Never delete!

I’ve never deleted an image since I started digital photography. Disk storage capacity has grown exponentially and reduced in price, and it would take a long time to look at every single image from every shoot and delete images I didn’t want. This means I have a backlog of unedited images, which has come in handy over the past year.

Also, the style of images I like has changed, so images I didn’t used to like I now like, and if I had deleted them they would have been lost forever. Plus one day I may get into doing composites, so even relatively boring images of a model could look good when transferred into a different scene.

More recently another good reason for having kept all of my images has come to the fore. A number of plugins are now available to improve images with very high noise levels, or are unsharp due to slight camera shake or slight missed focus. I’ve tried these out and edited a few images from the past that suffered with those faults.

Here’s one of the lovely Lulu Lockhart that had slight camera shake:

And here’s a close-up 100% crop of before and after processing with the plugin Topaz Sharpen AI. There is a tiny halo in some areas that I might tidy up, but I’m very pleased with the results, as you get much more severe artefacts with other ‘dumb’ sharpening methods.

BEFORE

AFTER

I also have a number of images that had high noise levels as they were shot with natural light, many years ago when sensor technology was not as good as it is today. This image of the lovely Raphaella was taken at ISO1600 with a camera that usually struggled at even ISO 400.

Although I prefer the mono, where you can often get away more with a noisy image anyway.

And here’s a few of the super Ivory Flame on one of my first location shoots, again bought back to life with plugins.

Another from 2010 with the fabulous Madame Bink.

And although modern sensors are much better in low light, I sometimes still have to increase the ISO substantially and so the plugins are still useful. Here’s a more recent image of ArtNute that was helped with the DeNoise plugin.

Many thanks to all of the models involved, and it may be worth looking through your old images for any images that can be bought back to life.

I have no association with Topaz, and am just a user of their products. If you’re going to purchase one of the plugins I suggest you wait for one of their very regular sales. I also used the discount code ‘ref15’ which saved me an extra 15%.