Editing pictures is a key aspect of photography. It lifts the picture and enhances the overall look and feel of the image: just like ‘Salt Bae’ sprinkling salt a second before serving the food!
Post-processing has been around since the days of darkrooms, where techniques like dodging and burning were common. Even adding or removing objects and people from photos was done in the darkroom. These practices are still followed today. With technology, post-processing is all the more simpler, and with easily accessible software, transforming a good image to a great photograph is eminently achievable.
Editing tools: Software and apps for both mobile and PCs range from simple to professional. Snapseed, Lightroom and Google Photos are great apps for mobile phones. Photoshop, Lightroom, and Affinity Photo are some of the popular software for PCs. A few OpenSource and/or freeware yet powerful tools like Gimp, Darktable, RawTherapee and Paint, NET are all great as well.
Due to recent technological advancements, AI plays a significant role in photo editing. It has become much easier for editors to make adjustments and modifications to images. Tasks such as removing objects, changing facial expressions, altering backgrounds and others have become much simpler.
Basic editing: Basic editing involves not only enhancing an image but also making minor corrections such as straightening and aligning, cropping, increasing brightness to fix underexposure (dark images), or removing distracting dust or noise. Additionally, basic editing includes tasks such as colour correction, increasing saturation, reducing highlights, converting colour to black and white, and sharpening images.
And therein lies the difference between editing and manipulation. Editing typically involves minor adjustments to improve the image without changing its essential form. On the other hand, manipulation involves more significant or drastic alterations to the image such as adding or removing objects or people, changing backgrounds, or using clone techniques.
While the line between the two can be thin and subjective, manipulating the original image is generally a big no-no in fields like photojournalism or documentary photography. However, in commercial shoots or in cases of personal photography, such modifications may be acceptable. For instance, transforming a photo of an orange into a football might be considered creative.
Keep editing to a minimum: Post-processing is usually used to make the image look like how our eyes perceive it. Editors try to make the image more pleasing or attractive. While it is fun to play around with the different toggle bars, from brightness to sharpness, depending on the intent of use, try to keep the editing to a minimum.
Some photographers prefer to keep the image as natural as possible and achieve their best while shooting itself. Some like to experiment, pump the colours a bit or add fire to the ice! There is no blanket rule to say how much is too much, as long as you maintain authenticity.
Lenscraft is a monthly column on all things photography — tips, tricks and everything in between. The writer is a photojournalist who tells stories with his pictures. Find his pictures on @pushkarv