Post Production Editing

I have been preparing my photos to turn in for review and part of the process is to edit them. I am not a huge fan of doing a lot of drastic changes to my photos, and really, sometimes I sort of feel like its cheating. My photography teacher says it is absolutely necessary to do something to almost every photo. I have a hard time with this, how much is too much? Some photos I look at and think I don't want to do anything at all. It is nice to crop or straighten out lines, make a few corrections. I have a professional photographer friend who does some editing to almost all of her photos and I wouldn't ever say she was cheating by editing her photos so why do I feel so conflicted? Here are some of my edits, both before and after so you can see what I started with and what I ended up with. Is it cheating?

                                     

The above picture is the original. Nothing wrong with it really, the butterfly is pretty sharp and in focus. The right side of the photo is so bright it is washed out so that is no good.

This is the same photo, cropped and given a border. I feel comfortable with this sort of editing, nothing too drastic was done. I'd have to use a giant lens to get this photo without cropping (or find a way to get the butterfly to sit still while I get incredibly close).

This is the original photo. I shot this thru a trash can with two holes in the lid for the garbage used as the frame. It is uneven because I had to squat down to see through and it was super uncomfortable.

Here it is post editing. I cropped and straightened only. No other changes were made. Now looking at it I wonder if it is straight or if I need to go back and redo. I should have used the grid tool...

Original photo, taken in Copenhagen. Must have been bright afternoon sun because the colors are a little washed out.

I added some color vibrance, not a ton, just a touch, better? Cheating? Maybe.

Editing software can also be used to change your photos to black and white. I haven't used this function yet, just wanted to show the different possibilities. Fun to play with.

Also you can play with the color hues and get a totally different picture.

Original photo, another bright sunny day...

I like this better. Nice greens, bright yellows. Cropped it a bit to get a closer look at the bird. You can increase hue saturation, lighten or darken shadows, so many options! It is easy to spend a few hours going over photos and making changes. Just be careful to keep a copy of the original unedited version.

I liked this viewpoint but the colors are a bit washed out and the Art Science Museum (structure on the right) has dirty lines running down, not so cute. What is that dark spot in the bottom right corner?

I cropped out the dirty stuff and made the sky more blue. This is sooo cheating, but it looks great!

Great shadow, bad composition. I should have zoomed in a bit more to get that bottom line out of the shot.

Fixed!

So I am still not sure about the editing software and if I consider it cheating but I do think it is so fun to play with. I guess not all of it is cheating. Maybe none of it is. You still have to start with a good photo. You can't fix everything. 

Happy Friday!