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New to editing - so why, how and what in editing


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I've been taking photos for the last 3 years now and I have always been taking them as JPEG and doing little to now editing. And the editing was using phone apps like Nokia Lumia creative studio or fantasia app on windows mobile. 

 

But my friends kept telling me shoot in raw and edit them in a serious program. I finally decided to get a raw developing program that I could afford and hence I now have affinity photo. 

 

But the basic problem I have is I still don't know why I should be editing. I don't know where to start. 

 

I have watched the develop raw videos in the youtube channel but that still doesn't answer my questions.

 

  • Why should I reduce blackpoint or increase it? And by how much? How can I know that this is enough or not enough?
  •  
  • Why should I adjust tonal curves? What is a tonal curve? Again, by how much should I adjust, when is it enough? 
  •  
  • Why should I reduce noise? What is this luminance and chrominance? How much, too much?

 

The above are just a few of the dozens of questions I get on each new concept that is introduced in the tutorial videos. And a typical video can introduce 10 concepts in  the span of 6 minutes

 

 

I have problems with why should you do this or not do this kind of editing, by how much to edit them, and whether it the right amount of edit or it's too much or too little. How will I know that someone else will like what I did or not like? 

 

The videos jump in with the assumption that the watcher knows what the tutor is teaching about - and I don't know that. I know what the basic camera settings are and what you can do to change them for a particular effect but nothing beyond that

 

Can anyone help?

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Raw format is just that - totally unprocessed, unlike Jpegs which are compressed by the camera.  

 

With the Raw format there is a plethora of things that can be done to correct/improve an image, such as altering the white balance to get as accurate an image to what was seen when the image was shot.  There is also greater control over the shadows and highlights in Raw  format than there is with Jpegs.

 

Let's face it, there is rarely a time when the shooting conditions are perfect and by shooting in Raw the photographer has the opportunity to correct those imbalances.

 

When is any adjustment is enough?  That is down to the photographer's personal taste.  Only you can know what the scene/subject looked like, but the aim is to produce an ascetically pleasing image with impact.  Will any body else like your edits?  If they don't, then stuff them.  If you are pleased with the edit, then that's all that matters.

 

I think you need to study and understand what your camera does when you press the shutter release, as it measures each image as tonal values, shown in the Histogram.

 

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms1.htm 

 

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/photo-editing-tutorials.htm

 

Will give you a very good idea of what I'm talking about, which includes tones and curves.

 

Noise in an image can be distracting, certainly with a blurred background - reducing it either in camera at the point of shooting or in post processing will usually improve the overall  quality of the image.

 

Hope this helps.

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Dont know what sort of pictures you take,  but try say taking a raw picture of some local scene. then practice changing the different setting licke colour balence, shadows an highlights and contrast one at a time and go with sliders from one extreme to the other and see how each affects the image. Then set what seems pleasing to your eyes. Editing a picture is all about taking picture from camera and either making it look more pleasing to the eye or perhaps making it more dramatic there is no right or wrong and no one can tell you exactly how to do it you just need to experiment.

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It sounds like you're pretty new to this process. To make your learning go as easily and enjoyably as possible I offer these suggestions.

 

1. To get started try some of the free tutorials on You Tube from Drippy Cat (Simon Foster). They'll get you going with the basics. Simon also offers 3 in-depth courses (paid) through Udemy that are worth having a look at. Simon's courses go into some detail on the why and how of several of the topics you mentioned like RAW processing, black point adjustments, etc.

 

2. The official Affinity Photo tutorials are offered free. They're created by James Ritson (a member of the AP development team). James covers pretty much all aspects of the capabilities of Affinity Photo. His tutorials are excellent: I believe there are about 200 different ones.

 

3. Affinity Revolution (on You Tube) also offers several good tutorials on specific techniques. Several are free and he also offers one paid course.

 

All three of these offer a lot of good clear advice presented in easy to follow steps. All three offer free tutorials too. For my own learning I followed Simon's 3 courses on Udemy as well as the free tutorials from the others to get started and found they gave me a good solid foundation as well as showed me the rationale for doing things in a particular way. Which is best? Try each and see whose teaching style fits you best. 

 

Good luck and have fun.

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Thanks for that EdD! Just as a heads up to Chintan, here's a link to the first of 3 youtube videos aimed at someone like yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYwjdx9FJRA . They cover more general principles than RAW processing but hopefully if you go though them it will be of some help. Btw; I agree with the idea that 'how to' is not enough. 'Why to' and 'when to' are equally as important.

 

Cheers

Simon

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I have watched the develop raw videos in the youtube channel but that still doesn't answer my questions.

 

  • Why should I reduce blackpoint or increase it? And by how much? How can I know that this is enough or not enough?
  •  
  • Why should I adjust tonal curves? What is a tonal curve? Again, by how much should I adjust, when is it enough? 
  •  
  • Why should I reduce noise? What is this luminance and chrominance? How much, too much?

 

The above are just a few of the dozens of questions I get on each new concept that is introduced in the tutorial videos. And a typical video can introduce 10 concepts in  the span of 6 minutes

can you give a quick list of these dozens?

I feel like doing them.

 

"by how much to edit them, and whether it the right amount of edit or it's too much or too little. How will I know that someone else will like what I did or not like? "

(1) mostly it is too much  :)

 

(2) this is really hard to tell and takes time and practice, looking at work that others did and that you try to replicate certain looks you like and understand how they got something to the state it is

 

[learn techniques]

I've covered so far these topics 

 

 

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Also (beside a lot of practise)  you can begin with the sliders at max and work your way against minimum.

It's also very useful to learn about histogram. 

- Affinity Photo 2.3.0
- Affinity Designer 2.3.0
-Affinity Publisher 2.3.0

 

MacBook Pro 16 GB
MacOS Sonoma 14.1.2

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It's a long long learning curve. I started with Lightroom and NIK, never used photoshop, so I'm at the same level of understanding.

 

If you haven't seen this video yet you might find it useful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR0j-qVLJ5o&feature=youtu.be&t=479

Skill Level: Beginner, digital photography, digital editing, lighting.

Equipment: Consumer grade. Sony Nex5n, Nikon D5100, (16MP sony sensors)

Paid Software: Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Lightroom4

Free Software: NIK collection, Sony CaptureOne9, Cyberlink PhotoDirector6, Hugin, ImageJ, MS Ice, Davinci Resolve

Computer: Win10 home, CPU Skylake I7-6700, GPU Saphire HD7850 1G, Plextor SSD

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