Originally posted by Barbara Fu I also like ease in processing, and this brought me to this question. I don't like obvious processing, and yet judging by the monthly photo contests most folks here do. Colors are beautiful but unnatural to my eyes. Rather than pick on anyone here, I'll show you an ad that sums it up for me.
PP enhances the data already captured. Remember that the sensor does not capture "true" reality. It merely records some light and then a computer turns it into pixels and into what we perceive as a photograph. Doing heavy PP brings things out that the human perceived, but camera did not. For example, clouds. We see them very clearly and we enjoy them. But in raw photo data they look grey, without contrasts or details or shapes. So you can PP that to make the clouds in the photo look more like the scene you witnessed (in your human subjectivity)
The other parts to PP are fashion and market trends. One websites with thousands of photos, how can you make yours stand out? Well, the human mind will notice heavy colours more than muted colours. So the muted, low contrast photo will simply not get as many clicks as a saturated over the top photo.
Leaves in autumn
I took this photo with the K-r. Not a super sharp camera. The light in that forest was not strong and I did not bring my own lights with me (would that be "cheating", too?). But the leaves did stand out noticeably. I did heavy PP on this image in Lightroom and Nik Effects. I used PP to make them full of detail and to make them stand out in the photo as they did to me when I was walking there. I did not paint anything, did not add droplets digitally. Only "enhanced" the data that was recorded in the raw (saturation, sharpness, contrasts). Is what you see on your monitor objectively the same thing you would see if you went to that forest? Probably not. But you wouldn't see what an unprocessed camera raw recorded, either
Edit: Attached is the raw with no PP, only the default colour interpretation (which itself is subjective and will be different from camera to camera, from software to software). I don't remember the leaves looking so "brown", to me they were shining in that forest.
I chose this photo as example because I know I went a little hard on the PP, especially because it makes the bokeh look hard; and because the raw seems really dull, unimpressive, almost depressing