image processing, do you actually enjoy it?

Is processing enjoyable?

  • its got to be done but isnt much fun

    Votes: 56 34.6%

  • I cant stand it, i hate it with a passion

    Votes: 18 11.1%

  • Its alot of fun and rewarding

    Votes: 76 46.9%

  • without it i dont think i could ever get a good pic.

    Votes: 12 7.4%
  • Total voters
    162
To start with when doing a set I really enjoy but can get a bit monotonous after a while. Thats when I know I need to put it down for a day or so.

I'm sure the HDR'ers hate it..!!!!:wave:
 
The problem for me isn't whether I like it or not (which I do) but whether I have enough time to do it properly, and if I can't do it properly I won't enjoy it. If only I could freeze time and sit there tweaking things in LR without it eating into my time! Not much to ask I know... :lol:
 
I love it when an ordinary photo becomes a great one, or a good one becomes something i would put in a portfolio.
 
It's one of the things that wet Sunday afternoons were invented for...
 
Option 1 for me.

Main reason I bought Lightroom. I need some editing from raw but nothing extreme and Lightroom gets me through it quickly. I have no interest in fine tweaking with photoshop etc.
 
A lot of my shots are planned and composed specifically for the processing i plan to do. ( i also take a few landscapes and other 'usual suspects', family snaps, unplanned opportunities etc). Pressing the shutter is a tiny, tiny part of my photography experience, most of it consists of planning before hand and processing afterwards.

Order of importance and enjoyment for me would be :- 1) Being out and about, experiencing the location of the shoot. 2) Processing the images afterwards, 3) Planning the shoot before hand, 4) Physically taking the photographs.

The camera, to me, is just a (almost formulaic) tool in a much bigger creative process.
 
RobC said:
I can't stand it. Probably a lot to do with my inability to succesfully do anything other than re-size, lighten/darken and add a little contrast. .
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with you there - most of mine are for me - each to his own but i hate to see a seascape with metallic purple skies ...:lol:

Rob - have you tried Paint.Net - a little easier to use than Gimp ?
 
I quite like it making a good photo even better, but hate it when I spend hours faffing around agonising over minor things, constantly tweaking and re doing bits of it. This sometimes means I hardly get any processed. :lol: There again I suppose I've always been a bit of a perfectionist... :bonk:
 
I used to hate it - and I mean, really hate it.

Now I rather enjoy it.

What changed? Two thing...
1. My workflow. I got myself a copy of Lightroom, learned about some of it's features and found that I could do the menial stuff tha bored me much quicker.

2. Time. In the past I would go out, shoot, get home, download, process. NO real break, just one fairly constant action. Now I give myself a good few hours before I even consider looking at my images. I enjoy the photography, so I get home and feel the 'photography glow' I get from going out and doing what I enjoy. OK, recently the glow has been because it's bloody cold out!
THen later on I make a pot of coffee and start work on my photos. Deleting the howlers, saving the quality duffers (For a thread in birds forum) and narrowing my shots down to a small number that are the best. To me this is very enjoyable and I can from there look at my mistakes and learn from them.

Processing my images is now part of the learning expeirence - I enjoy it.
 
VinnyB said:
I'm sure the HDR'ers hate it..!!!!:wave:
Click to expand...

Actually, that's one of the things I do enjoy at the moment. Although, that's probably because I've only ever tried it a handful of times and still have a lot to learn about using it effectively (I've seen FAR too many HDR images that go way over the top and just look crap).

Right now, I'm still at the stage where I'm not 100% sure beforehand (hell, let's be honest, I'm lucky if I'm 25% sure at the moment, lol) how the final results are going to look, so seeing what comes out and seeing how minor changes to the RAW files before feeding them to Photomatix change the final result is great fun.
 
Reality check here guys.... (for me) It is great fun when touching up the odd print or when doing something you want printed for the wall or a client. but when you have 16,000 retouch up to the whites white and remove any shoe or scuff marks its a pain in the butt and no fun what so ever.

