(More) Before and After
Second Verse, Same as the First — sort of…
I’ve ruminated on this subject before. I am one of those crazies who enjoy editing digital photos. Over time, I discovered that JPEGs could be successfully re-edited for greater detail, provided they were not overexposed. I don’t mind spending hours turning silk purses into sow’s ears at my computer. …Oh, wait.
I now champion raw capture, and I can attest from experience that raw really makes a difference, but for (too many) years, I was content shooting JPEGs, just being careful never to overexpose them so the important highlights didn’t block.
I love digital color because I can manipulate values, tone down hot highlights, and raise shadow detail. It’s all there in digital, but I am not at all sure it was in color film. I never printed color when I worked — strictly black and white — but I’d heard that trying to dodge or burn or otherwise manipulate color under an enlarger was extremely tricky. Digital lets me do stuff in full color that I once could only do in monochrome.
I process exclusively in Adobe Creative Cloud; Lightroom Classic, plus full Photoshop.
Fill flash without the flash
We visited Noo Joyzee (New Jersey unless you’re from there), and a cousin took this picture. I love back light and likely would have exposed this the same. It’s a JPEG, but I knew that JPEGs respond well, provided they are not overexposed.
In analog, since this was not flash-filled, little could be done to open detail in the shadows, but digital, especially raw, is incredibly tolerant of raising shadow detail and dodging to lighten shadows further.
My trick, with a tip o’the hat to Anthony Morganti, is to begin by pulling the highlight slider all the way left (down) and the shadow slider all the way up. I “dodge” (hold back) if more is needed with a brush.
Digitized Slides from the One-Hour Lab
Before I switched, I shot film. On vacation in Colorado in the early 2000s, I was shooting Fujichrome 400 in my Canon T90. When the slides were processed, we opted for the digitized CD, but at the time, both my skills and my apps were inadequate; plus, the digital versions were tiny, with 400 or so pixels on the long side.
Today I have Adobe CC plus Topaz DeNoise, Sharpen, and Gigapixel AI. These tools enable me to do things I never could imagine.
On the left is the SOOC digitized slide. On the right is what I did with it using my latest tools and skillset. Gigapixel seamlessly enlarged it by 4X. The sky was replaced in Photoshop.
Casual Raw Snapshot
This is a recent raw capture, a snapshot leaving a coffee house. I have not yet seen the flower I did not like. I made one exposure with the camera held low (I don’t bend so good no more), and the screen flipped up, but the bright sky wiped out the image, so the composition was less than ideal.
This is my final (for now — I think it’s too dark on the right)—all in Lightroom Classic.
My granddaughter’s seventh birthday
I dislike flash-on-camera. In analog, it was a necessary evil, but digital, with its incredible dynamic range (especially in raw, which is all I shoot now), allows me to get away with available dark at high ISOs — photographic murder. I own flashes and occasionally use them, but I hate destroying the natural light's ambiance.
The original unprocessed raw capture is on the left, handheld at ISO 6400. It’s a noisy nightmare, and there is no detail in the slice. I first ran it through Topaz DeNoise AI to tame the noise, then applied my fave highlights-down-shadows-up treatment, further “dodging up” in the slice. Obviously, other tricks were used, but that’s the fundamentals. Flashing would have ruined the look.
Pike’s Peak, Fujichrome 400
This was such a pitifully meh shot that I nearly skipped it. It’s still not a show-stopper. I think I applied DeNoise to it, sharpened it, and did everything else in Lightroom Classic. Like most Adobe workers, I start in Lightroom and finish in Lightroom 80% of the time, but there are things Photoshop does better and even easier than Lightroom. It’s why Adobe bundles them.
Molting Mule Deer in Montana
These were made in JPEG with a tiny sensor point-and-shoot out the car's window. We didn’t dare get out because we knew they’d spook.
I was content for years shooting JPEGs in tiny-sensor cameras. I knew the infinite depth-of-field (DOF) was due to very short focal lengths and little manual control over aperture, but I didn’t sweat it at the time.
Moving up to larger sensors, though, I remembered how much control we had over DOF, and the old JPEGs began to look odd with no separation between subject and background.
If you are an Adobe subscriber, you know that updates and upgrades occur as often as weekly. Not long ago, Photoshop introduced some “neural” filters (I can’t figure out why “neural” since its dictionary definition is “relating to a nerve or the nervous system. — ‘patterns of neural activity’” …Um, wut?
One of the newer neural filters is called “Depth Blur,” and you see how it is applied in the far right photo.
“The Three Graces” is my title for this group, pure serendipity from the window of my car. I can’t get over the precise placement of the bodies and especially the heads, each visible through the legs of the others. The version on the right has had “depth blur” applied, which I think makes a big difference.
Charging Forward sculpture, U of Montana at Missoula
A typical problem with the little P&Ss is that the infinite DOF makes separating a subject from its background challenging, especially if both are “busy.”
After applying adjustments in Lightroom Classic, the warrior is more detailed, but the background is still busy and distracting. Photoshop’s depth blur permits me to make it look convincingly like I had some in-camera control of DOF. Modern smartphones now have computerized gee-golly-whizbangs onboard that simulate the effect.
Wish on a White Horse
My beloved grandad told me I could make a wish whenever I spotted a white horse. He had a ceramic collection of them that is now lost.
Driving a rural road someplace or other we saw this scene. I pulled to the shoulder, got as close as I could, and zoomed to the maximum. It wasn’t enough.
Another drawback to the early P&Ss was a lack of reach. The superzooms hadn’t arrived yet. My camera was a Nikon Coolpix P6000, 13.50 Megapixels on a 1/1.7 inch sensor (phone size) with a 4X zoom equivalent to 28–112mm on a full-frame. 112mm is pathetically short, as seen in the SOOC JPEG on the left.
But heavy cropping was not really an option as the image fell apart with unsharpness and noise.
Ah! But now we have Topaz Sharpen AI and Gigapixel AI that can increase the size while enhancing the resolution. The horse’s rump is slightly blown, so I could wish I had raw, but the P6000 did not output raw.
Pioneer Woman with Plow — Sculpture
The Fremont County Pioneer Museum in Lander, Wyoming, may be the oldest in the West. Outside is this heroic sculpture of a pioneer woman with a plow. I love the piece. Just look at her beautiful features and the sinuous curve of her body as she works the Plow that Broke the Plains.
Oh, but that dangnabbed impossibly busy background! Ack! Gah!
This is a JPEG from a P&S, so every miserable detail behind her is rendered sharply, poles, wires, and cars.
This was a lot of painstaking work in both Lightroom and Photoshop, but I’d have to go way over 1500 words to detail it. I’m pretty happy with it.
THANKS as always, for reading and viewing! 😊👍
