Photographers don’t always have a good relationship with post-processing. Some photographers over-edit their photos, getting in the way of what they captured in camera. Other photographers neglect the post-processing stage – such as culling through their photos carelessly, or not utilizing the available tools to fine-tune a photo’s processing.
However, culling and editing are two of the most essential parts of photography and should not be ignored or done thoughtlessly. Culling lets you select the best photographs and more effectively transmit your message as a photographer. Post-processing – or picture tuning, as I like to call it more – then plays a significant role in making the chosen images perfect.
(I illustrated this essay using some pictures from the last mating season of Great Crested Grebe to make the case of a meaningful selection to form a small portfolio.)
Table of Contents
Why Image Culling Is Vital
The culling process – that is, selecting your images, the ones you choose to show – is essential because it extracts the best images from the mass of pictures taken (perhaps thousands if you, like me, use bursts a lot in action photography).
Being selective helps us become better photographers. Two reasons why this is true:
- Showing only the best photographs increases the perception of the photographer’s skill – even in our own eyes, improving our self-esteem,
- Quality over quantity. It doesn’t matter how many total photos you take during a photo session, it matters how many good photos you take.
Ansel Adams famously said, “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” I find this quote very explanatory of this concept, emphasizing the importance of selectivity. Consider this when showing your pictures to all your audiences, even with family and friends. A short selection of your best photos is often more appreciated than a lengthy sequence of lower-quality images (or even of similar good images; often better to choose the best of the set, even if it’s difficult).
What counts as your “best” photos and how many should you discard? In the past, I gave priority to discarding technically unsuccessful photographs. Now, I follow the opposite approach: I select those to keep based on how the image effectively conveys the artistic message I had in mind when shooting. And I mercilessly delete all the others, which often are more than 90% of the total.
How to Select Images Effectively
A straightforward place to begin is that you should not select any images with such technical flaws that you find objectionable. Sometimes, you may take photos with deliberate motion blur or other intentional “flaws” and of course, these images should be kept. Serious unwanted technical flaws, however, will only annoy you more over time and should rule a photo out of contention.
Then the step is to select images depending on their artistic effectiveness. This process includes an evaluation of several factors:
- Emotion and Impact: A successful image tends to evoke emotions and have a strong visual impact. It does not matter if this impact comes from the subject matter, the composition, the light, the color, or the contrast. But the image must strike.
- Clarity of the Message: The image should communicate the message or story that the photographer intends to convey – that is, the idea the photographer has in mind. It does not matter if it is a sophisticated project, or simply the desire to illustrate the beauty of a landscape or the intensity of the subject’s gaze.
- Originality and Creativity: The ability to offer a new or unique perspective often distinguishes an image from others and makes it special.
Suppose you have a project in mind for your selection, such as for a presentation, a portfolio, or a book. In that case, stylistic coherence is also necessary between the selected images and the photographer’s style in general. This helps maintain a uniform and recognizable visual narrative. However, variety is even more essential for projects like these. Two images that are very similar to one another can ruin the flow of a photo series altogether.
The Post-Processing Stage
Post-processing allows the photographer to fine-tune and perfect a good image. Software may be complex, but there are just a few fundamental tools for post-processing that matter for every photo:
- White balance – Remember that it is also a valid artistic tool that can significantly change the overall mood.
- Exposure – Think of low-key and high-key pictures, and how different their emotions can be.
- Contrast – Makes a photo more intense or more subdued by changing the difference between light and dark areas of the image.
- Saturation – Adjusts the intensity of the colors, and often, of the mood those colors impart on the image.
- Clarity – Increases the contrast in the mid-tone areas, emphasizing textures and details and their importance in the composition.
- Sharpness – Increase or reduce the perception of low-level details; however, too high sharpness looks aggressive.
- Noise Reduction – Reduces grain and discoloration at a pixel level, but too high noise reduction makes a photo’s details look like plastic.
- Cropping – It is often necessary to crop an image slightly to improve the composition, but a severe crop suggests a composition issue in camera
- Spot healing – A very controversial way to “remove” elements within a photo. I will talk more about this in the next section.
The names of these tools will not be the same in all software. For example, I like to use the Curves tool to adjust contrast and exposure. It is not the name of the tool that matters, but how the tool really modifies a photo’s white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, etc.
Adjustments can be global or local; they can affect the whole photo or just a portion. Most photos can be improved mainly through global adjustments, with local adjustments providing the finishing touches. It is possible to change a photo substantially through editing – however, my goal (and my recommendation) is to use a light touch and always try to maintain the image’s original qualities.
This brings me to the following concept: ethics in post-processing.
Ethics in Post-Processing
Ethics are essential in post-processing and, more generally, in photography. After all, anything can be done to a photo today. You can add or subtract whatever you want from the photo. You can change the background or paste the subject into a different scene. And software is so good that the result can “look normal” no matter how heavily edited it is.
To me, this is a worrying possibility as a photographer. For me, the goal is never to invent images in this way. I prefer to use post-processing as a tool to optimize photos and pursue my artist’s intent as captured in camera. Fine-tuning and editing a photo is an appropriate way to highlight what you have captured, but once you use it to change the nature of what you captured, is it even photography any more?
If necessary, I crop and remove unwanted elements – such as dust on the sensor or small branches, but only if I do not change the image’s meaning. I do not add, move, or replace anything. I am comfortable removing small elements in the photo, such as dust on the camera sensor or small branches, but no more than that, and some photographers would not even wish to go that far.
We must distinguish photo editing from making artistic graphics. While the former aims to improve the quality and expression of the captured image, the latter completely transforms the original work, creating something new and different.
