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B5 How much processing is TOO much?
B5 How much processing is TOO much?
Don't overdo your adjustments
Don't overdo your adjustments
You can easily get carried away while adjusting brightness, contrast, and saturation. If you overdo it, your images will look unnatural and artificial with colors and light that are too strong. Your viewers might stop believing your pictures and disregard them as fake or unrealistic.
Knowing when to stop your adjustments is difficult.
Google stated:
- Stylistic adjustments (such as applied filters) are acceptable, provided that these stylistic changes are minimal.
- Excessively dark or blurry images significantly rotated compositions, and the use of filters that dramatically alter the representation of the place may be rejected.
Source: Maps User Contributed Content Policy Open Photos and Videos and then Stylistic adjustments.
Googler AnnaDickson wrote How to Upload Great Photos to Google Maps in 2017 and included these tips:
- Sharp High Contrast Images - Avoid blurry hard to decipher images of a place
- Don’t fake it! - Images should POP but look real. Don’t over saturate or photoshop your images too much.
There is no optimal amount or combination of brightness, contrast, and saturation. It is very much up to you and your taste to decide how bright, colorful, and full of contrasts you want your images to be. As long as the changes are minimal and do not dramatically alter the representation of the place.
How you adjust your images is also up to personal taste. And it depends on how colorful and bright you see the world. And whether you like to see that reflected in your photos.
I keep in mind that the images on Google Maps almost always will be viewed as a very small thumbnail on a small screen and close to a whole lot of other photos. So if you like your photos to stand out and be noticed and attract attention to the places that you have visited, then make sure they are bright, colorful and don't lack contrasts.
The human brain and eyes can adapt to see light and colors even on a dark day. We perceive the colors relatively to other colors and not on an absolute scale. But when a darker image gets lined up next to more bright images, the darker and less colorful image stands out as a dull and boring place. So not adjusting the brightness and colors can be a disservice to the place/business.
The quality of your camera, the camera settings, the viewing screen, and the viewing screen's settings also influence how much adjustment you will add to make your images look their best. So be sure also to study your shots on different screens and monitors. And try adjusting the same image on different devices and compare them to perfect your processing skills.
A lot of my earlier adjustments can look a bit too much when viewed on a bigger screen, while they look great as small thumbnails on Google Maps.
Some examples to discuss
Some examples to discuss
Below you can see 5 of my latest images taken on February 17th, 2020. Left is the raw and unprocessed image, and to the right, you see the processed image as uploaded to Google Maps. Both images were resized to be 300 pixels high for display on this page.
The processing is explained in the comments. Do you think I did TOO much while processing these images?
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
Processing includes strong cropping to the wider-format. Increased brightness and contrast plus a bit of pop.
If you as a Maps user saw the processed image on Google Maps, would you then start doubting if the weather was actually that nice when the picture was taken? Does it look unnatural or just nicer to you?
National Film School of Denmark
Processing includes strong cropping and a few degrees rotation. Increased saturation and contrast plus a bit of pop.
If you as a Maps user saw the processed image on Google Maps, would you then start doubting if the weather was actually that nice when the picture was taken? Does it look unnatural or just nicer to you?
Processing includes strong cropping. Increased brightness, saturation, and pop.
The storefront is very pink. Actually, more pink than it seems on my desktop screen. I regret not bending my knees more to make the sides more parallel to the frame. Alternatively, I should have tilted up and cropped upper floors rather than asphalt away.
If you as a Maps user saw the processed image on Google Maps, would you then start doubting if the weather was actually that nice when the picture was taken? And the store that pink? Does the right image look unnatural or just nicer to you than the original?
Processing includes strong cropping to remove some water and to get the dome centered. Increased brightness, contrast, and saturation.
The crop absolutely helps this image. I should have moved a few meters to the left.
If you as a Maps user saw the processed image on Google Maps, would you then start doubting if the weather was actually that nice when the picture was taken? Does the right image look unnatural or just nicer to you than the original?
Processing includes strong cropping. to remove some of the grass and the hard shadow. Increased brightness, and extra brightness in the shadows. Lots of saturation to make the grass as green as it really was. Extra contrast and pop to give the yellow some structure.
It was difficult to adjust this image. I would like the roof to be more black in the right image. It's a difficult balance when using the same adjustments to all areas of the image.
If you as a Maps user saw the processed image on Google Maps, would you then stop and start doubting if the grass was indeed that that green when the picture was taken? Does the right image look unnatural or just nicer to you than the original?
Processing includes strong cropping to remove some water and center the theater in the frame. Strong increase in brightness and saturation. Plus a bit of contrast and pop.
The crop admittedly helps this image. It is shot from above, so placing the theater lower in the frame would have been better (less tilt = straighter vertical lines).
If you saw the right image on Google Maps, would you then start doubting if the weather was actually that nice when the picture was taken? Does it look unnatural or just nicer to you than the original?
Conclusion
Conclusion
Apart from the challenging contrast in the Louis Poulsen image and the downward tilt in the Leben-image, I'm happy with these images.
I consider the processing to be minimal concerning the brightness, the contrast, and the saturation.
It was a very cloudy and strangely also sunny day, and I think the colors and the light in the processed images represent pretty well what I saw when out shooting them. At least on my screens.
What do you think?
Have a go yourself
Have a go yourself
The images discussed above are available in this album: Over-adjusting. Try viewing them as a slide show to study the details.
Download the original images and make better adjustments. Share your results on Connect (insert deep link #soon2come).
Notice, there are three versions of the pink Leben-image in the album. The last one had the vertical lines fixed in the app called Snapseed. You find the Snapseed demo here.
What over-adjusting can look like
What over-adjusting can look like
To illustrate what over-processing can look like, please click/tap through the 6 images below. They got way too much saturation and contrast. They are distinctly over-done. They look unnatural almost cartoon-like to me. Do you like them? Would you like to see pictures like these on Google Maps?
On the next page, you will find Workflow: Processing. Just click or tap the blue "Suggested next page"-button to continue.
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