Post Processing

Sean and Shannon Again

I haven't taken a serious photograph since I returned from Europe on August 5.

But I'm okay with that.

When I came back, I had a large catalog of images that needed to be processed. In addition to all the images from the cities discussed in previous entries of Point and Frame, I had photographs from all the places I visited after I arrived in Oxford: London, Edinburgh, Zurich, Rome, Dublin, and Oxford itself. While stationed in Oxford, I spent my free time studying for classes and planning these weekend trips (they were not part of the larger study abroad group and were planned by myself and friends), with the understanding that my photographs would be processed when I arrived home.

Well, I got home and set out to pare down the catalog to the images I wanted to focus on, then opening them to convert the raw file and do my tonal corrections. I quickly realized how little I knew about digital post-processing. I had discussed this in an earlier entry, but I thought I had made some progress since then; it turns out not much. After churning out a few images like this one, I knew I needed help. So I consulted the podosphere, as I normally do, and found a wonderful podcast called Photo Walkthrough, produced by a man named John Arnold from the UK. His podcast is a series of video tutorials taking the viewer through the post production steps on a photograph, often spending a few weeks' worth of lessons on a single image. The lessons don't just focus on editing technique, which so many tutorials do, but rather they attempt to convey the why's of editing, which means I don't just learn how to do the technique, but when I should--much more valuable in my opinion. My eyes were opened again to the wonders of post-exposure processing, similar to the revelation I had during my short course on darkroom technique. The impact that a little dodging, burning, or contrast filtering can have on a photograph can be breathtaking when done right, and the superior control offered by a digital darkroom got me excited once again about the possibilities available. There's just one big problem: John Arnold, along with all other serious digital photographers, uses Adobe Photoshop.

Now anyone who knows me knows I am a staunch open-source software proponent. I'm currently typing this entry on a laptop running Ubuntu Linux as the operating system, and have done all my image cataloging with a great application called Digikam and image editing with the GIMP (an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program). All this software is open-source, meaning the code used to write it is available for modification or redistribution; free as in freedom, meaning there are no license agreements forcing you to only install on one machine, etc; and free as in free beer, meaning it costs no money at all to download and install any of these applications. These three characteristics, especially the last two, were enough to convince me to switch to a completely open platform, with no proprietary software (including Microsoft Windows) installed on my machine.

In order to follow the tutorials given at Photo Walkthrough and elsewhere on the internet or in books, I had to translate instructions for Photoshop into instructions for GIMP. Sometimes this was trivial, other times it was impossible. Basic tenants in Photoshop such as high bit depth for adjustment flexibility and adjustment layers for non-destructive editing were simply absent from the GIMP. As I delved deeper, I realized just how far the gap was between the two programs, and just how superior and more intuitive Adobe's application was. I found myself spending hours in GIMP attempting to do something I knew would take minutes in Photoshop. It frustrated me so much that I took the plunge: I gathered some money I had received from some relatives and purchased a 20-inch Apple iMac (2.4GHz Intel Dual Core, 2GB RAM, 750GB HDD), along with Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 3.

As much as I lament the loss of Linux as my main computing platform--and it's not going anywhere, I still plan to run Ubuntu on my laptop--I do not regret my decision. Though the computer geek in me advocates using open-source software, the engineer in me always advocates using the right tool for the job. The artist in me tells me the right tool for my work is the Macintosh platform with Adobe Photoshop. I still maintain that for the vast majority of computer users with general needs (internet, email, documents, spreadsheets--even music management, image management, and image editing), open-source software more than suffices. But for specific needs such as those of serious digital photographers, the superior tools offered by Photoshop along with the iMac's full printer driver support and calibration abilities on the Cinema Display unfortunately make this the best solution. The iMac came in a few days ago and Photoshop shipped yesterday.

In the meantime, I've pretty much taken a break from photography. I figured it would be a waste of effort to work on these pictures before Photoshop arrives, so I haven't. I've realized that my love for photography has reached a much more sustainable level. At first, as in any blooming love, there was a feverish romantic flame, where I devoured anything about the subject I could get my hands on: from a philosophical discussion to gear reviews to tutorials to simply analyzing photographs. I was worried that, when the initial flame wore off, so would my interest altogether. But, after being saturated with shooting in Europe and still not being bored with it, I realized that my interest was staying for the long haul. I have the rest of my life to work on this subject, to read the tutorials and text books and practice composition, exposure, and post-processing. There's no rush. This is both a liberating and comforting realization. I know that, though I haven't taken a serious photograph in over a month, that's okay; it hasn't gone anywhere.