Thoughts on editing, love it ,hate it , have a say, it is part of the digital photography age how are you doing?

[iamdlewis]

When the marketing types can get any image they like by talking to an AI image tool, product photography may vanish.

Stock image photography will have problems but product photography will stick around as it will be difficult for AI to produce an image for a new product.

Sports photography - interesting question - I wonder how long it will be before we see scandals where a news publication shows a photograph of, for example. a dramatic catch, only to be sprung for faking it using AI (eg: "The catcher was Albert X, not Angus X as shown in this image!!!").

The first time some news agency takes this chance will be the last day the sports editor will have a job. There is no league that would allow this and it would be unlikely that any news publication would keep their right to publish stories about any games/events after getting caught doing this once since all the leagues would most likely harshly punish the first offender.

Wedding photography? "We can make your wedding look like the biggest and best event - give us photos of your late granny, and she can be in the wedding party, too!"

I can see this happening but personally I would find this creepy and wouldn't approve.

 

[Landshark99]

Editing has been part of my photography process since the old film days, back then it was harder in terms of time spent doing the basics. With work I started with Kodachrome, a film that was not very forgiving in exposure, so my editing was limited to culling out what was bad and letting the client do the rest. When I switched to E-6 films, I could adjust the exposure in development, which meant running back and forth to the lab to check and adjust development times of snip tests ( a few inches of film processed seperate from the whole roll ), after getting that right, it was again culling what was bad and the client doing the rest. During the transition of shooting film and then having it scanned digitally, it was again judging snips, culling, scaning, more culling and then off to the client. The big change came when it was all digital capture, everything was shot raw, instead of going to the lab, it came home where I first copied everything to a large desktop drive, edited, corrected exposure and color if needed and culled what was bad, in whatever software the raw images required, Hasselblad, Leaf, Phase One, Canon, recopy the images still raw to a portable drive and take it to the "lab"to have all the frames job renumbered and given to the client in both tiffs and jpegs. Those shoots were averaging somewhere in the area of 7,500 to 15,000 frames.
Now for me and my own stuff, I still use the same software, just newer versions. Everything is shot in raw, except with my Ricoh Gr which gets raw and b&w jpegs, it is then processed and rough edited in Capture One, PP in Adobe Photoshop and organized and searched for in Photo Mechanic.

 

[Doug Herr]

Photoshop for over 20 years, RAW only. I've tried several other programs (Gimp, Affinity, ON1, Capture 1) but always come back to Photoshop. Not fond of the subscription pricing model but it has all the features I want and it's compatible with all of my legacy image files.

 

[Clide]

I find editing, post processing fascinating; it is creative for me. In my profession I employed photos (macro) first slides then digital for education. They could only be cropped, no other alterations, I understood why and adhered to the rules. I do not sell my photos, they are for me, family and friends. I enjoy printing and holding the photo, making photo books, giving prints to family and friends. I will not change the story that I tried to capture, i.e. place an object in the photo to enhance it. But now in retirement, wow, I have LR, LR classic and I am learning Photoshop, let the creativity flow. I am fascinated by Photoshop generative fill. Topaz AI and Denoise are great appts especially with the new cameras that are coming out that can shoot at high ISO but then produce a lot of noise which can be removed. Old photos can be enhanced and brought back to life. I believe employing these tools has also helped me progress as a photographer. When you make as many errors as I have taking photos and then have to look at it on a screen and say "sHxx I have to clean that up" I learn!
Thanks for sharing I do learn from this group.

 

[Jeff A]

I shoot Raw and have the Photography subscription from Adobe, which, IMO, is dirt cheap for what you get.

I now really enjoy the processing. Seeing the photo come alive, to me, is thrilling. Once I get rolling in Lightroom I do the same 7-9 quick adjustments to every photo and it's over with quickly. I have over 4000 images on Flickr now and used to think I would only post images from either my A7M3 or A7M4. Recently I have found some old images shot with digital cameras from the "Dawn of Time", not to mention the fact that a lot of my images were sh*t as far as my photography basics. I have found that in a limited way, Lightroom can make some of the old JPG's I have bearable to display. These are not Photo contest entries, but memories of times and people in my past.

I have purchased both DxO PureRAW 2 as well as Topaz DeNoise AI, both are excellent programs but now, when I start a new batch, I run all the photos in the batch through Adobe's built into Lightroom DeNoise and never have to think about noise again. If you believe that none of your photos show noise, perhaps you need to invest in a better monitor.

The best thing about shooting Raw IMO is the Sony's Dynamic Range coupled with Lightroom's recovery of shadow detail. It's old stuff I know, but it pleases me every time I witness it.

True confession time. Although I have never attempted a sky replacement, I have learned how to deal with smoke from forest fires, industrial smoke and plain old Smog with a couple of clicks in Lightroom. I made my living flying above that sh*t and I would rather not see it in my photos.

OK, so in summary, I'm a believer in shooting Raw. I shoot Raw and JPG simultaneously and as soon as I get home, I pop the card from Slot 2 in my PC tower and review my days shooting. Sony does an excellent job with these JPG's, but they are in no way a match for a processed RAW photo in my opinion. Then, when time permits, I process my photos and while taking some time, it is, for me, an enjoyable experience.