Optimize the impact
You’ve captured your image in Raw, but in the digital age that’s only part of the process! Whatever your software, you need to give your images the finishing touch
21 ENHANCE THE IMPACT OF YOUR IMAGE THROUGH POST-PROCESSING
This comes back to my first question, ‘Why am I taking this picture?’ The primary aim of your post-processing workflow should be to maximize the impact of your image and the effect that you’re looking to achieve.
It’s often a fine balance, but my starting point is to try to replicate what I saw with the naked eye. This is subjective, of course, as the camera doesn’t record data in the way that the eye does. But then I’ll see if it has the visual impact that I’m looking for – this is where the fine balance comes in! Many of my old photographs have had the Vibrance slider overused on them… Oh and a little bonus tip for you: use two screens if you can, it will make your life so much easier at the editing stage!
22 THE USE OF CROPPING
Our Nikon DSLRS and mirrorless cameras produce a 3:2 format; it is easy, therefore, to frame the scene in the proportions that you can see through the viewfinder. However, many images have far more impact when cropped into a different format, or blended together to form a panoramic. This may be because the content of the photograph suits a finished image of different proportions, you want distracting features to be taken out, or you have a particular purpose for that picture. I regularly use a panoramic format, or crop to square.
Like most of the techniques here, it’s generally better to have a crop in mind at the shooting stage, rather than thinking, ‘I wonder what it’ll look like cropped?’ That being said, there’s absolutely no harm in experimenting.
If you are currently in the habit of deleting your Raw files after processing, my advice is don’t! Come back to them
23 USE POST-PROCESSING FOR INTERPRETATION
Your post-processing workflow will have a significant influence on the appearance of your finished image. With many shots there is no correct way of processing, in the same way that there is often no such thing as the correct exposure when you’re at the shooting stage. It’s all about interpretation and the result that you want from your image.
With the sequence above, I have shown the original Raw file on the left, while the examples in the centre and on the right show the two ways in which the same images can be processed: the first a ‘literal’ interpretation designed to maximize detail and give a realistic result; the second an ‘abstract’ interpretation, intended to produce an abstract image based on strong forms of black-and-white tones with little or no detail.
24 RAW PROCESSING FOR VIGNETTING
One of my favourite ways of increasing the impact of my images is to use vignetting. This complements the composition of many of my images as I will usually place the highlights within the frame to draw the viewer into it, particularly when shooting against the light.
You can achieve much of this at shooting stage through careful composition, but building on this in post-processing will enhance it. For example, I often want my foregrounds to be in shadow when I have a key element of the image lit. Adding vignetting or a digital graduated filter on the foreground will add to the darkening effect. The same often applies to the tones in the sky.
25 REVISIT YOUR OLD IMAGES
In the same way that our shooting skills evolve over time, the same applies to our post-processing skills. I look at many of my past efforts at processing and see that, as previously mentioned, I frequently overused the Vibrance slider! We usually process our images shortly after taking them and leave it at that, rarely revisiting older images. But it’s always worth looking at some of your older images once your processing skills are more highly developed; you may find that you can achieve far better results from the original file. Added to this, the power and functions of the imaging software we use has improved significantly in recent years; that alone could produce better results and net you some fantastic imagery. For this reason, if you are currently in the habit of deleting your Raw files after processing, my advice is don’t! Come back to them at a later date.