that artsy grunge look. Some slight sphere distortion to create a faux fisheye effect, or skewing to correct parallax error from a perspective shot. Stitch several panning images for a panoramic view, or merge several shots together for a High Dynamic Range [HDR] effect [Albert wrote a helpful tutorial on this].

Despite all the possibilities, several digicam users have conciously chosen NOT to post-process their image. This is usually born out of shallow pride and to be able to want to say stuff like “it came out like this from the camera” or “no photoshop, only camera settings here”. It’s either discreet bragging about their skills, or the features of their equipment.

Of course, there *are* occasions when the image comes out from the camera just perfect like that - i’ve shot a few of those myself [maybe like, one in several hundred shots, lol].

But seriously, if you look at the images posted by these people, however, well… let’s just say a camera feature that they really need, is a “Don’t Suck” button. By stubbornly refusing post-processing, their images are left dull, bland and often imperfect works - I’d never go as far as calling those things art. Then again, they might not consider themselves to be artists in the first place.

Of course, I’m not talking about taking your images to the next level with extreme Photoshopping [like what Digisniper blogged about some time ago] - that’s something you do if you’re REALLY feeling up to it. But really, if you have a digicam, and you feel the drive to produce something you can be proud of, try to approach it with an artistic sense. And a bit of pride.

Post-processing is an art, too, you know :)