Dirty Little Secrets #3

Posted by Philip in Photo Processing, Photo Technique

There are so many movies that show high-tech video and photography capabilities.  You see an image taken from a low resolution black and while ATM video camera.  They will take that image and not only “enhance” it to be able to read the license place that only took up 4 pixels on the screen but also come up with a color of the vehicle.  These abilities are pretty much impossible.  But through movie magic, that license place pops into perfect detail and the black and while image colorizes those shades of gray into perfect hues.  Let me give you a little test.  Here’s an image I’ve made smaller and converted to black and white.  Next week I’ll post the larger color version, but for now tell me what color are the walls of the room or the couch.  How about, who’s photo hangs on the wall above the fireplace.

While you try to figure that out.  Here’s the real dirty little secret, you can’t fix everything in post processing.  A lot of people think that you can fix photos that are out of focus.  You can’t.  If it’s out of focus, you have blurred out the detail, and there’s no way to bring that back.  Below I have an image where I blurred out the background.  You have a clue what’s in the background based on the foreground objects, but there is no way from this image to restore the detail of the grape vines.  The same is true if you “accidentally” have bad focus on your subject.  So  make sure you check your focus.  One of the nice things about digital cameras is the LCD on the back.  In most cases you can zoom in and check on the spot so you don’t have any nasty surprises later.