Rescuing bad shots! How far do you go?

Some photographers just do levels and a little sharpening and that's it and perhaps a minor crop.

How far do you go when the shot comes out wrong? Do you remake it?

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Some photographers just do levels and a little sharpening and that's it and perhaps a mimor crop.

How far do you go when the shot comes out wrong? Do you remake it?

Asher

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This is perhaps a bit redundant, just posted a similar comment in another thread. This amateurs answer to "how far will I go?" To the limits of my editing abilities, then off to learn more, time permitting. This has been both the most valuable incentive to learn and progress with PS (in my case, editor of your choice in yours), and to learn new stuff.

Tools? Levels, curves, saturation, selective sharpening, softening, channel mixing, LCE (one of my favorites to add "pop" and de-fog)...to name a few. And the passion to learn new PS tricks and tools continues. The more I peruse my "junk" shots, the greater my passion. Next step? likely HDR (if I got that right). Not so sure that applies to old "junk" shots though ......but I can create a whole bunch of NEW junk shots as I naively pursue this new adventure.

Off to re-shoot is certainly an option, I guess in my case I normally don't take this quite that seriously (yet?), or more often, it was happenstance to begin with.

Thanks for presenting the opportunity to opine, Asher.
-Greg

Greg Rogers said:

....This amateurs answer to "how far will I go?" To the limits of my editing abilities, then off to learn more, time permitting. This has been both the most valuable incentive to learn and progress with PS (in my case, editor of your choice in yours), and to learn new stuff.

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That's one great answer! It in fact says, let's learn the most of this failure and then go back and re-shoot better so that all this will not be needed. This set's up a line of intent that's realistic and true to itself and one's tools and capability.

How about using that failed shot as a starting point for something entirely new, inspired by the failure or inspired by some discovered interesting quaility?

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

How about using that failed shot as a starting point for something entirely new, inspired by the failure or inspired by some discovered interesting quaility?Asher

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Indeed! 'Tis the logical next step.....further justifying my opinion regarding "get it right or post-process", an exciting learning curve to experience both, no? Can we really place more importance on one or the other? And do pursuing improved skills in both not simply build on the other, and in the end, better results?

Digressing, did we not do this back in the wetroom days anyway? Ah, the brave new digital world. Gotta love it. Faster, and a lot less smelly.

Regards,
-Greg

Greg,

There are two apparently different processes. However they are related. Most professionals:

1. Have a purpose for the image: be it adveritising, wedding or a landscape to sell.
   
2. Develop a goal with specifics to meet the purpose
   
3. Put together the resources (lights, team model, location, transport, gear etc)
   
4. Have a time schedule
   
5. Do the work and deliver the resulting pictures AS PLANNED!

Then they can get PAID!!

An artist might get inspired by a bird flying past or the shadow of a frog! He/she might then do a sketch work out some details and do the shoot to exploit that idea spasm! Or else the spark of creativity might come from an unused portion of a shoot where something appears interesting and sparks a new cascade of thought and photography.

Everyone is different.

To me, unless I have no choice, I'd rather reshoot than edit. However if necessary, I'll do extensive rework. For example at an event there was one important person is stuck in the brightest noon sun and the other V.I.P., next to them is in the dark shadows and they are moving. One cannot stop the event! So one brackets and has to rescue the image in photoshop. I hate it! Bracketing with a fast 1DIII would be a great thing to do! The 5D is not fast enough!

Asher

In my opinion the answer is : "it depends".

There is no doubt that starting from a good shot is the best.
But the question is: "can you remake the same or a very similar shot?".

Asher, I agree completely

To me, unless I have no choice, I'd rather reshoot than edit. However if necessary, I'll do extensive rework. For example at an event there was one important person is stuck in the brightest noon sun and the other V.I.P., next to them is in the dark shadows and they are moving. One cannot stop the event! So one brackets and has to rescue the image in photoshop. I hate it! Bracketing with a fast 1DIII would be a great thing to do! The 5D is not fast enough!

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seems like less and less

Asher,
The more experience I get, the less willing I am to spend time editing a poor shot. I'd prefer to spend my time editing perfect images. My goal is to get most everything right in camera and with displays and histograms, why shouldn't I? There are some things you just can't fix in post, like focus as a simple example. Better to spend you time getting good with the camera and lighting than with photoshop.
Eric

I think it was Adams that said something like, "The negative is the score, you are the conductor and the darkroom is your orchestra." I came from film and approach digital the same way. I strive to get all of the information I can into the raw file, my digital version of the traditional negative. Then as conductor, I "arrange my orchestra" and develop that negative optimally towards the goal of generating the final image I envision. Once the optimised negative is open in my image processor, the rough equivalents of the enlarging and paper development process, I "conduct the score" until I get the final result as I envisioned it when I first exposed the negative.

Sometimes the conducting requires a lot of work and frequent adjustments to the score, while others require hardly any effort at all to achieve my desired result... And at yet other times, it's pretty clear that the score itself sucks and isn't worth any additional effort

I guess you do what you have got to do. Maybe it's like making furniture. The chain saw is the camera - it chops down the tree. Everything after that is post processing. Not many people are concerned with the detail of manufacturing furniture, the same with folk viewing our images, I guess. (not many Chippendale's, plenty of Ikea, .... beware of splinters. ;-)

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray West said:

Everything after that is post processing. Not many people are concerned with the detail of manufacturing furniture, the same with folk viewing our images, I guess. (not many Chippendale's, plenty of Ikea, .... beware of splinters. ;-)

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Ha Ha - Love the analogy Ray - I'll be posting some of my splinter ridden Ikea rejects in a while!!!

I second Jack and Ansel Adams:

If the shots are really missed, I 'd much prefer to reshoot, which is almost imposiible in my case of architecture photography; the owners beeing already in the new buildings the day after the first shots.

Once I could reshoot; the ceiling had thousands of little holes, for accustic reasons. This produced lots of Moirées - togehter with the pixels of the sensor. No way to get it retouched.... chosing a other lens next day was the solution.

So basically the shots have to be good. But if someone has a option to reshoot, its alwith better than dealing with bad RAWs or missed shots: a bad capture is a bad foundation for a good picture.

As far as the image will allow

As I said in the other thread, I work to get it as right as possible in the camera. But sometimes drastic measures are necessary.

This picture, a once-in-a-lifetime shot, was effectively ruined by the presence of a black VW Golf in exactly the focal point of the picture. A couple of hours of work in Photoshop, and voila! no VW. And a totally different picture.



Most of the time, I'll do curves and levels in the RAW converter, crop and sharpen, resize and convert to JPEG in PS. If there are wires, fence posts, debris, or some small defect that "spoils" the picture, I'll clone it out. But I'd rather reshoot than repair.