The Power of Post Processing

I often run across other photographers who don't use post processing in their workflow and it always strikes me as somewhat odd.  Are these people so good that they don't need to use post processing or do they not know how to use Photoshop or other image editing tools?  In my opinion, after learning how to use your camera gear and composing an image in your viewfinder, post processing is the most import part of your workflow and it can greatly enhance the visual impact of your images.

Today I was looking through some older photos and I ran across this unprocessed picture of my son at the beach in Destin, Florida.  I like the image but there were so many things wrong with it that I decide to run it through Photoshop and see if I could improve it.

There are four major adjustments that I felt needed to be made.

1. Level the crooked horizon.
2. Remove the two swimmers just above his left hand.
3. Remove the blue shovel and pail near his left knee.
4. Correct the over exposed sky, clouds, sand and water.  

I pulled the original image into Photoshop CS3 and corrected the four problems and also used curves to adjust the colors. here is what i did in Photoshop

1. Level the crooked horizon.
   Rotated the image 3 degrees clock wise and cropped.  I had to use the clone tool to rebuild the far right edge of the image or his left elbow would have been cropped off.
2. Remove the two swimmers just above his left hand.
   A little bit of cloning took care of the swimmers
3. Remove the blue shovel and pail near his left knee.
   A whole lot more cloning took care of the blue shovel and pail.
4. Correct the over exposed sky, clouds, sand and water.
   Added an adjustment layer and set it to multiply to darken the entire image.  I then added a layer mask and masked out him and his surf board so they would not be darkened by the adjustment layer.
5. Added a curves adjustment layer too bring out the color and contrast of the sky and clouds.

The whole process took me about 15 to 20 minutes.  I'm pleased with the result but I can see many flaws and I know that I can do better with more practice.  Let me know what you think.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.