Before and After I

November 15, 2014 • 4 Comments

I was playing around with JQuery and found a neat way to show before and after photos. When I say before and after, I mean what the photo looks like as it comes out of camera (shooting RAW format) versus what the photo looks like after I've done a little retouching to it. I retouch for multiple reasons, but I've listed my top two below.

It's not how the scene actually looked. Often, we might see some picturesque landscape and decide that we want to take a photo of it. How many times have you come home from either vacation or some event, reviewed your photos, and thought that the photos you took didn't look at all like what you experienced? I know I have. A lot. Sometimes, it's because of the limitation of the film or the digital camera's sensor that you're using that prevents you from capturing the actual scene as your naked eye saw it. A common example? Try taking a picture of a sunset with a dSLR camera and an iPhone. I'm not knocking phone cameras at all, but there's definitely a difference. Post processing allows a little leeway in correcting mistakes made during the photo's capture. I didn't say a lot of leeway, but some. Despite the ease and low-cost of shooting digital these days, I still allow myself time to slow down, compose the shot I want, and check settings before I press the shutter button. If that fails, post-processing makes what started out as a good image better. I strongly believe it cannot and should not make a subpar image good.
It's not the final vision of the image that I had in mind. #2 is actually a more important point for me as to why I do post processing. As a photographer, I often find that before I press the shutter button, I ask myself why I'm taking the photo in the first place. What about the scene compels me to even lift the camera to my face? What visual story am I trying to tell by taking this photo? In the scene below, I wanted the pillars to have their own story and I wanted the stars/sky to have their own story. Out of camera, I felt that the pillars were a little too close in color to the sky. I also felt that the sky was not dark enough to showcase the stars. So I tweaked the photo a bit to better fit my vision in the after version.

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them below!

BEFORE

AFTER

Show "after" image fully Show "before" image fully

Show "after" image 70% Show "after" image 20%

Keywords: Stonehenge, post-processing, vision

Comments

VT(non-registered)

Hi! Where can I see this code for before/after? I would like to use it on my Zenfolio web page. :)

Jake Jacobson Photography(non-registered)

Thank you so much for sharing your html. Your slider works great! I just plugged my images and can send my clients the link to see their before and after. All client want free photoshop but they don't realize how much work you put into it. This way I can show them what I can do and start charging per image. Thanks again for your help!

Tina(non-registered)

Thanks so much Bertrand. Because of you I am now able to create these cool BEFORE and AFTER affects on my blog. http://www.tinacasephotography.com/blog/2015/2/before-and-after-slider

Bertrand Hui

Huh. Always learning... and on seeing this post on two different computers, just found out that the images on my Macbook Pro are a little darker (stars aren't as bright in the After image) as they are when I edited them on my Windows PC.

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Before and After I

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