Importance of Digital Post Processing

In the good old days of only film, most people who took photographs usually went to a photo store to have the negatives developed and the pictures printed. After clicking the shutter release button, they had no way of previewing the image, or further improving it in post processing. Darkrooms were accessed usually by photography class students, professional photographers and serious hobbyists who had space in their house to maintain one. Darkroom equipment was also expensive, which was another reason why photo editing was not very widespread among regular folks who just wanted to see what their photos looked like.

With the arrival of digital photography came the boom of digital post processing. Suddenly, the ‘darkroom’ could be accessed with the use of a computer and a photo editing software. With digital, one could now preview the image right after taking the shot and edit it in the convenience of a personal computer. The easy access to the digital darkroom and its cost effective effects on images spawned a massive wave of interest in post processing and people who used to get their prints in the camera shop could now dabble in photo editing and even printing.

Digital post processing has given us the capability and the opportunity to take control of our images and how they can look from the time the shutter button is pressed to the final printed hard copy. If you like taking photos but haven’t tried your hand at digital post processing yet, here are some very valid reasons why you would want to:

1. You can remove photographic imperfections – scratches, sensor dust, little dark spots and other blemishes can be eliminated in a few short minutes. You can straighten your image’s horizon, fix its exposure, and remove background clutter.

2. You can enhance your images to make them more appealing – photo editing programs have loads of tools and filters to help you make your shot more attractive. Some programs such as Photoshop can even imitate the effects of expensive lenses and filters. You can brighten colors, add creative blur, sharpen edges, and do countless of other editing adjustments.

3. You can crop your photos - cropping allows you to play with the position of your subject in the frame. It also gives you an effective way to cut out unwanted sections at the sides of the frame. Do keep in mind to compose the shot as you would want it in-camera so that there is less need to crop off unnecessary elements. Cropping can be good for your image but it will also cut image pixels, thus making its size smaller with less room to work with when editing.

4. You can resize photos for faster online upload - sharing your images with loved ones and the rest of the world has significantly become easier with digital photography. Since the digital image size can be quite large with the higher megapixels your camera has, uploading to your email or a website can be a slow process. Not only that, if you send an image at full resolution, someone can copy it and then use it for their own gain without your permission. In Photoshop, you can resize your photo to a much smaller size such as 75kb, while maintaining good visual quality. The results are faster uploading and downloading in the internet. The smaller file size will also make photo thieves want it less since they will not be able to do much w a photo that has been resized to a much smaller scale. Whether you use digital post processing for basic and minor corrections, or you use it to make wonderful works of creative goodness, the choice is up to you.