A post processing guru

[Chip]

gh patriot -

The short answer is "no," you don't need to do a lot of pp to produce great photos. Look at the pic by genielamb in this link as an example.

When starting, lots of people tend to foucus most on getting better straight out of the camera shots. With better SOOC shots developed through experience and practice, you'll start to see if you want, need, or would like to improve any part of your photos with pp.

And remember that all this is subjective. If you find that you like your shots with no pp, with just subtle pp, or with a lot of pp that makes the photo resemble a painting, then that's what's right for you.

So, don't worry about pp. You'll do fine with or without it, and your experience and tastes will show you the way.

Good luck and have fun.

[gh patriot]

Originally Posted by Chip

gh patriot -

The short answer is "no," you don't need to do a lot of pp to produce great photos. Look at the pic by genielamb in this link as an example.

When starting, lots of people tend to foucus most on getting better straight out of the camera shots. With better SOOC shots developed through experience and practice, you'll start to see if you want, need, or would like to improve any part of your photos with pp.

And remember that all this is subjective. If you find that you like your shots with no pp, with just subtle pp, or with a lot of pp that makes the photo resemble a painting, then that's what's right for you.

So, don't worry about pp. You'll do fine with or without it, and your experience and tastes will show you the way.

Good luck and have fun.

Thanks. I have been focusing on building a strong foundation and not developing any bad habits. You all telling me this is letting me know that I started out right I feel less and less overwhelmed with every post from you all. Thank you so much. Mt. Everest isn't looking quite as daunting anymore.

[Mr Guy]

And if you think the people HERE are good with photoshop, very few, if any of us, even come close to the true zen masters of the art, the competitive photoshoppers. Several online communities have photoshop contests that throw that whole "Don't significantly change the image" guideline out the window. Any time I feel good about my skills, I browse a photoshop thread at Fark.com and realize what a puny mere mortal I am.

Plenty of them could fix the lighting, adjust the color, and then, for good measure, put the entire image as the background in an Oliver Stone film starring you shaking hands with the President.

[Alex168]

You dont need to be a photoshop guru so to speak. But i kind of like that thing when it comes to digital photography, i was really lucky and was offered a photoshop course in middle school WAY back, about like 8 years ago. I been using since version 6.0 and now were at CS4

Quite some few advances there, and honestly i have tried to "photoshop" bad, really bad shot to make them some what better, but that just does not work, unless your looking at a composite or something along those lines.

The best way to achieve good effects with photoshop, or any image manipulating software is by starting out with a good image.

I like to combine vectors, colors, light digital art in other words into my photography, that is why i use photoshop that much, its half of the fun of photography for me. To take a vision i have in my head and apply it on the computer screen.

But if your out there taking GREAT shots, you wont need to photoshop at all, and when you get that shot that just says it all on its own with no work done with it, no crop no levels no sat up no nothing, you just feel so proud of it! And you should be

....

if you are interested to learn about photoshop, tutorials are a great way to learn if want to do something just do a google search "blabla photoshop tutorial" over at google and you will often get some nice tutorial.

when it comes to photoshop i have some tutorials on my blog for examples, and my guess is that a lot of members have it as well

hope that helps

[superdewa]

I just used Picasa for a few years.

Recently I got a copy of Photoshop Elements 6 and found it pretty confusing, and I found the automatic changes didn't offer much that I couldn't do in Picasa. Most of the tutorials I could find online for learning what I wanted to know were for full photoshop -- not elements alone.

So I took a bunch of books out of the library (The Missing Manual, Teach Yourself Visually, and Scott Kelby's book) and got a little out of them all. They were all good -- I ended up buying Scott Kelby's book for my own shelf, but you might find one of the others is more helpful.

I rarely see people recommend books for learning these programs, but they work well for me. There are books out there for all the more complex programs -- even the GIMP, which is free.

[Gunjan Karun]

Hi All,
I had written a few tips on my blog sometime ago related to post processing using Picasa and Gimp.

You can read Part 1 at
http://www.gunjankarun.com/?p=41

And Part 2 at
http://www.gunjankarun.com/?p=42

I hope you find it useful.

Regards
Gunjan Karun
http://www.gunjankarun.com

[baldmountain]

If you watch some of the Aperture tutorials you'll see that the pros don't really do much PPing. They do their work before releasing the shutter. Rather than spending a lot of time learning Gimp or Photoshop, spend the time working on taking better pictures.

I use Aperture. I find that as my pictures get better I do less and less in Aperture. The only changes I make tend to be white balance and some adjustments to make the colors pop a bit more.

[gh patriot]

I am learning so much from you guys!! Please keep your comments coming.

Thanks

[JerBear]

Photoshop and the others can be very intimidating!

Just start with the basics one at a time, get to feel comfortable and then move to the next challenge.

Lots of tutorials on the net, so just google for what you want to do and then dive in.

I see a lot of post processing services available for those that either do not have the time or maybe the skill level to "finish" their work.

Do not get discouraged though, it is just like anything else in life, each journey begins with the first step. But, ya gotta take that step!

Good shooting

JM