If you creating something and improving the odd image I love it. But for business in bulk? no fun.

so I'm in the middle on this one......

Raymond hit the nail on the head.
 
Option 1, I find it very boring compared to the actual job of capturing an image.
 
Love it most of the time, but then I don't do portraits for a living.

I love it when I get a photo that doesn't need much done to it, but I also love turning a photo into something as far from the original as possible.

The more I learn about digital manipulation, the more I enjoy it. But then, I do like graphic art. Sometimes the photograph is just one element of the final image.

I find myself being increasingly contrary in my head, because I like the fact that you can alter a photograph to look like a drawing or painting in a few minutes, but then I also get pleasure from spending a few nights paining a picture based on a photograph I've taken.
 
Daryl said:
but when you have 16,000 retouch up to the whites white and remove any shoe or scuff marks its a pain in the butt and no fun what so ever.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's the bit I hate too. ;)
 
I think it depends on how many shots I need to "work" on. Life was so much easier before some idiot said " shoot in RAW" - Oh thats right I was the idiot who read it in all the books.:):)

So nearly 99% of my shots are in RAW.

There is nothing more tedious than shooting my mates band in a pub - then converting approx 250 shots into something useable.

I mean FFS I even took the family Xmas snaps in RAW. Its only now I am thinking " I used flash they are only for a few people to see......why didnt I use leave them as jpegs!! " :bonk::bonk:

But, as many others have said, I do get a nice feeling when getting a nice landscape to "pop" out of the screen and make the whole thing worthwhile.
 
I think it depends on the kind of photography. Capture or create - the former is something you want to get as close to in camera as you can and then adjust the dynamics. The latter you are using the camera as a starting point to a longer process
 
I detest it, but that is probably because I dont understand how to do it and am never really happy with the results
 
post processing comes into various categories
the most important is remedial work on tone and composition
the next is enhancement...with a fixed goal..not just purple leaves and brown grass



i love to do it from one perspective...control and appraisal
a shot which just needs resized and slightly sharpened i put in the best bracket
better and good shots are still able to be made presentable

its part of the process as dev and printing were..
 
And of course the most advanced skill of all is knowing when NOT to process
 
i love it, yes it can get boring if doing the same thing over and over but when i create my mono images its fun and is as enjoyable to me as taking the photo in the first place.
 
Having read this thread it seems that the consensus is that people enjoy being able to experiment and "mess about", but don't really like having to do the same old thing to a lot of images (ie no experimentation, just the grind of knowing what you have to do).

Agreed?
 
I'm in the hate it camp, it has to be done but I really wish I could wave a magic wand and have the pics process themselves :lol:

Edited to add: its the one thing that stops me trying some shots/subjects that are different, simply because as they would need me to spend a lot of time processing them in a different way to my normal method they would get deleted as soon as I had had a quick look at them on the screen.
 
I like it, lets you make different images from a set of similar ones, pick up on details

and it gives me somat to do while watching tele
 
The post I hate the absolute most isn't actually anything to do with photography, but videography.

I *really*, with a suicidal passion, hate colour correcting video footage from multi-camera shoots (live events and such) where they've used 3 or 4 different cameras and not calibrated all their white balances to match the scene and each other (I've outright refused to deal with some clients when they've used auto white balance that constantly shifts itself throughout the footage. I'm nice about it, but explain why I don't need the hassle).
 
I don't particularly like actually doing the image processing, but a lot of the times the final results are such that I always find it to be satisfying in the end.
 
I think its part of the process with digital.... If you shot in JPG you'd be letting the camera do processing for you so why dislike it? Even if its only to add meta data and sharpening for print its all part of the process. Its a lot easier than it used to be with chemicals and a darkroom! Personally, I love it.
 
I love it when it comes right but I can only do simple stuff :):D
but I do get frustrated when I cant work out how to do stuff
I still dont really understand how to manipulate images with layers !
Pete
 
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