processing yous photos?

The more I look around in the forum and see/read what people do, I come to the conclusion, that there is almost no digi photos without some additional work: cropping, color adjustment, sharpening etc.....
I have been very simpleminded as I didn't expect that...

I have started to go through my own photos as well. Yes, they turn much better this way.
But at the same time I am somehow disappointed: Why all this (except cropping)is needed to be done. I hoped the camera to be more "clever". Of course - I have to learn to USE the camera propely - but still....I hoped 10D would make taking photos easier for me.
(My previous was Zenit. using slaides and negatives)

My original photos seem dark, as if misty to me. Compared to the processed ones.
Should I change the options in the camera menus ?
What have you changed in the menus ? How much of processing-work you need to do afterwards?

Give me some idea how it works for you!

Digital SLRs are a blessing as well as a curse.
In the old days all you could do yourself (without entertaining a darkroom) was taking the photo. For the rest you had to rely on the photo lab.
Professionals, of course, did all the gimmicky things that we now do on the computer in their darkroom. If you look at the names of the tools in Photoshop almost all of them come from the darkroom world:
Unsharp mask, dodge, burn, sponge tool, gradation curves...

I do cherish the possibilities that I have now. It only depends on me, my skills with the software (they replace the darkroom skills) and my imagination.
It also changed the way in which I see the shot I am about to take. I have a pretty good imagination of how it turns out after doing the processing; the image is formed in my mind first and then I frame the shot. The raw shot might not look as good as it could have but the final result after post processing does look better (at least to me) than what the best raw shot would have looked like.

The time spent on a single shot varies greatly, it can be a minute or an hour.

All in all, though, the quality of the prints I get by just downloading a shot, about a minute of fiddling in the raw converter and another minute afterwards in Photoshop is head and shoulders beyond what I used to get out of photo lab enlargements.

Prieni

hmmm I think we are all masters here on doing just enough photoshoping and never really go over the top with it.

If you want a camera really that smart, it needs to read your mind and I don't think we will see such camera soon.
The good thing about Pentax is that they give you a lot off controll and don't do much with the image so that you can better results with post-processing.
So start shooting in RAW and work out an efficent way of processing your photos. I've recorded a lot of standard things I do in photoshop so with a press on a button and some fine tweaking I'm already almost done in seconds

Pentax tends to underexpose because it wants to retain the highlights. Losts highlights is worse then lost detials in the shadows. You can set the camera EV emtereing to overexpose the image with one stop and your imagese would look a bit better expose then.

Don't be disapointed with your k10 it has a lot of features like in camera processing controls with saturation / contrast and white balance also has a range of filters for in camera processing.When shooting it also has over 200 selectable white balance settings all aid YOUR creativity.As for your photos seem dark try thr AE-L button when focussing on something in the mid ground see how you go.Give yourself alot of time to get used to it .I'm still getting to know mine and its been over a year.Change the menues to suit you read the manual to see what you want to do But most of all percivere and it will reward you

I did used to do that, but I now use the green button in M mode for that. Sometimes it's also very helpfull to meter the light on the grey pavement/stones of the street since the camera measure the grey value you get a better exposure.

Back in the old days, shooting slides was seen as the " purest form" of photography. But even then you had the possibility to predict the outcome.
Bold saturated colours? Use Velvia. Subdued pastel like colours. Take Ektachrome. You had to do it perfect within camera. On the other hand,all the negative films, processed by colour labs would have corrections made like colour balance etc....( so image manipulation isn't something new)

Now in the digital era. Every Raw file is a bit on the soft side. Personally I think we are blessed with all this new technology.
It gives you so much more control, over the end result.
But.....,and I am a firm believer of this: It all comes down to: Light, form and gesture.(quote by: Jay Maisel)
When you are very lucky, you capture all three elements. When you capture two out of three you might have something good.
If a picture have none of these, you might as well bin it. No PS is going to save you.

Martin.

I don't mind doing some processing work afterwards - up to a few minutes per image. I find it easy with Silkypix Developer Studio, and I can do things with it that the camera cannot.

But if you want the camera to do more for you with brighter results, try the Bright tone setting, and increase the exposure when you can.

I understand the disappointment when you don't get great looking images straight from the camera, but I think we quickly forget that we got the same disappointment from film when the light and exposure wasn't good.

A greater difficulty with digital though is the more limited dynamic range - the difference between the darkest and brightest possible parts of the image. Post processing can help make up for this by making the darker parts lighter without blowing the highlights.

Rather than spend a few minutes on each photo I tend to leave the vast majority exactly as shot (in RAW) and just concentrate on the odd one, on which I may spend several hours. The ratio is quite large, probably somewhere in the region of one shot in several hundred actually has time lavished on it in Photoshop.

I never did any darkroom work of my own but I watched my Dad as a kid and I've been an avid Photoshop enthusiast since version 3.0 (that's 15 years now - where's the time gone? )

Sometimes I'll go back to an old RAW file and see what I can make of it; for example this was a scrap shot:

[IMG]http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd37/hefty1969/IMGP0566.jpg[/IMG]

which I revisited for a competition here to make this:

[IMG]http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd37/hefty1969/ferraris.jpg[/IMG]

Before the competition it had sat untouched for nearly a year and now the finished version is a print.

You need to just find a system that suits you.

I know what you mean hefty sometimes i will go back to a photo that never made it and you can be quite surprised what you get after playing around in photoshop

Same here.

Most of the time I just crop for a better composition.

I agree with Pete and suggest you have a go using RAW and SilkyPix. It's very easy to use and you can get very fast results from it. You can also apply the same settings to a whole group of RAW files so that you can speed up the post processing where you have a load of shots.

I find I actually post process about 0ne in ten RAW images as the other 9 aren't as good or are rubbish anyway. This is about the same as when I shot film although then I was aware of the cost of film. That said while I was broke I was prepared to gamble some waste for getting a good shot at 35mm anyway. Using the Rollei on 120 I was much more careful.

In summary get the trial version of Silky and shoot RAW next time and see how you get on. I did and it was a big jump in control of how my images looked.

Mike

Edit for some spelling and sense!

I used silkypix for a while .It's a excellent programm and offers a lot of control over your RAW's

I couldn't get my head around slikypix though because I use photoshop a lot.
Lightroom and photoshop works very well together and that's what i use now.

I agree just could not get on with Silkypix I have gone back to Lightroom + Photoshop, still every one to there own.

I was silkypix until tel showed me the light