The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca

Blue Hour Pier Re-Done

Blue Hour Pier
Blue Hour Pier, Corrected
I don't think I've done this before here, but I'm posting a correction, of sorts. Yesterday's Blue Hour Pier was written on Wednesday. The photo was taken about a month ago and I only yesterday processed the photo. I had posted the straight out of camera JPEG of this shot about a month ago on Google+, but knew I wanted to do a little work to it before I put it on the blog. Well the minute I saw the photo go up yesterday (Thursday) on some of the other photo sites I post to I instantly disliked it, which is kind of embarrassing because I got a fair number of likes on these sites.

So what happened? First, and probably the biggest mistake, was that I used the JPEG version instead of the RAW version to do my edits/processing on. If you can shoot RAW, do so it makes processing so much easier. Then it was a matter of having a light touch in the editing to get a little more detail in the railing and clouds. The grunge look on the pier itself is gone, which is what I really had issue with, and the clouds don't look over cooked. Then I took a suggestion from a friend and cropping out the dark area  right at the front/bottom of the original shot, which I ended up liking.

I think this is a better look to this shot, and I hope you'll agree. So what did I learn from this? First, don't edit your photo the same day you're going to post. Give it at least a day to sit and then look at again. Second, make sure you're working with the RAW file and not the JPEG. Though I typically only shoot RAW now, it doesn't hurt to double check.

I've included yesterday's photo at the bottom so you can compare. Click the photos and use the arrow keys to switch back and forth between them in the lightbox.


Incorrect Blue Hour Pier
Original Blue Hour Pier

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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor