What do photographers consider "essential" skills for post-processing?

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I was just wondering what everyone thought were the essential techniques that a photoshop/lightroom/aperture/whatever user should know? For example, if you were to name your 5 most useful techniques to a post-processing newbie, what would they be?
 
1) Adjust Levels / Curves
2) Adjust Exposure / Contrast
3) Adjust Hue / White Balance
4) Sharpening
5) Basic cloning to remove dust bunnies.

That's about all I can manage, the rest I have to make a special effort to get right in camera.........

Everything else
 
PP is only used to gain something I can't do in camera. PP work is different for all themes. If you are forever changing WB, levels, dust bunny removal etc you obviously need to spend more time learning about your camera and light.
 
yoby said:
1) Adjust Levels / Curves
2) Adjust Exposure / Contrast
3) Adjust Hue / White Balance
4) Sharpening
5) Basic cloning to remove dust bunnies.

That's about all I can manage, the rest I have to make a special effort to get right in camera.........

Everything else
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6) when to know you've taken a crap picture and not to bother
 
For me as little as possible, want exposuer/whitebalance etc. right in camera, for sudio only look at basic raw adjustments and some minor spot/blemish removel, but only for glamour shots, wildlife just basic raw adjustments.
 
1) Brightness
2) Contrast
3) Colour Balance
4) Spot Healing Brush
5) Sharpen
 
as above...

Decent B&W conversion
Colour matching
Decent split tone conversion

Also

Being able to remove obvious issues, like unavoidable fire escape signs, scaffolding and the like

I'm not elitist.. look at most strorybook albums and see:
fades, merges, partial desaturations, blends etc. etc.

You can do some things in camera, and you can only do some things in PP
 
tiler65 said:
PP is only used to gain something I can't do in camera. PP work is different for all themes. If you are forever changing WB, levels, dust bunny removal etc you obviously need to spend more time learning about your camera and light.
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This seems to be straying slightly into the area of "photoshop vs photography" which is another thing all together! I'm by no means a photoshop expert but I know enough to get by. I was just wondering what other people thought on the issue (in case I was missing something :D).

Obviously if you're trying to salvage every single photo in post you need to go back and revisit the basics. However, many images (or at least many of mine!) can benefit from a tweak after the fact. I think a sound knowledge of post-processing can be massively beneficial if it is used to aid photography skills, not replace them.
 
PP does have a big place in this art, and I do PP when it is needed, it's just the basics I like to get right in camera :D
 
Like I said, I only do PP work if I need to 'change' the shot into something I can't do in camera, like adding a texture, changing the background or removing unwanted items.

I love my photoshop but I love my camera more.
 
1 coffee
2 music
3 clone tool
4 healing brush
5 curve adjustment
6 lasso tool
 
Resizing and sharpening according to output media.
 
I'm with Scarecrow, with the knowing when to stop argument. But I would say the most important skill is knowing what you want to produce. This extends to the taking stage . Knowing what the final result is going to be is a very important part of PP skills. What you want to achieve, and how you are going to produce it is important. This will determine what skills you need. Sounds a bit woolly I know, but learning skills that may not be of use to you can be a waste of your time.

Sometimes the most interesting projects are those that start with " How the hell am I going to do that". Also remember with Photoshop and similar, there is usually more than one way to do things
 
tiler65 said:
PP is only used to gain something I can't do in camera. PP work is different for all themes. If you are forever changing WB, levels, dust bunny removal etc you obviously need to spend more time learning about your camera and light.
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I disagree. The only thing that's important is the end result. How you get there, nobody cares about.

Most important skills:

A good eye
A good technical understanding of the tools you're using.

Get those right, everything else just falls into place.
 
kimaldis said:
I disagree. The only thing that's important is the end result. How you get there, nobody cares about.

Most important skills:

A good eye
A good technical understanding of the tools you're using.

Get those right, everything else just falls into place.
Click to expand...

But surely if you are constantly having to adjust the basics like WB, levels, contrast, colour balance, then you lack
A good technical understanding of the tools you're using.
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:thinking:

I normally just crop, a clone here and there if needed, then a resize and sharpen (depending on output)
 
my most used tool is cropping (PP)

whilst behind the camera, I take too many pics, so more thorough understanding of composition and basic camera options would be a great help..... as well as a couple of 'L' lenses .....
 
I'd be interested to know how much time is spent adjusting exposure in PP for photographers who let the camera decide the correct exposure to those who manually set exposure using a meter
 
tiler65 said:
Like I said, I only do PP work if I need to 'change' the shot into something I can't do in camera, like adding a texture, changing the background or removing unwanted items.
Click to expand...

Do you shoot in RAW or JPEG? I find I have to sharpen all my photo's from a RAW file.

Back to the thread:

Levels
Remove spots/marks etc if needed
Little sharpening
Maybe a bit of vibrancy if the image looks a bit flat.

That's about it for me on most photo's.
 
It also depends on the quality of the glass you're shooting through. When I was using cheap glass I needed to boost vibrancy, curves etc on virtually every shot. Now I do much much less.
 
i love threads and discussions like this.....those who are not that good or intrested in editing say what comes out of camera should be right and need no messing with.

then there are those like myself who see photography and graphic art as the same thing and intertwine them.

whats most important to me is having the composition correct.
the second most important is to know what ** wanting to achieve with the shot, that to me is the real skill

Gaqry
 
kimaldis said:
I'm surprised that so many people are only using post to fix stuff. This seems such a waste to me.
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My feelings exactly. PP is to enhance not to fix. Photoshop is the tool that compliments the camera but you can't polish a turd.
 
The23rdman said:
It also depends on the quality of the glass you're shooting through. When I was using cheap glass I needed to boost vibrancy, curves etc on virtually every shot. Now I do much much less.
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Depends on your camera settings also.
I have the D700 set to not do anything with the vibrance on the photographs it's all set to standard. I do all this in post so I can alter as I see fit.
 
I do hope so
 
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