Natural or Editor?

airman85b

Senior Member
Got into a little bit of an arguement a couple of days ago. One of my co-workers just came back from a vacation and took a lot of pics. I asked to see them and he said no. This is when the arguement started. He told me photos that haven't been edited are worthless and you cant take any good photos today without editing them. Now I have Lightroom 4 which I use to sort and export photos very rarely do I edit any of them. So my questions are

1 Who thinks you have to edit a photo to make it good?

2 How many of you are Natural(doesnt edit alot) and how many are Editors(have to edit every photo)?

Just wondering these days if I am really a minority by not editing my photos.
 

Rick M

Senior Member
It depends if you are shooting Jpeg or raw. Jpegs are post processed in the camera for you, I rarely do any processing on them (I only shoot casual "snapshots" in Jpeg). For my more serious work, I shoot raw and PP all of them.
 

Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
I shoot only raw and process the shots I wish to keep or deliver. You cannot shoot wedding photography, portraits or anything for sale (successfully) and not edit the images.

I did it in the darkroom when I shot film and I continue on the computer since switching to digital.

I would guess that true photo journalist edit less than the rest of us.
 

AxeMan - Rick S.

Senior Member
Lightroom is to digital what a darkroom is to film. Do you think back in the day all your film was developed using the same settings? No..... adjustments were made. You do the same thing in Lightroom.

I shoot RAW & JPG. I shoot JPG for the reason I can see what my camera thinks it should look like. I also have the option of showing someone a photo right away. Not every photo I take comes out of my camera the way I see it in a JPG file compared to what I saw in the view finder.

People shoot in manual mode because they want more control over their camera. So it would make even more sense to shoot RAW and edit them, thus giving you even more, if not total, control over your camera.

As Rick pointed out, shooting JPG, your camera makes all the choices for you. As pointed out in a similar thread, I think I'm a lot smarter than my camera. I think by editing every shot I want to keep I'll have better looking photos than what the camera thinks.

The first part of the argument that photos that haven't been edited are worthless is somewhat correct because they were taken to be edited later. The second part of the argument that you can't take any good photos today without editing them is somewhat misleading in my opinion. You can take good photos without editing them, however, you're going to have better results if you do edit them.

It seems your co-worker takes great pride in his photos like many of us here do and wants to show you his best

I think you will find most people here do post processing of some sort, be it RAW or JPG.

That's my 2 cents worth.
 
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bluenoser

Banned
Got into a little bit of an arguement a couple of days ago. One of my co-workers just came back from a vacation and took a lot of pics. I asked to see them and he said no.

He sounds like that girl Seinfeld dated in a particularly funny episode when she stubbornly refused to eat a piece of his apple pie (she just kept shaking her head when he asked her about the pie) and more confoundingly refused to give him a reason even though she professed to like apple pie. :)

This is when the arguement started.

Did the police get involved? :)

He told me photos that haven't been edited are worthless and you cant take any good photos today without editing them.

Gee...he sure sounds like a barrel of laughs! :)

Now I have Lightroom 4 which I use to sort and export photos very rarely do I edit any of them. So my questions are

1 Who thinks you have to edit a photo to make it good?

I think you have to edit good photos to make them great.

2 How many of you are Natural(doesnt edit alot) and how many are Editors(have to edit every photo)?

I prefer to think of it as being lazy vs. not-being lazy. The term "natural" usually imparts some level of virtue to what it's describing - I'm not sure it's virtuous to be lazy. :)

Just wondering these days if I am really a minority by not editing my photos.

You are probably in the minority amongst people that join online photography sites but by far, more people out there just buy a camera (point and shoot, DSLR, etc.), shoot JPEG and are happy (ignorance is truly bliss :)) So being in the latter population, you are easily in the majority (although whenever I find myself in that situation it makes me question my decisions as I find the majority of people are usually way off base about most things!)

There is nothing inherently wrong about shooting JPEG and being satisfied with the results. However in most cases I have come across - whether shooting JPEG or RAW - doing some amount of editing will improve the image.

Your co-worker - IMHO - has taken things to a bizarre extreme and I feel his issues are less with processing vs. not processing and have more to do with taking his meds vs. not taking his meds. ;)
 
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airman85b

Senior Member
I should of put it this way since this is my thinking.

