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I quit editing photos

jamesbaker.uk

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Re: I quit editing photos

#41

Post by captainclam »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

There are plenty of people who sincerely enjoy the aspects that make older tech less convenient or practical. Maybe it's an appreciation for the engineering or "comprehensibility," often it's because older tech produces unique outputs that can't be adequately captured by newer technology.

Reducing people's interest to "social signalling" comes off as dismissive.

Re: I quit editing photos

#42

Post by CarVac »

jbellis wrote: post #25
CarVac wrote: post #22

I got tired of in depth fiddly editing and wrote Filmulator to minimize the decision-making and streamline editing. I rarely spend more than 20-30 seconds per image. You get a clean, basic look, no weird colors or overly creative "looks", but with adjustability and great highlight handling that JPEG doesn't get you. https://filmulator.org The current builds there are quite old but we've got new ones coming.

I'm interested if you're GPU-native and actually fast with my a7 IV raw images. Edit: oh wow, this is much older than I thought. Never mind. :)

It's not GPU-native… that's a goal but it'll certainly take some time. Back when I was last working heavily on it there commonly wasn't enough vram but now there should be on most machines.

33 megapixels is not a lot. I'd consider that fast on my 9800X3D gaming machine but moderate on my older 2700X dev machine. But of course, what you consider fast depends on your computer and your expectations.

Zooming and panning is much faster on Filmulator than most other software because it caches full-res images throughout much of the pipeline. On my gaming monitor I can rapidly zoom in and out at a buttery-smooth 240Hz refresh rate.

But actually changing settings is a bit slower.

The earliest settings are the slowest to respond since they only operate on full resolution raw data, but they're non-creative, technical decisions on highlight recovery and demosaicing and such that do not need tweaking. Additionally, you get early feedback from these in the form of early-pipeline histograms interspersed among the tools, helping you tune these settings quickly.

Noise reduction adds a lot of processing time but once you figure that out the full-res image gets cached and doesn't interfere with later steps.

It has fast (~100ms) screen-resolution response to sliders in the filmulation tools mid-pipeline but it'll take a second or two for the full resolution image to process.

Late pipeline editing (post-filmulation) is near instant even for the full resolution.

So is it fast? Yes and no. But it tries to always be responsive and provide useful information as quickly as possible.

Re: I quit editing photos

#43

Post by whiplash451 »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

> If you want to limit yourself to 36 unreviewed shots, you can do that with digital too.

I’m not sure that’s true. At least, not nearly as hard-constrained as with film.

I agree with your broader point, but let’s be completely honest. Digital is not a free lunch. You do lose something somewhere.

The medium you use “leaks” deeply into the whole experience of life (be it a vacation trip or something else). So all of this is a big deal.

Re: I quit editing photos

#44

Post by TehCorwiz »

CarVac wrote: post #22

I got tired of in depth fiddly editing and wrote Filmulator to minimize the decision-making and streamline editing. I rarely spend more than 20-30 seconds per image. You get a clean, basic look, no weird colors or overly creative "looks", but with adjustability and great highlight handling that JPEG doesn't get you. https://filmulator.org The current builds there are quite old but we've got new ones coming.

This looks right up my alley. Does it properly support true monochrome raw DNG files? I.E., cameras that don't have a bayer filter and don't require a debayering pass. I'm shooting a Pentax K3 Mark III Monochrome, although Leica has a couple true monochrome cameras and there are services that will de-bayer cameras and modify the firmware to achieve similar ends.

Re: I quit editing photos

#45

Post by alistairSH »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

It reminds me of people buying vinyl... signaling...

It's absolutely partly this.

But, for me today, as a sometimes hobbyist, it's also about the process...

Digital is too good. The cameras are too good. The results are too good. There's no anticipation.

The analog experience is, to be trite, so much more analog. A good vintage film camera (and probably new Leica too) feels so good in the hand. Like a nice watch, it's a piece of mechanical art. It takes time to focus and set exposure. Sometimes is goes horribly wrong, but sometimes whatever went wrong produces an unexpectedly delightful result. There's also something to be said about receiving the negatives and scans weeks or months after shooting the film - the delayed gratification is something that's lacking in today's instant-everything world. Plus, the cost of film and processing makes me slow down a beat and think about what I'm doing - no spray and pray when a roll of Portra 400 + processing is $25 or more.

Re: I quit editing photos

#46

Post by ageitgey »

The dark truth no one wants to say out loud is that 'real' cameras are dying to cell phones not just because phones are more convenient to carry, but because phones take 'better' photos for 99% of people than they can manage with any other camera - and that's without any editing. It's all software.

Yes, enthusiasts here are spending hours editing RAW files and most think cell phone pics are over-HDRed messes. But phone software is so advanced now that it takes real talent and skill to replicate the perceived quality of what users get with their cell phone's software automatically. Most people are at a disadvantage with a DLSR/mirror less, not an advantage. That leads to ever-declining sales.

Why can't someone make a traditional camera with modern software instead of something that looks like it is out of 1994? The software on a Sony DLSR, for example, looks like the on-screen menu of a VHS player, but is somehow slower and dumber to use. The number of overlapping, incompatible picture adjustments on a Fuji is just as ridiculous.

Re: I quit editing photos

#47

Post by neogodless »

A few lessons hidden in here:

Perfect is the enemy of good: Don't obsessively edit. Cull obviously bad photos. Find a few pretty good ones. Pick one at random. Edit lightly.

Photography can focus on captures or edits: analog photography necessitates a focus on the capture. Be in that moment, frame the shot you want, and your only edit might be some color correction.

While the above might not make you a 99th percentile photographer, that probably isn't a goal you need concern yourself with. I always find photos online that blow me away. Artists with the patience to plan and wait for the perfect shot, possibly for hours. Artists that meticulously cull until they find an exceptional photo. Artists that spend a half hour editing a single photo adjusting sliders.

If that's not you, you still don't have to give up editing photos if you like the result better than the camera's JPG. You just have to focus on the parts you enjoy, and find balance in the quality of the end results.

(And personally I love DxO PhotoLab. Purchased once on sale, no subscription. Fun to use, and I love the results!)

Re: I quit editing photos

#48

Post by spinningarrow »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time on both film and digital and currently I’m a lot happier with the results of my film work. Is it a combination of the camera, lens, medium, and process? I’m sure it is. Could I get similar artifacts out of digital? Probably but the key difference is that I don’t and the medium for me doesn’t make me want to. In the end creative work like photography has as many manifestations as people and your comment reads as rather dismissive than curious.

Re: I quit editing photos

#50

Post by [deleted] »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

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