What is "Post Processing," is it used for minor touch-ups only or and full creative expression?

[JFG]

Post‑processing is the digital darkroom — It is everything that happens after you press the shutter. It includes:

• Minor corrections like exposure tweaks, white balance, sharpening, noise reduction, and spot removal. These are the “clean‑up” edits that keep the image true to life.

• Creative enhancement, where you shape mood, color, style, and storytelling. This can be subtle (a signature color grade) or wild (textures, filters, double exposures, surreal composites).
• Full artistic transformation, where the final image may look dramatically different from the original capture — the equivalent of adding brushstrokes to a painting.

Professionals overwhelmingly edit their images — 99.9% of them, according to one source — because post is where the final vision comes together.

 ️ When post is “just touch‑ups”

These are the quick, corrective edits that keep the photo natural:

• Fixing exposure or contrast

• Correcting color

• Removing dust spots or small distractions

• Sharpening details

• Reducing noise

  These are essential for clean, professional‑looking images and are considered standard practice.

  When post becomes creative

This is where you push beyond reality:

• Dramatic color grading

• Stylized lighting effects

• Texture overlays

• Artistic filters

• Double exposures (in‑camera or digital)

• Composite storytelling

These techniques let you develop a signature style and create images that feel more like artwork than documentation.

🧠 How to think about it

Post isn’t a band‑aid — it’s a creative stage. Just like pre‑production and shooting, it’s part of the full photographic workflow.

A clean, realistic edit and a wild, stylized one are both valid. The only question is: What serves the image and your vision?

 One question for you

Do you want your post‑processing to stay mostly true‑to‑life, or are you exploring a signature creative style?  The decision is yours.  Which ever route you take, "Do what you feel in your hart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway." Eleanor Roosevelt

You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.   What is your take on this?

[JFG]

Post‑processing is the digital darkroom — It is everything that happens after you press the shutter. It includes:

• Minor corrections like exposure tweaks, white balance, sharpening, noise reduction, and spot removal. These are the “clean‑up” edits that keep the image true to life.

• Creative enhancement, where you shape mood, color, style, and storytelling. This can be subtle (a signature color grade) or wild (textures, filters, double exposures, surreal composites).
• Full artistic transformation, where the final image may look dramatically different from the original capture — the equivalent of adding brushstrokes to a painting.

Professionals overwhelmingly edit their images — 99.9% of them, according to one source — because post is where the final vision comes together.

 ️ When post is “just touch‑ups”

These are the quick, corrective edits that keep the photo natural:

• Fixing exposure or contrast

• Correcting color

• Removing dust spots or small distractions

• Sharpening details

• Reducing noise

  These are essential for clean, professional‑looking images and are considered standard practice.

  When post becomes creative

This is where you push beyond reality:

• Dramatic color grading

• Stylized lighting effects

• Texture overlays

• Artistic filters

• Double exposures (in‑camera or digital)

• Composite storytelling

These techniques let you develop a signature style and create images that feel more like artwork than documentation.

🧠 How to think about it

Post isn’t a band‑aid — it’s a creative stage. Just like pre‑production and shooting, it’s part of the full photographic workflow.

A clean, realistic edit and a wild, stylized one are both valid. The only question is: What serves the image and your vision?

 One question for you

Do you want your post‑processing to stay mostly true‑to‑life, or are you exploring a signature creative style?  The decision is yours.  Which ever route you take, "Do what you feel in your hart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway." Eleanor Roosevelt

You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.   What is your take on this?

[March411]

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@LeeP wrote:

By contrast, an image maker does much more invasive work to what was shot. They may add content that was missing in the original like a Pinterest-perfect blue sky with wispy clouds, or they may remove distracting content such as a telephone pole that seems to sprout from a person's head.

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But isn't that manipulation? It adjusts original content and is now more then post production. Creative....possibly but that isn't really post production.

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@LeeP wrote:

Beyond that they may stitch together multiple photographs for their image creation with the result being something utterly impossible to have been shot in camera. 

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How can this be considered manipulation? The scene, lets say a landscape cannot be composed as one single frame in camera, either it is to vast or you didn't pack a lens wide enough for the capture. It takes a good degree of skill to compose several different frames and stitch them together in post as a single image. If you don't add or remove content and simply benefit from minor touch-ups to exposure, or saturation, or contrast in post. How is that not defined as a photograph? This is really the ultimate test of good composition. 

