Post Process Or Straight OOC?

[fotografr]

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Going back to my first days of digital imaging, nearly 25 years ago, I almost never considered my images "finished" until I'd made adjustments in post. A bit of contrast bump, maybe an increase in saturation, so on. The latest Leica cameras I've worked with, in particular the Q3 but even the D-Lux 8, appear to my eye to come out of the camera with incredibly accurate, realistic characteristics. Now I find myself questioning whether to leave the images alone, or continue to make adjustments. I know this comes down to personal preference and everyone will have a different opinion, but I'd like to post a couple of examples I shot this morning and get feedback on what others prefer. Below, the first image is OOC, the second one has been adjusted.

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[tji]

Personally, I prefer the background greens of the SOOC photos, but your editing of the main subjects.

[bobtodrick]

I’ve have the same attitude with digital as I had with film.  I’m a fairly ‘realistic’ photographer.  I expose carefully and extra lighting (if needed) carefully.

This meant that in the darkroom I usually had an easy time.  Contrast adjusted, minimal dodging and burning and I was set to go.  I knew people who would spend minutes (a lot of time considering a 25 sec base exposure time 😂) manipulating the print.

I’ve carried that into digital.  Some contrast adjustment, bringing up the shadows…that’s about it.

I know (and respect) people who feel the image as it comes out of the camera is the starting point…it’s just not how I work.

[luetz]

After downloads of my SD card, I generally will have about  35% "keeper" remaining.  Every one of those will go through my editing process in LR Classic which is minimal at best.  SOOC images are only on my iPhone Photo Album.

[Tarekith]

I like the editing process almost as much as I like taking the photos in the first place.  One of my favorite parts of any photo trip is sitting down in the evening with my iPad and Apple Pencil and diving into Lightroom to play with my RAWs.  

That said, I’m also extremely picky about what photos I keep and want to edit in the first place too.  I might take 200 photos during the day, but maybe only 6-8 of those will I keep and actually make it to the editing phase.  I could see editing being a PITA and preferring SOOC if I was someone who like to keep 40-50 photos taken each day.

[jaapv]

I don't particularly like or dislike the editing process, but I consider an unedited photograph to be not-finished. Like a Walmart print in the film days.

[IkarusJohn]

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Typically, an adjustment to white balance (rarely needed), perhaps a slight lift in exposure (I set EV at -1/3), small contrast increase and always an S curve adjustment.  None more that small.

Edited July 30 by IkarusJohn

[M11 for me]

Inyour examples I prefer the colour of the background from the ooc image but the colour and brightness of the main flour (the subject) of the processed image.

In my view the jooc images rarely are finished or to my liking. On the other hand sometimes I do too much processing. Then comes a time when everything gets just worse. For these situations I like the button "reset" plus I start to take snapshots (all in LrC) in order to have comparisons.

[evikne]

I prefer my photos to look as natural as possible. I avoid adjusting highlights and shadows, as this tends to give the image an artificial HDR look. I mainly stick to exposure and white and black points.

I always expose to preserve the highlights, which often makes the images look dark, but in LR you can lift the exposure a lot afterwards without affecting the highlights much, and the image still looks natural.

[250swb]

Of the photos @fotografr posted I like the foreground of the adjusted image and the background of the un-adjusted image, which is a perfect example of why adjustments should be made by looking at the photograph as a whole and not just bump up colour and contrast across the entire image.

Both of the adjusted photographs would benefit from having the colour, contrast, and areas of distracting brightness in the background all toned down to better balance the images. Or simply adjust the main subject and not the entire image.

There is nothing 'natural' about leaving photos un-adjusted because your eye makes selections if you were looking at the flower, you'd see the colour of the flower in the sunlight and you wouldn't say to yourself 'the colours of that plant in the background that I'm not really looking at are distracting me', because your brain filters them out. That is a natural response. But your camera, unlike your eye and brain, doesn't filter out distractions, it captures them and if you globally adjust the image the distractions become even more distracting. This concept of how the world is seen vs. how the world is recorded by media isn't new, artists have known about this for centuries and photographers for 180 years.

Edited July 30 by 250swb

[LocalHero1953]

My photos need as much processing as it takes to achieve my vision of the image I want. Since your photos are not the kind I would take for myself (that's not a criticism), I can't easily decide which is better - it's entirely your choice AFAIC. 

[costa43]

I do not have a style yet but hopefully one day. I tend to just treat each photo individually and process it to my taste and mood at the time. This has changed a fair bit as time has passed and I'm far more subtle now than I used to be. On these pictures posted, I find the SOOC file a bit flat and the processed files a bit too uniformly saturated. I would focus on giving the main subject some love whilst being very mean and horrible to the background and ignoring it a little bit.

[hansvons]

16 hours ago, fotografr said:

Now I find myself questioning whether to leave the images alone, or continue to make adjustments. I know this comes down to personal preference and everyone will have a different opinion,

If you feel like doing what pleases you and that is nothing, do nothing 😎. However, it might make sense to remind us that there is no SOOC in the sense of "right". The camera jpegs are just an interpretation of what Leica‘s engineers thought would be "right". If that is right for you, great. Tons of time saved.

