Lightroom, Photoshop, and a JPEG Walk Into a Bar…

The results are…pretty?

Nikon ‘Coolpix’ P6000 1/240 @ f/5.8 ISO 64–-26mm FL

There is a common thought that JPEGs should not, or even cannot be post-processed — effectively reprocessed after the camera has already processed and compressed the raw data and spit it out the slot. I’ve never accepted that notion. The “get-it-right-in-the-camera” crowd shoots JPEG and, so far as I know, never touches them. I feel strongly that the SOOC JPEG is, at best, unfinished. We can agree to disagree agreeably.

I am a strictly-raw shooter now, but once I was a strictly JPEG shooter, and I thrived. I was gifted a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, released in August 2002, concurrent with Photoshop 7.0. Elements is still around many iterations later, nicknamed Photoshop “Lite.” My copy of 2.0 was my introduction to digital post-processing, and I reveled in it. I’m an old wet-darkroom guy, in my element editing and manipulating images. I shot only JPEGs for too many years, but I carefully exposed them to preserve highlight detail and processed them in Elements to, at a minimum, open the shadows.

This story is to show what can be done with JPEGs above and beyond SOOC. I have ranted about this before, but my belief is that there is far more to any image file than meets the eye, especially JPEGs. I think the capture and the edit are obverse and reverse of the same coin.

Dinosaurs

These faux dinosaurs were photographed in Seattle in 2009 with a tiny-sensor point-and-shoot in JPEG (it didn’t even have the raw option). I have archives going back to 2006, exclusively JPEGs up to 2014. I often dive back into the distant archives to see how much my editing and processing skills have improved. JPEGs respond well to Lightroom, and the edits are non-destructive. It’s important not to overexpose JPEGs as the compression is unkind to the bright highlights, but properly exposed JPEGs (slightly underexposed) have much more information than is readily apparent. You do have to coax it out with a post-processing app of your choice.

This handsome fella with the poor posture is an Allosaurus fragilis— a large carnosaurian theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 145 MYA during the Late Jurassic epoch.

On the left is the original SOOC JPEG. The middle picture has been cropped and reprocessed in Lightroom Classic, but there was a distracting sign in front of her feet that I removed in Photoshop. The image on the right has some added verbiage because I think I am hilarious (sorry, Mom). Below is the most current thinking on what the beast actually looked like. Maybe.

Allosaurus_Revised-By Fred Wierum — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, httpscommons.wikimedia.orgwindex.phpcurid=47577505

“Parasaurolophus is a genus of herbivorous hadrosaurid ornithopod dinosaur that lived in what is now North America and possibly Asia during the Late Cretaceous Period, about 76.5–73 million years ago. It was an herbivore that walked both as a biped and as a quadruped.” — Wikipedia.

On the left is the original SOOC JPEG. The middle picture has been processed in Lightroom Classic, and I think much improved, but the sign is distracting. The image on the right has been Photoshopped to remove the sign and clean up other clutter seamlessly. Remember, these are SOOC JPEGs, not raw captures.

Everyone who’s heard of Tyrannosaurus rex show of hands? Oh. Okay, anybody who has NOT heard of… Never mind.

On the left is the original SOOC JPEG, which is not bad, and many folks would accept it as-is, but not you and me, right? Lightroom Classic is to blame for the right-hand picture. The differences are subtle because I tend to pull sliders back a little. I was trained that if you can see it, it’s overdone.

But you didn’t imagine I’d stop there, didja? 😎

More Phun with Photoshop

You had to know where I was probably going with this, right?

Both animals were photographed from about the same distance and focal length, so the scale looked okay. The lighting worked for both. Photoshop CC has been upgrading steadily since Photoshop-1 was released in 1990 — with no layers. Today the ability to cut out and mask a subject has been effectively automated. I knew how to do it the “hard” way (snerk), but they’ve made it easier and easier, and I am lovin’ it.

Peck’s Rex, Full-Size Tyrannosaur Reproduction

One more Tyrant Lizard, PECK’S REX, at Fort Peck Dam, Montana. Original SOOC JPEG at left, the Lightroom Classic improvement at right.

