One of the aspects of digital that I really like is that as the tools get better, you can go back to your older images and re-processes them with new software. The image below is a good example. I took the picture in April 2006 along the Mississippi River near Dyersburg, Tennessee. The camera I was using at the time was pretty good, but not great by today’s standards. More importantly, the software at the time was at least three generations behind the current state of the art. It had about half the resolution of today’s cameras. More importantly, it had a tendency to exhibit quite a bit of noise in the image, especially in dark areas.
I happened to run across the original file, and wondered how the new Photoshop CS5 would do with it. One of CS5’s new features is greatly improved noise reduction, and it really did the trick with this image. When I processed the file four years ago, I found there was a lot of noise in the grass area, and it really detracted from the image. With the new CS5, the noise is gone.
This was never an option with film. Once the film was developed, it was what it was. You could make new prints from the negative, but you couldn’t go back and develop the negative again with a newer chemical. Just another reason I like digital.
2006 photo of the I-155 Bridge over the Mississippi River.
