Post-processing is my biggest struggle

Andrew.P

Andrew.P

Messages
28
Name
Andy
Edit My Images
Yes
I love taking photos, but really struggle with processing and I would love to get better.

I have on1Raw, and most videos/tutorials I find are in Photoshop/Lightroom and they end up feeling like they don't relate. I'm getting on ok with LUTs and Curves etc although feel like I don't know where am going with it.

I also have been editing on my large 24inch screen, which i tried to calibrate and realised it was not good quality enough :-(

I am reluctant to keep throwing money, (new Screen, Photoshop) if the struggle is just me.

Is it normal to struggle with processing? Looking for some ideas or thoughts, is there a gold mine of resources that I haven't found or should I keep practising?
 
Yes quite normal, when your new to it, and very frustrating at times, but perseverance pays off in the end, there are plenty of onOne tutorials on YouTube, a I'm fairly sure they have there own channel, I think Matt Kolowski has something dedicated to onOne too.
 
That's brilliant, thanks.
Looks like loads of decent content, I'll give it a try.
 
Good luck with it Andrew. I hope you can get to a point at which you're happy.

I have Adobe CS5 but I'm sure I hardly scratch the surface but even if I knew how to do more I don't know if I would :D

To go to an extreme... On another site I used to chat to a guy who's wife was a pro photographer and a good one. He once posted a shot she'd taken which a team had worked on for three weeks.... Imagine that :D
 
What sort of processing are you trying to do? The software that came with your camera might be enough to start with, most people mainly want to adjust exposure, contrast, crop, rotate etc.
 
+1 for what @sirch says. What do you want to do in post processing?

How much time do you want to spend getting an image to look like what you want?

If all you want is a quick good enough tweak to post an image then fine.
If you want to go beyond that then there is a learning curve for whatever app you feel comfortable with.

There is no quick fix despite all the adverting blurb you might read.
 
sirch said:
What sort of processing are you trying to do? The software that came with your camera might be enough to start with, most people mainly want to adjust exposure, contrast, crop, rotate etc.
Click to expand...
+1

Also, if you don't like processing get your camera to do it and simply use the jpg version it produces? There are usually lots of options for how the camera produces jpgs so pick the one you like and save all that time on the computer?
 
TimHughes said:
+1

Also, if you don't like processing get your camera to do it and simply use the jpg version it produces? There are usually lots of options for how the camera produces jpgs so pick the one you like and save all that time on the computer?
Click to expand...


That for many (or even most ?) people is the answer.

The manufacturers have invested heavily in their firmware to produce the best jpg's they can, and for the inexperienced (like me :) )it can take a while to equal it from a RAW version.
Then for cropping, levelling horizons, minor exposure, sharpening and colour adjustments etc something as simple as IrfanView can do all you want in seconds.

I didn't want to spend a lot of money either, so I really want the best out of a photo I use Darktable, Gimp, Fusion, Autostitch etc, and there are excellent online tutorials if I want to do something I haven't done before.

I can understand people doing it for a living will use more industry standard software, but for a hobby the free ones are good (I actually prefer Darktable and Gimp to the paid alternatives)
 
Quite often I watch lightroom or more often Photoshop edits to see how its done then google how to use that tool/technique in the software I use - Affinity mostly. I havent used On1 since the 2019 version. I found this easier to use than the 2018 version so would hope they have become even more user friendly since.
 
woof woof said:
Good luck with it Andrew. I hope you can get to a point at which you're happy.

I have Adobe CS5 but I'm sure I hardly scratch the surface but even if I knew how to do more I don't know if I would :D

To go to an extreme... On another site I used to chat to a guy who's wife was a pro photographer and a good one. He once posted a shot she'd taken which a team had worked on for three weeks.... Imagine that :D
Click to expand...
Wow 3 weeks is a long time for editing,


sirch said:
What sort of processing are you trying to do? The software that came with your camera might be enough to start with, most people mainly want to adjust exposure, contrast, crop, rotate etc.
Click to expand...

