Our Great Photo Processing Shootout!

I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this - I have so often heard the 'it doesnt look natural' line - its bull! What they mean is - in their experience, which is by default - limited. As a photographer one 'sees' a scene and attempts not only to capture the visual but also the emotions evoked whether that is simply the prettiness (for example) or something deeper - that is the artistry behind the camera - any comment, ever, involving the word 'natural' has no validity to my mind. The only one who can say whether a picture adequately captures the reality of the scene is the person who took the shot - because even that is a personal perception.

Clare

Theres my point John - it looks better to you! Personally I prefer David's original version - as to any other image shot & processed by David - I dont see your point at all. Our eyes do not correct for the colour differences seen at altitude, but you reinforce the point regardless - at the time of the shot - David saw blue, it appealed, he took the shot - maybe because the scene was blue (I dont know) - one would not process out a heat shimmer if that is what we were attempting to capture in the first place would we!

You're assuming Clare that the equipment has the ability to faithfully record what the eye sees. This has never been true in photography, from the very start onwards.

Film did not have the same response curve as they eye, so filters were used if a more natural rendidtion was required. Exaggerating this also was popular as it added drama to a shot.

Digital sensors reproduce colours pretty well, but can be fooled by excessive amounts of IR or UV light. Hence the blocking filters employed by manufacturers, to a greater or lesser extent. Dynamic range also plays a part, and over-exposed areas of green will tend to look very over-bright and sickly yellow very easily.

Add to this the human eye, and some people are more or less colour blind or see colours differently to each other. Just look at how some TV sets are adjusted by their users, who happily ignore bright orange faces and think it's a good picture.

There's more to this than just dismissing it as nonsense. I have a friend who used to work in colour printing and as part of one of his lectures he demonstates very well just how far off people's colour perception can be.

I can't quite remember whether or not I had a filter attached to the lens when taking the shot in this thread. It is possible that I may have had a 0.3 ND Grad, but I certainly didn't have a UV or polarising filter attached. For most of that morning I had no filter at all, as the majority of shots were taken before this one, when the light was completely different (less blue). It turned bluer as the mist started to clear a bit, just before the sun came up. At some point I did fit the ND Grad, but this would not have filtered out any blue light (please correct me if I'm wrong on this point).

I have only posted one other colour shot in my gallery that was taken at a similar time, and on the one in my Gallery the blues were purposefully reduced.

I think most people have made some valid points in this thread, the main one for me is that to get a fairer result the same person should process an image in 2 different software workflows. The arguments about whether or not certain images look natural are not that relevant to me as this was not what the thread was about.

Regards
David

I do not assume that the camera records exactly what we see - if it did and if we all approached photography from a purist point of view we would not need Adobe - your friend again reinforces my point - what we perceive is personal, therefore what we offer through our imagery is a reflection of our personal perception - the actual physics are not relevant. If you consider photography as an artform then one either likes an image or one does not, there are technical aspects which may well be worthy of debate but the 'naturalness' of colour is not one, in my opinion.It is a matter of perception! If one wants to employ physics then everything we see, including colour is a consequence of light and our physical position relative to the incident, since it is therefore a unique 'vision' it is always a deeply personal view.

Clare

Excuse me Clare, but I find comments like 'it's bull' a bit unnecessary.

As far as the question about whether our eyes (or brains!) correct colour perception - of course they do. Do you perceive tungsten light as yellow in colour? Course not, but your camera will unless you make a correction to the WB.

David is entitled to edit the scene according to his own recollection and artistic intent, but I'm also entitled to point out that it does not look natural.

I had this brought home to me rather forcefully last night. I have a blue T-shirt ... but my wife has always said it's purple. Last night we were with with friends, so I got them to vote on the colour. Result: 9 for purple, 1 (me!) for blue.

My eyes see colours differently to others.

I also really like blue tints in landscape photos. No accounting for taste

hahaha David - ever the peace maker x

This is great! I love to see everyone airing their opinions and it is this type of thread that makes the forum gripping at times. As long as we don't stray into arguments and pointing fingers, that is. Everyone has their views and others should respect them. It's very easy to misconstrue the written word and I don't think for example Clare is setting out to be rude to anyone or to stop anyone putting their point of view.

Regards
David

Oh - Im sorry if I appear rude - no I dont intend to David but I do feel strongly about this. Perception is everything - why would we ever try to average an image, firstly it is impossible to appeal to everyone and secondly one cant even approximate average - if I stood next to David I would not see exactly the same thing as he, our pictures reflect our unique view and I really cant fathom why we would ever try to change that whether through pp or any other way.

xx

hmm - I have put that badly - what I mean is - why we would try and correct our view to approximate what we might assume is 'natural' according to the laws of physics or the perception of others.

xx

I didn't think you were being rude Clare, don't worry. I wrote the comment because I thought that Will may have interpreted your post differently.

Regards
David

I'm afraid there is no way that any RAW image (which is not even a photograph really!), can somehow be considered in any way 'pure' or a natural rendering of a scene. It is just a data record of everything the sensor could detect - every detail, colour tone and brightness value - even if none of these were perceptible to anyone there, if the sensor can record it it'll be there in the RAW.

Then the real work starts! It is the processing where the decisions are made as to which specific data recorded to feature more or less photographically - is how much of any single tone, how to spread the brightness around, and where to extract more or less detail - and finally where to patch up and repair where the sensor has failed! (ie noise reductions, blown highlights, and colour casts.

It is through the processing that the photographer can 'develop' her/his visual intentions. My visual intention was to demonstrate a particular modular workflow approach and try and extract the best balance between high detail, the full range of tones in the scene and a clean, smooth texture, as our eyes would see it.

I would add, that it would seem according to the results as recorded above, that this particular modular approach has succeeded. That is not to say that any other approach (say a single 'one-stop-shop' type program) could not also achieve a high balance of these qualities.

I have been advocating PCU4 for us Pentax people, because at the workflow front end, it is particularly well equipped for ensuring we have full and easy access to all this data to draw on in later editing.

For example, in ACR David was hugely more limited with his saturation and vibrance control. Even though he wanted to retain the blues, if he hadn't have, then he would have been forced to export them into PS as well as all the other suble sub-tones that were in there (eg under the water) and that David has said he couldn't see (although maybe he was looking more across the lake).

I on the other hand was able to take a fuller creative control at the RAW stage - by using the Colour Fine Tune panel (in PCU4) I shifted the balance away from the blues and allowed more of the subtler undertones through. So by the time I exported and was working on an actual image file (in Sagelight), I only really had to control the relative intensities of the colours, I was not having to change colour values or make any excessive vibrance boosting.

Of course, Andrew, sorry, yes anyone would need the RAW. I believe David is happy for it to be used if needed. My point was just that I didn't think anyone could claim (Yet) that its a sure bet that PS etc could reproduce the same effects.