Originally posted by dcshooter Not necessarily the glass filter simulations, but I process every image that I use. The key word being "use," since I shoot far more images that sit in my library never to be used, and processing is admittedly time consuming.
As far as my philosophy goes, People can sniff all they want about the "natural" images coming out of the camera, but it's important to realize that in reality, they are anything but.
@dcshooter, I am sensing that we do share some common values here in terms of philosophy and techniques such as "camera's don't/can't read minds and can't interpret images like our human eyes" and "we want our produced images as close to 'reality' as much as possible".
Originally posted by dcshooter OOC jpegs are already highly processed in-camera, and RAW images cannot be used without being processed first. I tend to prefer the results I get with my own processing sequence, which typically involves the use of NIK and Alien Skin plugins, and at minimum includes manual Photoshop/Lightroom tweaking, than I do to the renderings produced by Pentax's algorithms. They're just not my bag. But that's solely a matter of personal taste and style, and if you prefer the OOC looks, then by all means, use them.
I don't feel I have a particularly "processed" style, either. In fact, I'd call it pretty naturalistic. And yes, I use nice lenses which at best may give an easier starting point in certain situations, but which I don't think that can really be considered a substitute for editing.
One of the reasons I prefer Silkypix over Lightroom/Photoshop with Nik plug-in is that the digital filters are applied directly in RAW development instead of JPEG file in Lightroom (I could be wrong though as I am not sure the Nik plug-in can be applied to RAW file in Lightroom).
Let me qualify my points further when I mentioned circular digital (correction) filters in my original post. Our traditional thinking of a filter is used to cut down the light (such as ND filters). In the digital world, it can also be applied in the opposite direction as we customary called it a fill-flash technique. Here is a couple of examples, the first one has correction filters applied to the subject's facial feature and second one is using in door fill-flash. Notice in this case, the fill-flash brings out the truer colour of the subject's dress. Of course, in my example, it was my intention to use fill-flash. The flash just did not fire in the first image shown here.