After argueing about editing or not we got into Take vs Make photos.

I was out numbered at work about this. My co-workers think having a DSLR is so you can shoot in RAW and edit more. Which I didn't have a probelm with but I think the point to owning a DLSR is so that your able to take good photos to begin with. Not take jacked up photos and be able to make them good later which is ok to but we should try to take good photos to begin with.

I'm still new to the DSLR world and came into it because of all the things(change settings, change lenses, etc etc) you can do to take a good photo not because now I can shoot in RAW and be able to edit more. I thought being in the DSLR world a lot of people would look foward to finding and taking good photos. This wasnt to complain about editing it was my view that we should try to take good photos to begin with, not just click and pray. I'm learning everyday how to take better photos, but it makes me angry when my co-workers tell it doesn't matter how you take photos because if you shoot in RAW you can fix anything. Thats the whole point of having an SLR is not to point and shoot but to take time and find the shot you want. This wasn't really about natural or editing but about learning your camera and takeing the best photo you can. This is just my logic maybe all of you may think I'm stupid or crazy but this is just what I think.
 
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Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
This wasnt to complain about editing it was my view that we should try to take good photos to begin with, not just click and pray. I'm learning everyday how to take better photos, but it makes me angry when my co-workers tell it doesn't matter how you take photos because if you shoot in RAW you can fix anything. Thats the whole point of having an SLR is not to point and shoot but to take time and find the shot you want. This wasn't really about natural or editing but about learning your camera and takeing the best photo you can. This is just my logic maybe all of you may think I'm stupid or crazy but this is just what I think.

I agree with your point that RAW can NOT fix anything and that a bad photo will remain a bad photo after processing too. But, in order to make great pictures, I think you have to take a great amount of pictures. Unless you would be a art genius, there is a learning process that involves knowing how different light will affect the result, how composition can make a picture more attractive, where to install the camera to get the best point of view in a landscape. And there is no other way than trial and error to find out what you can get on a picture. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you only take great pictures by saving the amounts of clicks you do, you might not get the even better picture because at the time you thought it was not worth it.

The mistake a lot of people make is that they forget the picture will be in 2 dimensions. They think that what they see as their point of interest (where their eyes focus) will be very evident on the final picture. And this is not very often the case since they forgot about all the other elements in the picture that will fight to get your eyes attention.

So in a way I agree with you, but think the best way to learn is to take pictures and if you find something interesting, do different angles, different settings until you know exactly how to use the tools you have to get the final photo done.
 

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
One thing to add is that part of post processing is optimizing the image for the output media (print, screen, web, etc.). Shooting RAW better enables this often overlooked aspect.
 

westmill

Banned
Your way of thinking is 100% correct. You buy an SLR for its flexability and opperability not to shoot RAW.
People very often talk like you cant edit a JPG.... Of course you can !
Its the same as everything else on an SLR... its an optional tool. There are pros and cons with watever format you shoot in.
Raw is great if you are after perfection in your work. Raw basicly allows a little more headroom in most areas.
You can gain a little more sharpness a little more dynamic range a little more subtle colour changes etc etc.
A raw file in itself though is useless to anyone. You keep them as you would a negative. They still end up as a JPG at the end of the day.
Shooting JPG can help a beginner become a better photographer, in a way as shooting slide film did for film. It forces you to try harder and
think about exposure more etc. You have less lattidude ! There are lots of auto options like lens correction that can be utalised when shooting JPG. The differance in quality between the two once as JPGs needs to be viewed at 100% to see any slight differances in quality.
This is known as pixel peeping. For viewing at screen sizes or normal to large prints, I would like to see anyone tell me which started life as a RAW
and which was shot as a JPG without using the EXIF info. There are plenty of draw backs for shooting JPG too of course :)
I dont ever think its a good idea to recomend a beginner to shoot RAW either. The fact is they will get better results from JPG unless there edditing skills and knowledge is upto par. You also have to ask yourself, when is the quality enough ?
Not everyone has the wish or desire or even the need to sit for hours edditing through hundreds of raw files.
I doubt very much anyone would know what format anyone used just by looking at the pics though.
If i didnt have the need for RAW files and I was not a Pro photographer I think I would shoot in JPG for everything.
This would not have been true a few years ago, but the qualty of Digital cameras has gone very high indeed over the years.
I would advise any JPG shooters to make a copy of the originals before you start edditing though :)
 

ohkphoto

Snow White
I don't waste my time anymore arguing with these people about processing or not processing. For everyone who picks up a digital camera, it's a simple matter of choice: either the photographer processes/edits the photos, or s/he lets the camera do it. That's all. I'm not a photojournalist, so I enjoy editing because I consider it part of the artistic process.

