Looking back (#1)...

An article that I came across on Facebook last week started me thinking about photo editing. The feature demonstrated a photographer's output over a number of years, and using the same image made direct comparisons, with not just the progress of the shooter, but of the very process that produces the final image.

Editing software is always changing; always increasing in power; to provide the photographer with greater versatility, and increased options as to how easy the finished article is achieved. Usually, I process the RAW file and then leave it as it is - after all, does the Mona Lisa really need any more lipstick? There has to come a point when the photo is left alone for posterity, but working on the idea that a work of art is never finished; merely abandoned, I dig deep(ish) into my files for two images to give a re-spray job to.

 The image above, shot for a post in 2009, was processed only in Adobe CS4 - without first opening and working on the file in Camera RAW - and it consequently lacks colour and detail as I didn't, at that time, take advantage of the converter. The image to the right is the same file, but worked on in Adobe Lightroom 4, and this time I was able to reveal more foreground detail and sky colour, and create a more accurate rendition of what was actually there in front of me on that summer morning.

The two monochrome images of Hengistbury Head on the Dorset coast, are another example of better processing techniques - although, to be honest, the time factor may also come into play, here, as I probably spent more of it with today's image (right) than the original above. Having said that, the Lightroom software allows far greater control over various aspects of the composition and I am able to produce a better image tonally. The crop is slightly different, but that is neither here nor there.




All this is just a thought. Going back and reworking old files will invariably produce a different result to the original - as no doubt it will in the future as software developers strive to us greater control - and photographers seek to drain the last drop of detail that lurks within the digital file. As we used to say in commercial printing: if it's on the plate, we can print it.


© 2013