stockie's imago

To me on of the most common touch up required is straightening the horizon. Some people don’t mind photos slanting here and there. Some even use it as part of creative expression. However all those depends on individual on the message that they wanted to bring forth. I rather not start on why horizon must straight in landscape. It may works with creative angle on portrait, still life, conceptual, street, urban etc but in landscape? Hmmm…. I better shut up!

Anyway, to straighten the horizon in ACR is such a breeze. Sometime I even purposely open files in ACR just because wanna straighten the horizon here is much easier than in Photoshop which requires few steps. I admit that I’m such a lazy fart!

Straighten Tools

Well, I think from the image, it has been so clear on what need to be done.

1. Click at the Straighten Tool or Press A.
2. Drag along a line that represent horizontally or vertically aligned.

Done!

Take note the ACR automatically crop those unwanted edges.

Generally there are two formats used by photographers nowadays; RAW and jpg. And there are many debates to which format is better.

Typically, jpg shooters fall into few main category.

1. Those can be considered as pro level where their exposure, WB, sharpness, contrast, hue etc etc are spot on. Nothing else to meddle in post-processing. It’s perfect!
2. Another category is very much noobie. If you were to ask them, they might ask back, what is RAW?
3. Purist who believe the photo is not a photo anymore after post-processing. Thus, wanna remain untouchables by digital era (I’m not referring to film-shooters but digital!)
4. And finally those admitted not well versed or less (prefer not to say no) initiative to learn about post-processing.

Which category I am? I’m a RAW shooter.

Why, coz my shots are not perfect as the pro level where everything can be perfect and more often than not, I’m a trigger fanatics when presented with such beautiful scene and cannot make up what I really want. Or due to limited time to really evaluate all of the above circumstances and conditions to come out with the perfect shots in JPG.

I’m not going to debate which is better. Let online forums deal with that and let the smart alecs present their case with technical mumbo jumbos.

What I wanna share here is that I shoot RAW coz mebbe (read mebbe coz not applicable for all. Crap shots is still crap shots.) some not so perfect photos that I can tweak later on when needed.

Before PP

Looking at this photo exposure, it was under bright sun and in the afternoon. There are too much light available and tricked the camera metering into thinking that it’s too much light and the result is underexposed.

If I were to really to make it right the first time, I should’ve set EV+1 coz I know it’s going to be underexposed but I didn’t. I let the camera decides on the exposure and shoot RAW instead and know perfectly well what need to be done during PP.

Due to the bright sunlight too, the colors seems to be a bit washed out. I should’ve pump up my saturation a bit, increase a bit of contrast and DR. (Psst.. pump up saturation, sharpness, DR etc etc is still post processing. It’s not in PC but in-camera PP when you changed picture settings of landscape, vivid, neutral, portrait etc etc <wink>). Therefore, if I am a purist, I’d bring my 2 big CD-wallet-like to open up dozens of filters (not like I have them) to counter the highlights, increase saturation of some colors, using GND etc etc. Again, I didn’t do that but I shoot RAW! He he he.

And this is the outcome only with Adobe Camera RAW, not even bring it to Photoshop yet.

After ACR

So what have I done in ACR? Be on the lookout for the next series of postings! <wink>