The people who argue from the "natural/purist" stance are the same ones who look at a great photo you've taken and immediately ask "what kind of camera do you have?" . . . very much like asking the chef who just cooked a fantastic meal, "what kind of stove do you have?" They don't really understand the "digital" in digital photography and no amount of arguing will change that.

Save your breath and just do what you like best.
 

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
I don't waste my time anymore arguing with these people about processing or not processing. For everyone who picks up a digital camera, it's a simple matter of choice: either the photographer processes/edits the photos, or s/he lets the camera do it. That's all. I'm not a photojournalist, so I enjoy editing because I consider it part of the artistic process.

The people who argue from the "natural/purist" stance are the same ones who look at a great photo you've taken and immediately ask "what kind of camera do you have?" . . . very much like asking the chef who just cooked a fantastic meal, "what kind of stove do you have?" They don't really understand the "digital" in digital photography and no amount of arguing will change that.

Save your breath and just do what you like best.

I wish I could like this a thousand times. Digital post processing is no different than pushing film past it's rated ISO, dodging or burning a print, or printing color negatives on black on black and white paper back in the day. Just because we're doing it digitally instead of chemically it is suddenly unpure?
 

airman85b

Senior Member
Not what I meant please read my second post. I have nothing against editing. But I beleave we should try to take the best photo we can and then proceed to edit. Not point shoot not care about any of the settings your DSLR has then edit.
 
I think there's a difference in defining post-production.
Some people simply shoot, and rely on post-production to correct the errors which were made in capturing the image.
Others spend the time to attempt to get the image right in the camera, which allows them to spend less time correcting errors.
Then there's my photographer friend who's been shooting for 20 years - who shoots .jpg and supposedly NEVER does any post-production.
 

westmill

Banned
The sensable thing to me, is what I do. Its irelevent as to which format the picture was taken, but every picture is an individual and should be treated as such. Some of the pics may need very little doing to be perfect, others will need loads. I could have two pics on a card, hardly touch one and spend an hour or more on the other ! Others... I might just think YUK ! and delete on the spot :) You might look at the pic and decide, mmmmm yeah... thatwould look cool in blck n white. I may go even further and decide to turn it into an infrared image. As in most things there is no one size fits all :D
 

AC016

Senior Member
You really opened up a can of worms with this one. As a beginner/amateur, i am doing what i can to learn how to take the best photos i can with my camera. In regards to post processing, the most i will do is crop a photo. In my opinion, if all someone is going to do is snap a bunch of pictures and not care about the settings on their camera (aperture, ISO, etc.) because they know they can fix it all up in post processing, then they are not really a photographer. They become more of a professional software user. Many people go on about dark-rooms and how it is similar to what Photoshop is today. I beg to differ. Software today is far more capable of manipulating (editing) a photo than any dark-room was. Again, i am not against using software to edit photos, i just can not be bothered to do it to the extent that some people do. To say a photo is not a photo until it is post processed, is a bunch of BS. If you are an amateur like me, try and take the best photos you can the first time around - so you can "learn" the finer points of photography. If you find them a bit dark or to light afterwards, you can by all means fix them and learn from that as well. Further, if you are taking photos that no one else will see except your friends and family, i really don't think you need to crack your head over post processing. In this instance, what matters is that the photos are decent and that you can look at them and remember the times you had.
 

bluenoser

Banned
You really opened up a can of worms with this one....

and then you spilled the can of worms all over the table! :)

This particular debate is age-old and has no nice, neat ending to it (at least in the 5,000 other threads I've read on the topic). Usually they end in declarations of war and eventually Armageddon.

It's been not too bad so far in this thread but just a pleasant reminder (based on extensive history) for everyone to keep playing nice. :)
 
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