Overprocessed or not?

Sometimes I wonder if I make my photos overprocessed and beautify the world to much. As an example, most of think of the sky and water as blue, but often they are really quite grey or dark. Here is a sample, two versions of the same picture. The one on the right, original as the “camera saw it”, on the left my enhanced version:

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Only if you want to be exactly true to the scene you saw should you keep processing to a minimum.

Edit to what pleases you as there is no right or wrong image. Remember that the eye does not see what the camera sees as it is continually adjusting for darks and lights depending on where you are looking. Colour is not seen in exactly the same way by everyone. People can see colour differently due to what is known as colour blindness.

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I do normally process my photos to what I feel look best, even if they make the world look better than it really did. Stronger colours, remove a disturbing element, blur the background. I guess that it doesn’t matter so much now that AI has come full force and most of us know that photo no longer is documentation, but either artificially created or enhanced.

And by the way, photos have always been our selective way to show a small part of reality that we want to expose to the world and have never been pure objective documentation.

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I do the same. And, yes, sometimes I think they look over-processed, but… who cares. Folks (family) think they look great. As do I.

I do think I use AI sky swap (in ON1) too often, though. But, again, used carefully, it sure beats a white or gray backdrop.

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I remember a movie that shows Picasso painting. I think he completely repainted a picture twice until he was satisfied (or just lost interest :joy: ). In that sense, the most beautiful reality is always the one that doesn’t exist.

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With my bad eyes, the sky in your sky seems a bit “cold” as compared to the “warmth” of the scrub and land, as if if different color temperatures were chosen for the two parts of the image. This discordance, rather than overall saturation seems “artificial” to my old eyes. Perhaps that is why you are questioning your image.

50 years ago photographers debated the different color saturations of Ektachrome, Kodachrome, Fujifilm, and others. Now days, it’s the debates between various processing algorithms as well as all smart phone images.

Ultimately, you, the photographer need to select how you want to remember and share the scene.

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Photography is art, and there’s more than one way to produce a pleasing image (more exactly, what will be pleasing to some). I like that your left image has colors that are more saturated and perhaps more complementary. These give the impression of more sunlight. Also, the greater color and tone contrast makes the subject stand out more. I suspect all of this has something to do with why you edited the right-side image in the first place.

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Perhaps you are right and I made the sky too blue and that just made me think. Not always a bad thing… :blush:

Well, I’m certainly no Picasso, but I often come back to some old picture and find that I now want it completely different!

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Whatever makes you happy is the ‘right’ answer.

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Just lately I have been enjoying the distortion (curved verticals, etc) caused by 24mm lenses, and not bothering to ‘correct’ them. It can look really good. Also I boost up saturation and ‘vibrance’. My aim is to make pictures that I like, and some other people I know like them like that.

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I like rocks in the right better than left but I prefer tree and sky in left compared to right

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