What does processing photos mean?

WHAT DOES IMAGE PROCESSING MEAN?

 If you are new to photography, you may not know what more experienced photographers mean when they say they are going to process an image. After all, you take your photo with your camera (or phone), maybe you transfer it from your camera to your computer, and there it is, ready for you to print, upload to social media, and so on.

 So what do you mean processing it? Isn’t it already there?

 The first thing we need to understand is that your camera cannot see images. What it does see, is light.

 When you see something, you are seeing light that is reflected from that item. Every colour or tone comes from the light that reflects back at us from that item. Your eye translates that information into an image and sends that into your brain.

 Your camera does the same.

 Every miniscule spot of light your camera sees on the sensor, it makes a note of in a file. Then, it tries to interpret that light into an image for you. That image it offers you is usually a .jpeg file, which is an image file, and it is ready for you to use.

 But, YOU may not have seen things the exact same way your camera or device is interpreting the scene for you.

The differences may be small, but small differences can make or break your photo.

Left: My camera’s interpretation. Right: My processed image. Note the subtle difference.

 Makes sense, really! We don’t expect our eyes to see exactly the same as each others’ eyes, so how can we expect our camera to see the same way as our own eyes do? They are mostly similar, of course, but think about this, some people see colours more richly, some see a greater depth of tones, some people can’t see specific colours. There are differences.

We might therefore take a photo, look at it, and be disappointed in it.

“Oh!”, we think, “This picture didn’t come out nicely at all.” Or “Oh! That’s not what it looked like when I saw it!”

Maybe, the camera’s best guess to translate the light into an image for you, was not an accurate guess at what your own eyes saw.

But, that is not the end of the world. You can process an image using software the same way people used to process films in a darkroom. (Okay, not exactly the same, but you get the idea!)

Here is the trick, once you understand this: the camera did not record an image. It recorded information on the light it was exposed to. That information is still there, in the file.

You can transfer your photo into image software programs like Lightroom, or Capture 1, or many other brands. In that software, you can then choose how to translate the data, and control how your image looks. You can then make sure your image looks much more like what you saw, than what your camera guesses it to be.

Processing simply is when you choose how your image looks, and your camera doesn’t choose.

(By the way, a .jpeg is not the only way to take photos, but I won’t cover that here).

© Catherine Knee