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<blockquote data-quote="BackdoorArts" data-source="post: 223977" data-attributes="member: 9240">Do I think it needs Photoshop?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; Do I think it could use a little more post processing?&nbsp; Sure.&nbsp; It's an extremely nice photo, but I find the unevenness of the light on the flower to be distracting, particularly the shadow on the lower petal.&nbsp; I used Elements 9 to do very minor brightness, contrast, level and saturation adjustments, and then boosted the sharpness a bit using Unsharp Mask to avoid adding noise to the nice bokeh in the background.&nbsp; I also used the Dodge tool to lighten up the lower petal a bit.The differences are very subtle, but I think it grabs the eye a little better.[ATTACH]60602[/ATTACH]While it's nice to believe that we can get perfect captures straight out of the camera, it's always been darkroom practice to dodge and burn and adjust the print exposure time to achieve the best effect.&nbsp; My take is that the digital photographer should expect to do the same to maximize the impact of the photos they take.&nbsp; You absolutely do not need the power of something like Photoshop to do this.&nbsp; For the digital photographer I personally believe that Lightroom is more than enough tool to do just about everything you'd want to do in terms of simple &quot;printing&quot;.&nbsp; And Elements can do most of that as well and save you some $$ if that's your main driver.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="BackdoorArts, post: 223977, member: 9240"] Do I think it needs Photoshop? No. Do I think it could use a little more post processing? Sure. It's an extremely nice photo, but I find the unevenness of the light on the flower to be distracting, particularly the shadow on the lower petal. I used Elements 9 to do very minor brightness, contrast, level and saturation adjustments, and then boosted the sharpness a bit using Unsharp Mask to avoid adding noise to the nice bokeh in the background. I also used the Dodge tool to lighten up the lower petal a bit. The differences are [I]very[/I] subtle, but I think it grabs the eye a little better. [ATTACH=CONFIG]60602._xfImport[/ATTACH] While it's nice to believe that we can get perfect captures straight out of the camera, it's always been darkroom practice to dodge and burn and adjust the print exposure time to achieve the best effect. My take is that the digital photographer should expect to do the same to maximize the impact of the photos they take. You absolutely do [I]not[/I] need the power of something like Photoshop to do this. For the digital photographer I personally believe that Lightroom is more than enough tool to do just about everything you'd want to do in terms of simple "printing". And Elements can do most of that as well and save you some $$ if that's your main driver. [/QUOTE]

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