Ansel Adams once said that the negative was the score, and the print was the performance; I think this is a sensible attitude, though custom prints usually aren't individually handmade any more.
The most important sort of post-processing consists primarily of controlling contrast and intensity, both overall and locally; these make a huge difference to what can be seen in the image. Cameras don't see the way eyes do; the eye moves around a scene, and the the pupil changes in size depending on light and attenion, so a modified image can be more true to original vision than an unmodified version. (Exception: an image made as a technical record of lighting.) Removing and adding material is a dicier matter. For record images, of course, this is right out. And it's very hard to do this well; I've found that I usually prefer my original composition, unless I am thinking about what I'm going to remove when I make the original image, or unless some particular image element is so arresting in an of itself that isolating it is effective. That said, the little bits of foliage at the bottom center of the image seem to mainly be distracting, and I think losing them would be an improvement. Rely on your judgement, which after all got you to make the original image; like Peter Shickele says, "if it sounds good, it is good."
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Date: 2006-11-26 02:07 pm (UTC)The most important sort of post-processing consists primarily of controlling contrast and intensity, both overall and locally; these make a huge difference to what can be seen in the image. Cameras don't see the way eyes do; the eye moves around a scene, and the the pupil changes in size depending on light and attenion, so a modified image can be more true to original vision than an unmodified version. (Exception: an image made as a technical record of lighting.) Removing and adding material is a dicier matter. For record images, of course, this is right out. And it's very hard to do this well; I've found that I usually prefer my original composition, unless I am thinking about what I'm going to remove when I make the original image, or unless some particular image element is so arresting in an of itself that isolating it is effective. That said, the little bits of foliage at the bottom center of the image seem to mainly be distracting, and I think losing them would be an improvement. Rely on your judgement, which after all got you to make the original image; like Peter Shickele says, "if it sounds good, it is good."