Editing Photos

Editing photos, when done correctly, enhances a visual so that they look gorgeous. Sometimes, we get folks who don’t know when to stop, resulting in garish photos.

However, there’s something that bugs me when I see an edited photo. The autumn leaves are too red, the waters too blue, the grass too healthy a green…

Maybe it’s because I grew up with comments like, “That portrait of her? Heavily Photoshopped to make her skin look flawless lah! FAKE!” so in my brain, I equate editing photos with fakeness.

Then again, in selecting certain modes on my camera like foliage, that’s also editing the colours even though it’s done within the camera, isn’t it? Like this photo when I used this foliage mode, I don’t like it because the colours are too vivid and it hurts to look at.

At what point do you sit back and look at your photo to say “enough”? It’s such a subjective activity which is why I avoid it altogether. Previously, I learned the basics of Photoshop and it was too complicated so I never pursued it. But with digital cameras becoming more common, more and more user-friendly software are popping up. Glancing through a recommended application the other day, I was amazed at how easy it was to brighten up the face of the subject, or make the skies bluer, or the rock surface and crevices more defined!

Now that I’m about to get my new toy (yeah!) which also shoots in RAW, I’m wondering if I should start moving my butt into doing all these editing too. So just curious, do you edit your photos?