Digital Image Processing, how much is too much?
As I continue rebuilding the website after recent changes, I am revisiting some images from several years back which is an interesting exercise. This is an image captured from a hot air balloon early morning outside the town of Luxor in Egypt and shows the full moon over the Valley of the Queens. Reprocessing the image through Lightroom I made some fairly strong adjustments to contrast, adding a graduated filter to enhance a sky that needed a bit more oomph! (you won’t find that description in Adobe’s instruction manual <grin> )
It’s always a quandary as to how far to go with digital processing, too much can end up taking the image far from reality, but truth is that almost all digital images need some processing to achieve a pleasing final image. Indeed in order to get the best possible image quality, digital processing is essential even in order to get a truly realistic image. The notion that you can “get it right in the camera” is one to treat with caution. An exposure that may give a pleasing image on the camera’s rear display may not be the best for further processing if one is intent on getting the best possible image quality. A recent essay on the “Luminous Landscape” is worth reading and explores the concept of “Optimum Exposure”
For further photos check out the Egypt-Jordan gallery. ~KD