I do not wish to define universal limits; everyone establishes their own. But it is wrong to pass a “digital image” off as a photo if that image was not made through a photographic process, but rather through digital art, compositing, or something like AI. It is much better to be consistent and transparent in explaining how you arrived at a result, and simple transparency is enough to quell most ethical concerns.
Conclusion
Carefully selecting your work – and then fine-tuning the most successful images – is essential to allow us to identify and showcase our photographs at their best.
This ultimately makes us better photographers, as well. To understand photo culling and post-processing is to be a more effective photographer, one who already has an idea of whether a photo will succeed before pressing the shutter button.
I hope you enjoyed this essay about the importance of culling and post-processing in photography. If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments section below.
Great article, thank you. I typically shoot several thousand frames in a few hours out in the field with the mindset that if I come home with a single keeper then the trip was a success and if I come home with zero then it was still worthwhile. As the years go by my keeper rate goes up but so do my expectations. I delete far more than 90%. Some would call this kind of burst shooting spray and pray, and to a degree I guess it is, but we are talking fast moving, erratic subjects, and field craft is everything. Right place, right light, right subject, hiding under camo or a blind, all the camera settings ready and then burst shoot for that perfect pose or frozen moment of action. Its a lot of effort. Of a sequence of 60 images maybe only 1 has the correct pose, no distractions, eye contact with the subject, and then the moment is gone. You can’t capture that if you just wait for it and then click, by the time you hit the shutter the moment is passed and the shot is missed. Even then, that image may still not be usable if the AF stuttered or the animal shifted position faster than the camera could keep up. It’s very rewarding when it all works out though.
Thank you, Dalin. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I agree with your perspective on productivity! I also added a few notes in response to Kln in the previous comment that are meaningful as a side note here, particularly regarding the productivity level Paul Niklen mentioned during an interview about his journey to capture the perfect picture.
I STOPPED READING AFTER THIS:
“Being selective helps us become better photographers. Two reasons why this is true:
Showing only the best photographs increases the perception of the photographer’s skill – even in our own eyes, improving our self-esteem,
Quality over quantity. It doesn’t matter how many total photos you take during a photo session, it matters how many good photos you take.”
In other words, “Cheat yourself and be shity at photography”.
Thank you for your comment, Kln.
Actually, the meaning of those sentences is quite different from what you interpreted.
First, photographers, even the most famous ones, take a lot of photographs each year. The result of their selection process is what their customers, followers, and friends see. This is true now and was also the case even before digital photography; you can check some reports from National Geographic assignments, just to name one.
Second, my advice (and not just mine) is to experiment; the more you experiment, the better. Fortunately, experiments can lead to beautiful photos, but they can also produce a lot of less successful images that a photographer should learn from and then discard without overthinking the number of mistakes made. This isn’t “spray and pray”; it’s a pathway to growth.
Third, a photographer is an artist. Often, the first photos are merely sketches to help clarify the goal of the photography. The farther the goal, the more sketches there will be.
Some time ago, Paul Niklen – an artist and photographer every wildlife photography enthusiast should know – mentioned during an interview that in one assignment, he took 100.000 pictures, of which only 40 were selected.
For example, when one takes the driving test, one should drive at the average of one’s ability — because driving at one’s best would be cheating.
Do you apply this to all of your endeavours [rhetorical question].
Many thanks for the entertainment 😂
It’s not just nature photos we have to be concerned with. That’s why I no longer follow Nikon ambassador Kristi Odom. During a presentation, she showed a lightning storm photo. She said it was a composite of many lightning photos which explains how amazing it looked. And, Audrey Woulard constantly removes her husband holding the light out of photos with AI. How can Nikon endorse these unethical post processing decisions. That’s why on my website, I have a photo processing statement which I think all photographers should have. Are we allowed to post our website URL here in the comments?
Thank you for your comment PixelMakerPro. I completely agree with you; the idea of writing a post-processing statement in addition to the photos on the personal website is very good.
Would you be able to share just that statement here?
Here is my statement on my website: All photos are real and none were AI generated. I will remove minor distracting elements within a composition. I do not use sky replacement, fake bokeh, compositing, or generative AI in my photos. I do not make misleading changes to photographs that would materially alter the scene as it originally existed.
But if she is open about her process, I really don’t see a problem. There are many ways to skin a cat. Even if I don’t like this or that way, unless the creator is trying to mislead you, what is the problem?
Not sure if it’s unethical or not, but I do find idea of removing someone holding a light from a photo with AI to be a bit depressing anyhow. If I saw a cool portrait but then later I found out it was manipulated to that degree I would be rather let down if I originally thought it was just a photo with some basic manipulations.
Agree with Kurtz. The issue is not with the postprocessing, but how you present your work. Most of the lightning photos are multishoot. If you say it is fine. Personally I love mutishoot techniques – you can generate something that was simply not possible with film, so claiming that this is not photography doesn’t not work. New technology and new possibilities always move boundaries ahead.
I agree with your perspective, but I wanted to point out that multiple exposures were very easy with film. I learned on a Crown Graphic 4×5 sheet film camera. Multiple exposures were not just easy, but easy to do by mistake!
Thanks Tom. My experience with film is terribly limited, so I can image that lightning at night can be easily obtained by multiple exposures on film. But I seriously doubt that you can have a decent focus stacking in macro at 1:1 using film.
Well written article on a very important topic. Beautiful photos as well!
Thank you, Rob. I’m glad you enjoyed them.
The high key photo has great impact. Nice work.
Thank you, Julie. It is also one of my favorites!
Amazing article! Love the simplicity and the way you bring the important parts across! Also great selection of accompanying photos :)
Thank you for your comment and kind words, Philipp.