Photography 101: The Post Processing Bugaboo

Check out another great post in Stephen Dennstedt’s Photography 101 series from his blog.

Expat Journal: Postcards from the Edge

Stephen F. Dennstedt

To post-process or not to post-process is not the question. The question is how much to post-process and who or what should do the processing. Everyone has an opinion on this based on their goals and experience.

All digital images are post-processed. Let me repeat that—all digital images are post-processed. JPEG files are auto post-processed in-camera using OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) algorithms; those can only be tweaked a little.

RAW files, on the other hand, are uploaded and processed using software like ACR (Adobe Camera RAW), Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or something similar. To over-simplify it a bit it simply means that the OEM processes your JPEG files for you based on predetermined formulas and that your RAW files are processed byyou the photographer. There are some grey areas—you can tweak your camera’s internal JPEG algorithms and further manipulate your JPEG files using the software packages…

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