Image Treatments – What are they?

In digital photography, there are ways to implement different treatments to photos.  These treatments vary from imitating film types and treatments, to special effect treatments to change the color and texture of photos.  Here, I will apply different treatments to the same photo so you may see how they look.

The most common treatments are Black and White and Sepia.  Black and White mimics black and white film.  Black and White can be taken monochrome in camera, or photographed in color later.  I prefer to convert Black and Whites later – there are conversions for each color which can be manipulated to achieve fantastic results.  Sepia tone was originally a treatment made on black and white photographic paper.

I apply photo treatments in either Photoshop or Lightroom.  I treat each conversion individually, rather than batch converting a set to ensure details and shades are preserved in the conversion.

I used the same image for each treatment so you may see how each one changes a single photo.  This slideshow is in Flash.

Here is the Original Photo:

There are even more different treatments than these (film grain, etc). However this is a sampling of the most popular treatments.  I tend to use them sparingly – I want photos to maintain their eternal quality and careful use of treatments can be timeless.  However, certain "fad" treatments can look dated quickly.  Spot color, anyone?