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We can see some of you looking puzzled with this question asking one or more of the following questions:
You probably do not realise this, but you have probably already used some form of digital processing, by using one of the multitude of photo apps available on your smartphone, such as Snapseed, VSCO, Afterlight 2, Lightroom and many more. I am sure that most of us have tried a number of these apps in the past, we certainly have. If you use social media apps, like Instagram, then I am sure you will have looked at, and most likely used a number of the filters that are built into this app. Well these are all processing apps, and they offer you the ability to manipulate and enhance your photographs.
Of course, there is a place for these types of apps and filters, and we quite often use them ourselves when posting to social media, but, if you are serious about your photography, then you really should look at some cross-platform, professional editing software that will offer you much greater control over your creative process across all of your devices.
We have all heard of apps like Photoshop and Lightroom, and there are a multitude of other alternatives out there, such as Capture One, Affinity Photo and Luminar to name but a few.
If, like us you want to get a little more serious about processing your photos, perhaps for the purposes of printing or displaying high quality images, then read on...
By investing a little time and effort you could turn what might, after pressing the shutter appear to be quite dull and lifeless photographs, into something that you will be happy to share with your friends and family.
To be able to take full advantage of digital photo processing and photo editing tools such as Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, or for that matter ANY photo editing software you will need to be shooting RAW images. Most modern digital cameras offer you the ability to save the RAW image data and you will need to check your camera to enable this feature. Most manufacturers store their RAW image data in different files, such as .DNG, .CR2, .CR3 .NEF or .ARW to name a few.
RAW images are files stored on your digital camera's memory card, they are normally a minimally processed and uncompressed version of the image captured by your Camera sensor.
The major advantage when shooting RAW images is that you do not lose any of the important and valuable image data. Essentially the image that your camera screen shows you is just the camera's interpretation of the scene, but there is much more data contained in the RAW image file and this data can be manipulated with the use of editing software to pull out details in overly bright areas and to recover detail in your shadow areas.
In the above image the left photo is the RAW image captured by the camera and in the right photo which has been edited with Adobe Lightroom, you can see that with some minimal editing we have recovered a lot of detail in the shadows of the foreground and recovered detail in the sky and clouds, already making for a much better photograph.
We have not really changed anything in the photograph, we have just bought out something that is more representative of the actual scene that we saw with our naked eye.
Whilst the camera sensor can capture all of the data that the naked eye can see, it is not intelligent enough to present the data to you in the same way that the naked eye can, without a little help from some photo editing software.
Once you grasp this concept and post process your photographs, you will fully appreciate the power of RAW images and you will never go back to shooting compressed JPEG photographs which strip out a lot of this valuable image data.
Once you start down the road of post processing your images, you will become addicted to it, because the possibilities are endless and will give your photography and images a much more polished and professional look and feel.
We understand that not everyone can afford the costly subscriptions for products like Adobe Creative Suite, but there are special prices available for Photographers, which give you access to products like Adobe Bridge, Adobe Camera RAW, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom, for a quite reasonable £9.98 inc. VAT per month or if that stretches your budget too much, then take a look at the reasonably priced Affinity Photo or the free open source software Gimp, although there are a wide range of other software products available, so you may like to do your own research.
Editing Software is only the first step in the post processing journey, but it is a vital step into developing your own workflow and an important tool that will bring your images to life and give you pleasure for years to come.
There are certainly hardened photography professionals, normally those that remember film processing, who would argue that a true photographer will be able to create the desired result within camera, and whilst we would agree that this is a solid goal to pursue, we would also say that post processing of film also offered many possibilities to enhance the film photography that were just not available unless one developed and processed their own film.
With the advent of digital photography, those types of tools used by film processing became available to the masses in the form of computer editing software.
Let us be honest though, the normal rules of photography still apply and even with the greatest software, you cannot make a silk purse from a sows ear, so, very much like was the case when shooting film, your original photo, still needs to be the best quality it can be. First, your photography needs to follow all the important rules of composition, exposure and most importantly, the sharpest possible focus on the subject at hand. Post processing can correct and enhance many things, and yes, it can even tell lies and create a different story, but only you, your digital camera, and image quality, can truly set that story in motion.