Quote Originally Posted by The Bijou Dragon View Post
I use Photoshop CS4 levels... easy peasy
It's certainly one way to get the result visually and I know that a lot of people do get their white high key backgrounds after the fact in that way and I would too if I needed to. But as soon as you start shifting the tones in that manner, you deteriorate the quality of the image data a little with each adjustment.

Which for small end uses like web site photos is almost certainly not much of a problem - but if you then wanted to use that same image for a high end publication or something, you might find that the data wasn't good enough to print from.

So getting the effect in the camera initially, where that's possible, without potentially compromising the quality of your data would always be a better solution. Just in case a mag wants to run a feature on your work or something. We all wish.

Not suggesting you personally should do it differently, but your comment was opportune to make the observation. It's always going to be better to take the photograph itself as close to how you want it, than to rely on software manipulation. Don't get me wrong, I'm as guilty of it as anyone!