Do you Photoshop?

I have been asked a lot of questions about Photoshop lately and specifically what the difference looks like between an image SOOC (straight out of the camera) vs. once I am done with it in Photoshop. I definitely do use Photoshop and honestly I don’t know many photographers these days that don’t use it or some other editing tool for sharpening, color adjustments, etc. My recent pictures of my “skater kids” prompted the most questions, I’m guessing because I really did more editing / color saturation than normal in order to achieve the look I really wanted for those pictures.

So I thought I would post a before and after shot so you could see the difference between what the image looks like when it comes out of my camera and once I am done editing it. I know when I was first getting into photography I was hungry to learn any detail I possibly could. There were a couple photographers who were really great and took the time to answer questions and steer me in the right direction. I am really grateful to them and because of their willingness to “Pay It Forward” I want to be able to help others feel more confident taking pictures as well. So… here they are.

SOOC – I shoot in RAW but this is ZERO editing – no sharpening or color adjustment done to it – I just converted the RAW file to JPEG so I could post it.

RAW edited – this file was opened in Camera Raw and I brightened the exposure a little, then darkened the blacks. I believe I also warmed it up just a little bit. Just doing the RAW adjustments makes the colors stand out more and gives a little more depth to the picture. I always shoot in RAW and can never go back to shooting in JPEG. There are no other photoshop edits or sharpening done yet on this image. Just saved it out of RAW and uploaded it.

Here is the final image after editing in Photoshop. I don’t claim to be the best at Photoshop and most certainly everyone has their own style of editing. I learn something new every day! Sometimes I even open a picture the next day and change the processing a little because I realized it was too dark or too cool, or too saturated.

Hopefully this is helpful for those who are learning like me to get an idea of the difference between what comes out of the camera and what Photoshop can help achieve. Let me know if something was confusing and I will try to help.