Image editing theory

I have been busy for the last few months both upgrading this website to a new more flexible hosting solution, and in starting to learn the basics of digital imaging theory. The latter may sound horrendous but is actually fascinating, and has allowed me to start using image editing software with more understanding.

Since the beginning of my photographic journey I have used the open source darktable software to manage my images, complete basic cropping, and to append a watermark. For the first few years I only shot and saved files in the jpeg format, already having enough to think about simply learning to use a camera! However with the advent of version 5 of darktable it became possible to apply an inbuilt profile approximating your camera's jpeg output to a raw capture, which encouraged me to start shooting in raw. Initially I just used the OM1 mark 2 profile to output pictures for social media etc, but after some study I am now able to publish my own basic edits.

A red kite subject to basic exposure editing.

As someone who predominantly shoots at dawn, and also usually under a woodland canopy, my main motivation for switching to raw files is to minimise the effects of sensor noise and low light on the image. Although darktable has some excellent tools to help with this they are, at this point in time, the best of a "previous generation" of software modules. Thankfully during my study of how a raw file (which is not an image file) is presented in a viewable form for editing I came across the concept of preprocessing where the data is "demosaiced" and made ready for editing. The most advanced denoising software now works at this stage to remove as much noise as possible before before it can be "baked" into the edited image.

A buzzard subject to denoising software

DxO Pure Raw 6 is an example of preprocessing software with the latest version 6 being released as I was undertaking this study. It "simply" demosaics the raw file, employing AI to identify and remove patterns of sensor noise in the image before it is "baked" into intermin .DNG file ready for editing in any editing software such as darktable. In addition Pure Raw 6 has a vast collation of optical correct files which allows it to correct for know optical variations in both sensor and lens types. This is particularly useful to somelike myself who often uses teleconverters and prime lenses, so I bought the software for use in conjunction with darktable.

Two geese subject to processing via Pure Raw 6 and darktable.

I have barely scratched the surface in my understanding of image development techniques and cannot wait to see what comes up next.