Photo post processing

[flamin lib]

3. I shoot in JPEG plus Raw. If the JPEG looks good I edit that.

Oly has very good JPEG processing in-camera. If the tonal range is outside the JPEG capability I can rely on RAW. 90% of my stuff is JPEG.

I routinely run images through Corel's 'one step photo fix' that uses pre-set brightness/contrast/noise/etc settings. About half the time I disagree with it and customize the adjustments. Then I run it through a high pass sharpening tool. I burn in the corners and any hot spots as well as any overly bright details to lessen their prominence.

I spent about half an hour removing small imperfections and dodging/burning to selectively change brightness.

I really do have OCD. As a Realtor every house I showed had absolutely level and straight pictures on every wall after I left, I can't help it . I have to eventually just leave the damn thing alone or I get lost in making changes at the pixel level. I save the image several times along the way with -1,-2 appended to the file name so when I go too far, and I invariably do, I can recover a copy that's not over processed. I also save the original un-altered and there's always the untouched RAW file.

Now, if I could just get really cruel in the 'delete file' stage I'd be so much better off.