This big fella is life-size. He (she?) is called Peck’s Rex, having been found 20 miles southeast of Fort Peck, Montana, in 1997. This is one of the best renditions of a living Rex I’ve ever seen, but I wasn’t crazy about the background in the original shot, sooooo…

Starfield, Pexels, Felix Mittermeier 956981 blue. Dinosaur © by Author. I took the Lightroom Classic version into Photoshop and gave her a new background, some etherealness with the stars shining through, and, oh, notice the EYE. 😁 heeheehee

Fort Peck Interpretive Center and Museum

It ain’t always about dinosaurs.

“Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railway №539 is the only preserved working example of the class O-3 2–8–2 ‘Mikado’ steam locomotive. It was built by the American Locomotive Company in 1917 for the Northern Pacific Railway as engine №1762. “— Wikipedia.

On the left is the untouched, deliberately underexposed SOOC JPEG. By the time I made this in 2014, I had learned to slightly underexpose JPEGs to preserve detail in bright highlights, in this case, the clouds. I knew I could lift detail in the shadow and mitigate any noise. I was content for too many years. I didn’t wise up until 2015, when I finally tried raw. I’ve been kicking myself ever since but waddyagonnado? (But Raw Really Rocks!)

Overexposed Digitized 400-speed Slide

This overexposed, digitized 35mm slide was a disappointment for many years until I hit on the idea of converting it to monochrome. I replaced the sky.

Photoshop CC 2022 has a new-ish colorization feature. I was surprised at how well it worked.

Most photographers know that overexposing JPEGs is likely to ruin them. The highlight detail is fatally blocked. Clouds are dead white with no character. JPEGs are sometimes compared to analog slides (transparency film does not tolerate overexposure ), yet I managed to goof and overexpose this slide by probably a whole stop. This place had memories for my late wife, and I wish she could see that I finally figured out how to semi-restore it.

Bloodroot, slightly overexposed

“Bloodroot is a plant. People use the underground stem (rhizome) to make medicine. People sometimes use bloodroot by mouth or apply it to the skin for a long list of conditions, but there is no scientific evidence to support these uses, and using it can be unsafe.”— WebMD .com

A Girl and her Allosaur Walkin’ West

About dusk in late January near Murdo, S.D., along Interstate 90, a skeletal young woman walks her Allosaur (Allosaurus fragilis), strolling, naturally, west (because, um, west is best?). She seems to carry a pooper scooper in her left hand, which kinda spoils the moment, don’t it?

We'd passed this humorous roadside silliness many times during our too-few five years of frantic road-tripping, mostly westbound. This time, dead of winter, with nobody around, I (illegally) pulled off on the eastbound side and made the shot out the car window across all four lanes with a pathetically underpowered point-and-shoot. See what you can get away with? Photographic moider!

The original SOOC JPEG across four lanes of interstate. The sky was replaced much later, and Topaz DeNoise helped clean up after too much enlargement.

The Runners Sculpture

Sculpted by Dr. Theodoros Papagiannis, The Runners was a major project of the Athens Committee. The Committee raised the funds for all aspects of the project. It was dedicated and accepted into the Chicago Public Art Collection in 2011. — Chicago Sister Cities

When I made this picture in early 2010 with a P&S, the sculpture was still inside the concourse. Cropping halfway through the figure on the right implies there are more runners out of frame.

The Runners sculpture, a 16-foot sculpture at O’Hare International Airport funded by the Athens Committee of CSCI, can now be seen in all its beauty in the evening. Lighting for the sculpture has recently been installed, illuminating it for travelers to see no matter the time of day they arrive in Chicago. — Chicago Sister Cities

Bighorns, Eastern Slope near Buffalo Wyoming, January 2010

Nikon ‘Coolpix’ P6000 1/240 @ f/5.8 ISO 64–-26mm FL

I think we’re looking west on I90 approaching Buffalo, WY, around 3-PM mountain standard time. I’m sure only the time, and who knows if I checked the camera’s clock. (Translation: I have no clue.)

The point I hope I’ve made is that no matter the camera, the sensor size, whether raw or JPEG, some editing is beneficial. If you hate sitting at a computer, I hear ya. But if you find yourself thinking your stuff looks anemic, you needn’t spend hours tweaking; just open the shadow, tone down the highlight, preserve the detail. It’s there; go get it.