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There are very few pictures that cannot be improved without at least a small bit of editing, and IMO a photographer who carries out little editing is only doing half a job.
How can you say for instance that you don't like an image to be cropped? if no one cropped all our pictures would be to the artificial dimensions dictated by sensor design.
Even in the film days photography was a 2 part process - one part taking the photo and the second part processing it for presentation.
There was a slight blip in this when people used to take photos with the film camera and then send them into the lab/shop to be processed; essentially many people grew up with the labs doing the minor adjustments, the setting of the whitebalance and so forth and thus they got disconnected from the editing/processing phase of the photography process.
As it stands if you shoot in JPEG mode on the camera a series of automatic (though variable by the user) settings are applied to the photo by the camera itself - contrast, brightness, sharpening, white balance and a few other settings are all fixed by default in camera processing. So your straight out of camera picture has already been edited by the camera itself; the problem here is that global (ie to the whole photo) editing to fixed values is not what many want; one photo might well warrant more or less of one value over another.
This is why many people choose to make these choices themselves, either on a JPEG whilst keeping the in- camera to basic applications; or they take it further and work with RAW photos where the camera itself fixes no values and the photographer is left to fix white balance and all the other variables.
Some people like this and others do not - either way is a valid approach; though myself I always approach things with the mindset that you've got to learn how to before you can choose not to. Otherwise you're just not doing something because of a lack of full understanding of what it entails
I agree with the others here . Editing has almost been done from the start of photography.
so one take or not. there would sorry photos with or with out. you do not always see little things that you do not want in the photo so nice to clean up.
myself i believe in it if it will not change the main line of the photo.
other wise it digital art.
frank.
The very moment you dial in some exposure compensation on your camera, You have edited the outcome of the image that it produces......
If your happy to live with " Blown Highlights " or " Gloomy Dark " shadows due to under exposure......Fair enough, Be happy......
But bare in mind that photography is a very subjective subject, What you like or don't like, Is not always going to be the same as everyone elses opinion....
The bottom line, If someone is happy with thier images, Photographs, Work/End product, They really don't care what others like or dislike.....
The other bottom line.... The level or extent of any post processing is a personal thing, If it looks like crap, You only have yourself to blame....!!!!!!!!!
I think there's a lot to be said for getting it right in-camera as much as possible, but even that is going to require careful study of the histogram to make sure you're exposing correctly and not clipping the highlights. The other thing of course is that best quality will be in RAW and you would then have to convert the RAW file anyway.
As has already been said: You don't have to edit your photos if you like them that way but I assure you, if you are trying to please others with your photos, then you will have to edit them - unless you take meticulous care at the photo taking stage and your style of photos and the equable lighting conditions you work in are not so demanding on editing requirements.
Quote: The other thing of course is that best quality will be in RAW and you would then have to convert the RAW file anyway
This is the crucial point. If you shoot in RAW, you will in any case be adjusting the image... the RAW file captured by the sensor is never acceptable as it stands.
If you shoot JPEG you are actually still shooting in RAW, but you have surrendered subsequent the image adjustment to your camera. Which is fine, but it's important not to delude oneself that the image is - so to speak - "pure" because you have not used software to adjust it in any way. The camera has done that job for you - perhaps better than you could do it yourself, depending on your experience and competence with imaging software, or perhaps not.
Quote: This question has been done to death. If you don't like it, then don't do it, it's not compulsory.
Some people enjoy working with images in Photoshop, some don't, that's all there is to it really. Live and let live.
That really says it all. Except that, if you shoot in Raw (which you should imho), then you at least need to process your files which, in a sense, is the first step of editing.
The other thing I think is virtually essential is some cropping - unless you always want every picture to be exactly the same proportions as your camera sensor. Some subjects just cry out for a different format - e.g. square or letterbox.
Quote: I think there's a lot to be said for getting it right in-camera as much as possible, but even that is going to require careful study of the histogram to make sure you're exposing correctly and not clipping the highlights.
Getting it right in camera is always essential - in fact many I know who do extensive editing (read hours) are often even more critical about getting just the right photo for them to work on; since the more you edit and push/pull at a photo the more demands you place upon the light data that you gathered; if its not good enough you'll get banding and other problems that limit or greatly increase the time and complexity of the editing.
The advertisements by editing software companies often suggest that editing is going to save the bad shot and that getting it right in the camera is less and less important; truth of the matter is that these claims are rarely ever as true as marketing suggests or are true only within certain specific constraints. In short you've still got to get it right in camera.
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