I feel like my photos are still a little amateur and I wanted to turn it up a notch. I know I am being vague but I think that could be why I am struggling because I don't know what I'm aiming for. Most of my good photos have minimal editing from the camera.

So if I found a photo that I liked the style of and wanted to do something similar to learn, I don't think I could.

I am ok adjusting exposure/curves/cropping - I'am nervous trying to adjust small areas of a photo like skin or sky or adjusting the colours to suit a style.

I'm going to try to find some good examples from others and set some time aside to watch some of these videos,
I find the videos a good resource so thanks for showing me some more.
 
AgentOrange76 said:
Quite often I watch lightroom or more often Photoshop edits to see how its done then google how to use that tool/technique in the software I use - Affinity mostly. I havent used On1 since the 2019 version. I found this easier to use than the 2018 version so would hope they have become even more user friendly since.
Click to expand...

I've found myself doing this quite often, I am using On1 2020. I wasn't sure if it was the software I was struggling with or me, but I don't think it's the software.
 
I think you need to break it down into knowing what you want to achieve and then knowing how to do it. Modern photo editing software has so many different tools and techniques I think you need to focus in on a few specific techniques to begin with, such as retouching or colour grading.
 
I've suggested this a number of times for people who are beginning the processing "journey", and although I didn't do it myself, I think it would have helped. Set your camera to RAW + JPEG. You can then use the jpeg as a reference and play around with the raw file until you can approximate to the jpeg.

It might also depend on what software you're using. At first the only software that was widely available was photoshop which I found hard to get to grips with. Then I thought I'd try Lightroom, and found it was much more to my liking. Even after about 15 years there are aspects of LR that I have never used and could probably benefit from. It will always be a learning curve for me.

Of course, I dislike Adobe's rental model for software so I'm stuck with v6.14, but that is a personal decision.
 
Try and find vidoes where the person tells you what the tool does to the image rather than just move this and move that. Thats helped me to decide how much to do or not do or use 1 option and not another.

Best gem I heard was if you have cropped the image and made some basic global adjustments and the image looks rubbish, chances are it will still be rubbish after an hour of adjusting.
I guess dont polish a turd is very apt. I quite often am disapointed with my images but have learnt something from every failure. Thankfully my enjoyment comes from being there taking the image and less about the image itself.

I have just finished writting myself a workflow process for when I return from a shoot so that I back up at appropriate stages, I carry out culling before importing to software and then cull the final crop. Its one less thing to now think about.
 
Andrew.P said:
I feel like my photos are still a little amateur and I wanted to turn it up a notch. I know I am being vague but I think that could be why I am struggling because I don't know what I'm aiming for. Most of my good photos have minimal editing from the camera.
Click to expand...

There are really 3 approaches to processing:
1) The 'I want to get it right in camera' approach that relies on - as you guessed - getting it just the way you want it in camera and then simply refining the image a little to make it sparkle. This is a perfectly acceptable approach, although it's unlikely to produce a more stylised image without a lot more effort and ingenuity than through post processing.

2) Treating the RAW file as the starting point, and manipulating the image into a form that you had in mind at the time of pressing the shutter button.

3) A blend of the 2 that recognises the potential of the RAW file and then seeks to draw that out, even though that wasn't necessarily what was intended originally.

Learning the tools is important which ever one of these you end up preferring. Never be afraid to experiment and to push the sliders well beyond the point of good taste to see how it looks, but also try to keep your eye grounded - have a few 'ideal' images laying around that you can pick up and compare to your creations - to use for comparison purposes. For example, early on with a DSLR I tended to push the clarity slider too far, often ending up wth very detailed but rather hard and crunchy looking images that I now don't find pleasing. That was partly a reaction to lower quality lenses, and partly because I felt it my duty to wring every last bit of detail from a picture. Having a comparison image handy would have saved me from my worst excesses.
 
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