Somewhat mirroring what @250swb and @LocalHero1953 said, the images you provided don‘t resonate with me particularly, but this is purely the sujet and my taste. I‘d say the same if you were photographing fighter jets, cars, "erotic" nudes, misty landcapes, your toddler, dog, cat, fill in whatever is not your cup of tea. However, if flowers were my thing, I‘d focused on the flower and not understood the BG as an sidekick, as shown in the first images where you pushed the contrast and made the out-of-focus colour dots more important, competing with the subject and robbing the viewers attention.

Also - and here proper post comes into play - I‘d worked on the leaves and made the greens as distinct as possible, which requires precise colour separation which can only be achieved with proper white and black balancing, which the camera can‘t do no matter what because it doesn’t know what part of the image is proper white and proper black. It‘s algorithm is pretty good though in assuming, which brings me full circle: if you are happy do nothing.

(And there are many more reasons such as texture, gamma, white roll off, shadow saturation, etc that can only be adjusted when working linearly from the raw file.)

[Einst_Stein]

I agree with Ansel Adams, if translate to digital, “RAW/SOOC is just the manuscripts”,  It is post-processing to play the music.

 

[jaapv]

2 hours ago, hansvons said:

If you feel like doing what pleases you and that is nothing, do nothing 😎. However, it might make sense to remind us that there is no SOOC in the sense of "right". The camera jpegs are just an interpretation of what Leica‘s engineers thought would be "right". If that is right for you, great. Tons of time saved.

Somewhat mirroring what @250swb and @LocalHero1953 said, the images you provided don‘t resonate with me particularly, but this is purely the sujet and my taste. I‘d say the same if you were photographing fighter jets, cars, "erotic" nudes, misty landcapes, your toddler, dog, cat, fill in whatever is not your cup of tea. However, if flowers were my thing, I‘d focused on the flower and not understood the BG as an sidekick, as shown in the first images where you pushed the contrast and made the out-of-focus colour dots more important, competing with the subject and robbing the viewers attention.

Also - and here proper post comes into play - I‘d worked on the leaves and made the greens as distinct as possible, which requires precise colour separation which can only be achieved with proper white and black balancing, which the camera can‘t do no matter what because it doesn’t know what part of the image is proper white and proper black. It‘s algorithm is pretty good though in assuming, which brings me full circle: if you are happy do nothing.

(And there are many more reasons such as texture, gamma, white roll off, shadow saturation, etc that can only be adjusted when working linearly from the raw file.)

And don’t forget local corrections. If you limit yourself to global corrections you will never get the subject emphasis 100% right. Like the examples here. Working on the flowers will also change the background if you do not exclude it. But as you say, use any method if it gets you where you want to be. 

[fotografr]

Interesting, and not unexpected, to read the wide range of approaches and various opinions. I've always been on the other side of the spectrum from Bob Todrick. Starting with my film/darkroom days and continuing into this digital era, I've always felt the need to make a lot of adjustments to get my images to look "right." In the darkroom it was burning and dodging. With my digital images it's primarily been to get as close as possible to colour accuracy. The reason I started this thread is that it seems to my eye that the Leica engineers have hit the bullseye with the Q3 and perhaps other models I haven't used. I'm sure ten different people would look at an image on their monitor and each would see the need for making different adjustments, but in my opinion the starting point now is markedly better than it has ever been.

[tji]

9 minutes ago, fotografr said:

Interesting, and not unexpected, to read the wide range of approaches and various opinions. I've always been on the other side of the spectrum from Bob Todrick. Starting with my film/darkroom days and continuing into this digital era, I've always felt the need to make a lot of adjustments to get my images to look "right." In the darkroom it was burning and dodging. With my digital images it's primarily been to get as close as possible to colour accuracy. The reason I started this thread is that it seems to my eye that the Leica engineers have hit the bullseye with the Q3 and perhaps other models I haven't used. I'm sure ten different people would look at an image on their monitor and each would see the need for making different adjustments, but in my opinion the starting point now is markedly better than it has ever been.

I agree with your conclusion here that the starting point from Leica is very good.  What I find frustrating is that (as far as I’m aware) Leica/Adobe haven’t implemented matching camera profiles in Lightroom such that you can get to that same starting point while editing the RAW files.  I suppose I could shift to using the jpg files, but I like to crop in camera and it’s handy to be able to unwind that later sometimes. 

[Einst_Stein]

To its best, a camera can see what in my eyes but not what in my mind. Usually the ice and snow is brighter in my mind and the sea wave is greener then what appears grey-ish in my eye.

 

 

[fotografr]

38 minutes ago, tji said:

I agree with your conclusion here that the starting point from Leica is very good.  What I find frustrating is that (as far as I’m aware) Leica/Adobe haven’t implemented matching camera profiles in Lightroom such that you can get to that same starting point while editing the RAW files.  I suppose I could shift to using the jpg files, but I like to crop in camera and it’s handy to be able to unwind that later sometimes. 

I think that depends a lot on what camera you're using. My Q3 43 matches quite nicely with the Adobe profile applied in ACR. The M10-R, not so much.

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[Jeff S]

Most of my pics are B&W, which just as in darkroom days, require global and/or local adjustments specific to the image, and further refined for printing (sometimes even different edits for different paper types). Only the tools have changed.  I can’t remember a single pic in over 40 years that was printed without some form of editing, of varying degrees, at some stage. 
 

The same is now true making my own (digital) color prints. Conceptually not much different than for B&W, but typically with fewer decisions and refinements required.