Reworking old images

Lately I have been going back to some older images I have saved in my files and reworking them. In some cases I was lucky enough to have the original RAW file (NEF files for Nikon, CRW files for Canon, ORF files for Olympus, for example) to work from, but in other cases all I had was the original large, fine, JPEG file since some captures were from before I started shooting in RAW.

Lesson to newbies: Even if you don’t want to work with RAW images right now, or don’t know how, at least set your camera up to record both JPEG and RAW. That way, if you change your philosophy in the future, you can come back and have good starting points from which to recreate your better images.

Here, for example, is an image from 2010, as I had post-processed it back then:

395 Years. Barcelona, Catalunya (post-processed in 2010)

Here is that same image, reworked yesterday:

395 Years. Barcelona, Catalunya (2010 image, post-processed in 2013)

I am not completely satisfied with this version, but I think it is a lot better than the first. I will probably revisit it again in a few years.

We will always continue to grow as photographers…to change our vision, to improve our techniques. One little “learning curve” insurance policy you can take out for free is to start recording RAW images now if you aren’t doing it already. Some day, you may be very glad you did!