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post processing

Using Your Smartphone As a Post-Processing Playground

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Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
Post-processing is one of the most important steps of creating a powerful image (as my dad wrote about in a previous post). Ansel Adams once said, “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.” In modern day digital photography, post-processing leads to the “performance” part that Adams refers to. A RAW file from your camera can go in so many different directions.

In the past year or so, I’ve been really trying to improve my post-processing skills (especially with landscape images), and I discovered that one of the best ways to practice is using your smartphone.

The great thing about the smartphone is that it’s a camera and a little computer built into one small device that’s always with you. There’s tons of excellent photo editing apps that have professional editing abilities—my personal favorite is Snapseed (available for iPhone and Android), but I’ll get more into specific apps in a future post. [Read more…] about Using Your Smartphone As a Post-Processing Playground

Completing Your Vision in Post-Processing

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Red-tailed Hawk / Photo by Vic Berardi
Red-tailed Hawk / Photo by Vic Berardi
Note from the editor (Steve): After reading this great post by my Dad, please check out his new blog, where he’s writing about his travels, his passion for hawks, and other thoughts on life.

That term “vision”—what does it mean? For me it’s simple. When I get home from a day of shooting, I review all my photos. I intentionally look for the images that stood out when I first saw them through my viewfinder. However, I usually get confusingly disappointed when I realize the camera didn’t capture the scene exactly the way I “saw” it—or maybe the way I thought I saw it? [Read more…] about Completing Your Vision in Post-Processing

Three Reasons To Periodically Look Through Your Old Photos

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Photos by Steve BerardiOne of the great things about digital photography is that memory is cheap. We can take lots and lots of photos without ever having to worry about expensive film. You can buy a big memory card once, and use it over and over again.

As a result, you probably have a big stockpile of photos somewhere. Maybe it’s in some obscure folder on your computer, or maybe it’s on a big external hard drive somewhere.

With all these photos, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. When you get back from a long day out on the trails, you might go through all your photos quickly, and grab the really good ones to process and share online. But, in this process you might immediately label a lot of those photos as “bad” — and bury them in that giant stockpile of photos you have hiding somewhere.

Since we’re always adding more and more photos to this stockpile, it’s easy to forget about them and never look through them again.

But, it’s a good idea to browse through all those “rejects” every once in a while. Here are a few reasons why: [Read more…] about Three Reasons To Periodically Look Through Your Old Photos

The Most Common Problem In Nature Photography

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Pitcher Sage (underexposed) / Photo by Steve Berardi
Pitcher Sage (underexposed) / Photo by Steve Berardi
One of the most common problems in nature photography is getting a good exposure. There seems to be a common tendency to underexpose nature photos.

There could be a lot of reasons why this happens. Maybe your camera’s metering mode doesn’t work well for a particular scene.

Or, the more likely issue is that your camera’s LCD screen appears much brighter when you’re outdoors in the sunlight. So, when you take a photo and preview it on your camera, the photo looks a lot brighter than it actually is.

Have you ever gone out and shot a bunch of photos that looked totally fine on your camera’s LCD screen, but then when you got home and opened the photos on your computer they looked super underexposed? [Read more…] about The Most Common Problem In Nature Photography

Three Reasons to Avoid Relying on the Crop Tool

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Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
In this age of digital photo editing, it’s tempting to get lazy when you’re taking a photo out in the field and just say to yourself, “well, if I don’t like how I framed this, I could always crop it later.” But, there are a few disadvantages to relying on that crop tool too much: [Read more…] about Three Reasons to Avoid Relying on the Crop Tool

3 Ways To Prevent Posterization

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Creosote (Larrea Tridentata) / Photo by Steve Berardi
Creosote (Larrea Tridentata) / Photo by Steve Berardi
One of the most annoying problems in digital photography is posterization (as seen in the photo above). It can turn your beautiful sunset photos into a jagged mess. But, luckily there are a few ways to prevent this ugly problem: [Read more…] about 3 Ways To Prevent Posterization