Pointers for polishing up your images

With some of the readers asking about it, I thought it will be important to talk a little bit about what you should and shouldn't do when it comes to post processing. This article contains my personal point of view of the subject matter.

It is very common to see photographers jumping into image processing software packages to make their pictures stand out. However, its very common to see cases where they end up making it more uninteresting as a result. Polishing up images is an essential step in any workflow.  But getting too much into packages like Photoshop at the beginning of your photography learning curve could hinder your skills as a photographer as a bi-product. So, here are some things I believe everyone should do...

1. Get it right in the camera -  The camera do have limitations compared to the human eye... Therefore, may not be able to reproduce the same scene you experience. But as a photographer we should all try to optimize what we could get out of the camera. For post processing, this is going to help a lot. Furthermore, you will start to learn your gear better by trying this. I know that there are some who claim to be able to correct for any mistake in Photoshop... But you have to ask yourself where you wanna spend more time... Behind a camera? or behind a computer?

2. Take a break when editing - This is an extremely important step many tend to ignore. Human eye gets used to color saturation fast and you might find yourself repeatedly increasing the saturation to satisfy your eye. In the end, you unknowingly end up with a picture with unrealistic saturation levels which you never saw in the actual scene.

There are many software packages and many ways to accomplish the edits you want... But I thought it is important to point out few mistakes you see in edited images (more like distracting qualities than mistakes).

1. Heavy Vignette - The amount of vignette is something that is very subjective. I have seen pictures where a heavy vignette works really well. But for most images, if its needed, its in small amounts. So, putting a heavy vignette to every picture doesn't make it interesting.

2. Too much sharpening -  This is another problem in some photographs which I have come across in the recent years.   Although sharpening is often a requirement in photograph post processing, too much of it could create weird effects on the image making it unrealistic.

3. HDR to make it interesting - Adding an HDR effect most of the time can reduce the value of your picture. You need to understand when to use HDR and how to use it properly to get the best out of it. Read the following article which explains this more - http://akilamikephotography.blogspot.ca/2013/09/hdr-and-landscapes-trying-to-keep-it.html

Please do let me know your thoughts on this article. It was purely meant to help all beginners by avoiding them from getting to the pitfalls most of us climbed out of.

Akila.