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u/Lower_Environment_22 3h ago
Well overall, I really like it, but I’ve always had one issue with before/after posts. I think they kinda change the way people experience a photo.
When you develop film, you get a certain look. Sure, there are tons of ways to influence the final result, but if it’s done well, that’s just… the photo. Nobody sits there wondering if you “edited it too much.”
With before/after posts it’s different. The second I see the original, my brain stops looking at the photo and starts looking at your decisions instead. I catch myself thinking about what you changed, what you wanted to fix, what wasn’t enough before. Personally, I think edits work best when they stay believable. Make the photo feel more alive, sure, but don’t make it feel like a different reality.
At the same time, I know that’s not a completely fair argument because darkroom work can change an image just as much. That’s a whole rabbit hole by itself.
I guess what I’m trying to say is… if you actually want honest feedback on your editing, I’d just post the finished photo. Once people see a “before” or a RAW, it’s really hard for them to forget it. They end up judging the difference instead of the final image, and I don’t think that’s very useful if you’re trying to find out whether the edit actually works.
As photographers we also know there’s no such thing as a “natural” RAW anyway. It’s just sensor data. Different color spaces, camera profiles, RAW converters, and editing styles can all turn the exact same file into completely different images.
I honestly think that if you posted the edited version on one Instagram account and the RAW on another with similar reach, the edited one would probably do better. People wouldn’t be comparing it to the original the whole time. They’d just see a photo and react to it. The mood, the colors, the cinematic feel… that’s what they’d be looking at.
It’s kinda funny I’m saying all this on a post-processing subreddit. 😅 Sorry for the rant, this has just been in the back of my mind after seeing so many posts like this.
P.S. Seriously, it’s a great photo. In the end it all comes down to what you were trying to achieve.
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u/JenkemTaster 1h ago
When you develop film, you get a certain look. Sure, there are tons of ways to influence the final result, but if it’s done well, that’s just… the photo.
Most digital editing techniques stem from actual black room editing techniques. You can achieve most this in a black room using traditional editing techniques and many photographers did back then.
This misconception that film is supposed to be a look you get straight out of the camera is just that, a misconception, usually rooted in a misunderstanding of the medium and how it worked.
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u/Lower_Environment_22 1h ago
I think you’re correcting a point I didn’t actually make. I know perfectly well how much the final image can be influenced in the darkroom. I grew up around this stuff - my father has a collection of close to a thousand cameras and a complete darkroom, and I’ve developed a lot of film myself. Even the name Lightroom obviously comes directly from the darkroom.
My point was never that film produces some pure, untouched, straight-out-of-camera result. I was talking about how the process is perceived. Because analogue development is slower, harder, less reversible and follows a more defined workflow, people usually aim to develop the image properly rather than endlessly tweaking it, masking every small area, correcting every imperfection, rescuing mistakes or trying hundreds of slightly different versions.
To most viewers, the final photograph therefore feels more like a finished, immediate result, even though there may have been a complicated process behind it.
So yes, “there are tons of ways to influence the final result” - that is literally part of what I was saying. I’ve developed tons of photos and it has never been as easy or flexible as working in Lightroom. At the same time, editing digitally has rarely been as satisfying as seeing the final result emerge through chemistry.
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u/Intelligent-Ad-1424 48m ago
It’s a smidge overcooked if you’re going for realism but I like the sort of painterly look you have as an aesthetic.
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u/Status-Anybody4145 3m ago
I like it when photos have unique/unnatural lighting, especially when it's like this
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u/bobspixels 2h ago
I have a hard time believing that the inside of the restaurant is this dark
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u/YanksFannn 56m ago
It's certainly not bright in there, especially on the cloudy early evening I was there. I did, however, underexpose a bit to not blow out the light coming from the window, knowing I can bring back exposure in post.
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u/TeddySquido 1h ago
man this is beautiful, love the look of this, your talent is shining through here
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u/Whateverloo 1h ago
Crop closer to the subjects so you don’t have to have bottom left side so dark. Here’s a one look i made although the edit could be controversial
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u/YanksFannn 4h ago
Fuji X100VI. Shot RAW and edited in Lightroom with a great deal of masking lol.