How many of your pictures do you run through Photoshop before posting?

[MortimerJazz]

Hi there,

I'm still pretty new to digital photography, but wanting to learn ... and feeling quite inspired looking at some of the pictures posted in this section.

A quick question though: would you say that the majority of the photos you post are straight from the camera, or do you run them through Photoshop before uploading them?

If PS plays a large part in producing photos, could you suggest which filters you use the most when fine tuning your pics?

Thanks loads for your help

[robbieduncan]

For me nothing is straight from Camera: everything is shot in RAW and goes through Aperture. Some pictures are just left as are, probably at least 50% of the keepers have minor level tweeks. Low light shots at ISO800 or above always end up going through Photoshop and Noise Ninja...

[Doylem]

0.000001% of my photos go through Photoshop. Approximately... :)

[bartelby]

Most of mine go through 'Levels...' and that's about it for straight photography. Arty stuff could go through a lot.

[M@lew]

Around 20% through Photoshop, 100% through Lightroom. :D (P.S. "Straight from camera" doesn't make you any better than someone who uses Photoshop on all their photos. It's a tool, much like a flash) :)

[Lord Blackadder]

I don't have Photoshop, so I use Graphic Converter to fiddle with the levels or do brightness/contrast adjustments.

[rotlex]

Everything I shoot gets processed to some degree as I shoot everything from family photo's, to side job stuff in RAW. Most of my processing however is done in Aperture as it's FAST to do it there. (Quick levels, saturation, contrast and minor sharpening).

I'd say 10% of it goes through PS 3 when noise reduction, or "special" touches need to be added.

[jessica.]

Most people would say the process is they run their photos through something due to their personal workflow setup. However, as far as how many of my photos do I need to do adjustments on? I probably touch more than half simply because I'm either removing a spot from someone's face, a bit of sensor dust that I didn't catch before, a little free teeth whitening, etc. I mean, straight from my camera is nice but I shoot raw more than anything so it's always going to go through something like PS, Aperture, or Lightroom.

[Clix Pix]

I primarily shoot in RAW so therefore must run the images through some sort of processing engine before sharing them. My normal workflow is: shoot photos, upload CF cards, review images in Photo Mechanic, cull out the best ones, take them into Aperture, do minor adjustments in Aperture, send to folder on desktop to be uploaded to Zenfolio or Smugmug. Once in a while I'll have an image that I want/need to do more than just basic PP on, and in that case I bring it into CS3 and work on it there.

Right now I'm doing more in CS3 because Apple still has not updated Aperture with the necessary RAW conversion info for my D3 and D300 cameras, so either I shoot in RAW and PP in CS3 or I shoot in jpg and run them quickly through Aperture that way.

Most of the time when I do post-processing it involves adjustment of exposure/white balance, maybe a bit of judicious cropping, spot removal, and a touch of contrast and sharpening. I have the cameras adjusted for low levels of sharpening/contrast, etc., as I prefer to control that myself in post-processing.

[CANEHDN]

0%. I use iPhoto for any changes that need to be made. It works well enough for my needs.

[Edge100]

My flow is:

CF card (RAW only) --> Lightroom (for conversion, cropping, convert to PSD) --> PS3 (levels/curves, saturation, noise, other editing, JPEG conversion)

Almost all my photos get this treatment

[pdxflint]

None, for my recent digitally shot stuff. For all old archived film shots, most of them were scanned either as prints using a flatbed directly into Photoshop, levels adjusted, etc. or scanned with a Polaroid or Nikon film scanner when not printed. All scans were directly into Photoshop, where adjustments were made, depending on the intended use of the picture. When being printed, they certainly needed tweaking because each offset printing process has variations which affect the CMYK (four-color) separations, or grayscale, etc. For inkjet prints, its a different ballgame, and for monitor viewing, different again.

For quick tweaking now, I generally use Picasa on my old Thinkpad (not really ideal, but the original file is unchanged, so I use it for quick work. It's very handy, and I wish they had it for Mac.

