Photo Retouching and Exposure

I wrote a little about this yesterday, and wanted to add a little to retouching because I just received an email from a software company whose product I use.  It was an interview with another photographer about retouching.  It's always nice to see that others feel the same way as you.  The point made in the interview was to get as much as you can correct in your exposure to minimize any retouching.  And when you do retouch, the subject of the photograph should not be able to see that you did.  They should not know that you did it in most cases - unless, of course, they specifically requested some post production retouching.  And then it should still appear as though it was not retouched.

About exposure and RAW (not about whether you're exposed in the raw, LOL) - Years ago, when I was shooting with film cameras, I was photographing a young lady with B&W negative film (ASA 125) and color transparency film (ASA 25).  One problem - I neglected to change the ASA setting on my camera's light meter for the color film.  Below is the result.

Yes, I had her climb up into the tree for this photo, so when I got the results, it was quite disappointing.  Years later, after I scanned it, and fixed it as much as I was able to in Lightroom (didn't spend much time on this as it would still not be good), this is how it looked.

Fast forward to today and digital cameras.  Let's say you were taking this same photo with a digital camera.  But your light meter got it wrong because you accidentally exposed for the sky (everyone makes mistakes at one time or another - To Err is Human).  If you shot this with your camera's RAW setting, and processed non-destructively in Lightroom, there is a good chance you would get a usable image.  Below is the image out of the camera (this time, the camera's light meter messed up - only time out of a few hundred exposures), and then adjusted in Lightroom.

I used to shoot JPG because the files were smaller and I could shoot more with the memory I had.  And store more on my hard drives.  But with the flash drives and hard drives getting bigger and less expensive, I switched to shooting RAW as it can save the day.  The only reason I can see to shoot JPG would be for shooting sports and perhaps wild animals and birds, as the images can be written faster to your camera's flash cards, thus you can shoot more faster.

This blog will always be my opinion - others may disagree, which is fine.  The best thing is to experiment and see what works best for you.  And have fun!