You and I agree on a couple points, adding picture perfect skies or other "stuff" causes an image to lose its integrity. To some regard removing content is manipulating the photograph. Maybe at that point it's just called Art.  And there are some photographers that that use these tools that will outright tell you they have, because they honor the integrity of the image by letting people know it has been modified.

And both perspectives should be allowed to coexist. 

[LeeP]

We agree on a lot when all is said and done. And in any venture semantics exist. What we differ on is largely semantics. The irony of semantics is that both sides can be true.

To tip toe into the semantics...

"Creative....possibly but that isn't really post production."

Anything done after-the-fact to alter a photograph we shoot--I maintain-is most decidedly postproduction. Be it minor attention to exposure/saturation/contrast or engineering photos into one outcome is "post" exposure and the altering "produces" the result, hence postproduction. At least that is what we teach in our program.

"It takes a good degree of skill to compose several different frames and stitch them together in post as a single image."

100% agree / Notice that you said stitching was postproduction

"How can this be considered manipulation?"

A basic definition of verb "to manipulate" is "to alter or to edit" therefore stitching together images involves altering and editing them into a one-image outcome. I am not speaking psychological / emotional manipulation i.e. deception.

I have never said that a Photoshop image is not artistic or that it does not require skill, but I am saying that engineering several separately shot photographs to become one picture is therefore an image because of the engineering done.

As always, I enjoy the intelligence you bring to discussions. I always feel engaged in the discussion with you. 

"And both perspectives should be allowed to coexist."

100% agree

Thank you for the conversation.

[March411]

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@LeeP wrote:

"It takes a good degree of skill to compose several different frames and stitch them together in post as a single image."

100% agree / Notice that you said stitching was post production

"How can this be considered manipulation?"

A basic definition of verb "to manipulate" is "to alter or to edit" therefore stitching together images involves altering and editing them into a one-image outcome. I am not speaking psychological / emotional manipulation i.e. deception.

Lee, just to respond to your point and my thought on stitching. Not to disagree with your position.

I'll stick with the landscape scenario since that is my experience where I see it used most often.

Three separate images are taken to complete a scene in its totality because it can't be captured in a single frame. They are brought into whatever application one uses and aligned to resemble the exact view of the photographer.The are not altering or editing the original images

Here's the real verbiage for the task they are completing, its not stitching its splicing (used to be film more problematic) into to accurate single image. After its spliced they may go through the normal process and adjust contrast, exposure or saturation. The image isn't truly engineered or manipulated, it's spliced. If they add that cool sunset or Pinterest-perfect blue sky with wispy clouds they have moved out of post.

Post production as I see it, just my perspective is not adding or subtracting elements that were not in the original image.

Post is as you referenced, contrast, saturation, exposure and white balance..... just as a few examples. For professionals I would probably add flesh tone and blemish removal but that is just to keep their clients happy and the revenue stream positive. 

I shoot strictly RAW just so that I can attempt to depict an image that as closely as humanly possible matches what I viewed with my eyes. When I had a wet lab I attempted to achieve the same goal, its just easier now. I can remember spotting, using incredibly expensive brushes and dye to fix dust spots. That's rarely an issue these days and I hated it back in the day.       

[LeeP]

"For professionals I would probably add flesh tone and blemish removal but that is just to keep their clients happy and the revenue stream positive."

10,000% agree / I don't mess with portraits in my flow so it slipped my mind to include that in. Thank you for that.

It is a pleasure chatting and having a friendly debate. Doing so gets me out of my comfort zone and challenges my thinking on a topic. For that, I appreciate the food for thought.

[ebiggs1]

"" 99.9% of them, according to one source"

I would love to see the statistical study that found that data point which was quoted by the source-..."

I have a hard time believing there is .1% that don't. If you are a money making 'pro' you use Photoshop and Lightroom. You u/l to LR from your camera and it applies lens correction. And that my friend is post editing!

[JFG]

Hi EB,

Surveys sometimes use 99.9% instead of 100% to avoid implying absolute certainty, which acknowledges that a very small number of respondents might not use the software.  No survey can guarantee that every individual in a population has been accurately represented.  Stating 100% might lead some to believe that the survey is infallible or that there are no exceptions. By using 99.9%, it clarifies that while the majority may use the software, there are always exceptions.

Having said that, I like you, "I have a hard time believing there is .1% that don't. If you are a money making 'pro' you use Photoshop and Lightroom. You u/l to LR from your camera and it applies lens correction. And that my friend is post editing!"