Chapter Eight

POST-PROCESSING

Take Your Images from Flat to Fantastic!

In home decorating, they say it’s the accessories that make the home. In cooking, they say it’s the seasoning that makes the meal. And, in landscape photography, they say if you start with a really good image, you can make it a really great image in post. By the way, post is not short for “post-processing.” It’s short for . . . awwww, forget it. It is short for post-processing (I couldn’t go to that well again). Anyway, post-processing is really important these days—just as it was in Ansel Adams’ day. He was an absolute magician in the darkroom, pushing the boundaries, doing amazing things, and using processes that are still studied in college photography classrooms around the world. Today, we don’t have to mess with all those harmful chemicals anymore, because back in the late 1990s, they ran tests where they held laboratory rats in a tray of fixer solution and found out the stuff was so toxic that not only did it not kill the rats, but these irradiated rats grew to 20 times their original size and killed their scientific handlers, and thus ended the use and testing of darkroom chemicals. In a weird turn of events, those very same chemicals are now commonly added to waffle fries. But, I digress. Okay, let me be straight with you. You have to know Lightroom or Photoshop. A lot of Lightroom, a little Photoshop, but you gotta know ‘em. They are “the great equalizers,” and they can make up for the fact that you might not be shooting with the sharpest lens, or that you might not have the most expensive sensor on your lens, or that in that behind-the-scenes shot in the mountains, you can clearly see your bald spot. They can fix all that and more. Well, it depends how big the bald spot is. If it’s really light there, I’m not sure how much it’s really going to cover. I mean, sure it’s Photoshop, but at the end of the day, it’s just software, it’s not like Rogaine on a brush.