[arogge]

Adobe Photoshop is normally only used when something was wrong with the image capture. Almost all of my images, however, are processed from the negative. If my RAW converter had compatibility with some of the fixing tools for Photoshop, I would not have Photoshop installed. I focus on the quality of the image capture, and avoid image manipulation. I delete many bad image captures instead of altering them in Photoshop. Something that I do most often is red-eye removal, but that is also considered an error in the image capture. I sometimes use alteration filters, but many of those are done with GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) and only as a supplement to the main product.

[Eric Piercey]

If they ain't broke, I don't fix em...but realistically I'd say about 1 shot in 1000 is absolutely perfect. There are also many different purposes and for each purpose many workflows. Typically I : shoot, transfer files to computer, toss the rejects, tweak and rate the keepers, upload proofs to gallery, and upon sales do thorough retouching of those sold and replace the proofs.

[Digital Skunk]

I primarily shoot in RAW so therefore must run the images through some sort of processing engine before sharing them. My normal workflow is: shoot photos, upload CF cards, review images in Photo Mechanic, cull out the best ones, take them into Aperture, do minor adjustments in Aperture, send to folder on desktop to be uploaded to Zenfolio or Smugmug. Once in a while I'll have an image that I want/need to do more than just basic PP on, and in that case I bring it into CS3 and work on it there.

Right now I'm doing more in CS3 because Apple still has not updated Aperture with the necessary RAW conversion info for my D3 and D300 cameras, so either I shoot in RAW and PP in CS3 or I shoot in jpg and run them quickly through Aperture that way.

Most of the time when I do post-processing it involves adjustment of exposure/white balance, maybe a bit of judicious cropping, spot removal, and a touch of contrast and sharpening. I have the cameras adjusted for low levels of sharpening/contrast, etc., as I prefer to control that myself in post-processing.

YUP! That's about it right there. Also, when you shoot in NEF on Nikon cameras no in-camera adjustments are added, so you will have to do some editing afterwards. But outside of the basic stuff that Aperture does so well, I use Photoshop for the bigger stuff and for detailed image editing.

[Martin C]

I do most of my adjustments in CS3, but I also use Lightroom for simple edits.

[marclapierre13]

All of my photos go on i photo, and i do most of my editing there for minor things. If i want to go do more artsy things, than photoshop. Id say like 10-15% of my photos go into photoshop, for minor to more advanced editing.

[GoKyu]

All of my shooting is in RAW, so from the camera, I import directly into Lightroom. I make most of my tonal edits there, but I actually prefer to do my color correction in Photoshop directly (I know I could do it in Lightroom too, but I feel like I have more control over it in PS.)

-Bryan

[Digital Skunk]

All of my shooting is in RAW, so from the camera, I import directly into Lightroom. I make most of my tonal edits there, but I actually prefer to do my color correction in Photoshop directly (I know I could do it in Lightroom too, but I feel like I have more control over it in PS.)

-Bryan

You have more control over them in PS. Lightroom and Aperture are okay but if your color isn't close to accurate then you will be pulling the image in PS.

[JFreak]

Close to everything that goes outside my laptop will be processed. If nothing else, a little cropping is usually required, I hate shooting "too tight" because the pic might be required to have extra millimeters for bleeds. And I also like to put the sharper center area of the lens into good use :)

[§HAMU§]

i just run my photos through aperture. i adjust leves/contrast/tint/crop.

i'll pick up adobe photoshop elements when it comes out for universal binary on mac so i can do some multiplicity and/or panoramas.

[AndrewMorrell]

100% of my photos are adjusted in Aperture and/or PS CS3.

As a matter of fact, most of my real estate work for clients is tone mapped, so it's first routed through Aperture (I shoot 100% RAW), then processed with Photomatix Pro, then fine-tuned through CS3.

[RoadieJodie]

Around 20% through Photoshop, 100% through Lightroom. :D (P.S. "Straight from camera" doesn't make you any better than someone who uses Photoshop on all their photos. It's a tool, much like a flash) :)


We share the same thoughts, I will only use Photoshop if I absolutely have to. All of them go through Lightroom though, as I shoot strictly in RAW. I find the Lightroom does an amazing job at post-processing, and rarely even have to open Photoshop.

:)