Now that you have managed to sort through your images, it’s time to start Post Process. This is where you can refine your images to what you envision. It has been around as long as photography itself. Getting rid of spots and blemishes, leveling the image, adjusting the exposure along with dodging and burning in details. Photographers still do it today; it is mostly done in software and not in the darkroom. With the explosion of digital photography, having a post-process routine is essential. Here are a few suggested practices as a base to a post-process routine.
Basic Post practices
- Know your Post Processing software! If you’re using Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, or whatever. You should know how to use it properly. How to import and export images, to have a basic understanding of the tools, how to adjust the exposure, and the list goes on and on. I’ve said it before, YouTube is your know-it-all friend.
- Removing dust spots. You got a dirty sensor, and it shows. Clone out all those little distractions, they’re taking attention away from your subject.
- Level your image. If you intended the horizon to be level and it’s not….it draws your viewers’ eyes away from what you are trying to show. With an unintentionally tilted horizon, it can give the illusion that everything in your photo is going to slide out of the frame.
- Adjusting exposure. I can’t stress how important it is to understand how your camera exposes objects in different lighting conditions. And you can adjust for it “in camera” and adjust in post.
- Resizing and sharpening. Whatever platform you’re sharing on, you should resize your images before posting them. After you have your resized images, you’ll want to do a tad bit of sharpening to them. You just want to sharpen up the details soften from resizing.
These are just a few basic examples of post-processing techniques. There are far more advanced and complicated methods.
Until next post,
Steven
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