I'm working on the tag wikis for our most popular tags, and wrote a description for . When I got down to , though, I found that basically the same description had already been written for that tag.

I wrote:

Post-processing is the process (and art) of adjusting a previously-captured image to obtain a desired look. It encompasses everything from simple whole-image adjustments to detailed per-pixel touch-up work.

and then I found:


Should these tags be merged? Or, is there some distinction that we should emphasize?

Update: I was all set to accept Stan's answer, but then I notice that of the 54 questions tagged on the site so far, exactly one of them (Attribution in a digital print?) has the "photo editor as a job" sense. And there's one other that might apply (since it applies to my answer, but the question seems to intend it the other way) — Image processing & editing: what is an "unmanipulated" image?.

So, with that in mind, I'd really like to ditch . It appears to be inherently confusing. What if we make it map to or ?

Or just make it a synonym of and have people who meant it in the job sense choose something else.

I think this is important, because the combination of the two tags would make it our fourth-top overall tag, tied with and after , , and . Having post-processing questions split buries them much further down the list, in conflict with this:


Update: can someone not on the reject list fix the tag excerpt?

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I'm not one of those fancy big-city photo editors, but my feeling is that "editing" has a lot more to do with photo selection and cropping than with image manipulation (contrast, burning/dodging, retouching, and so forth). That's likely where the line (if any) should be drawn -- at the division between artist and editor as separate jobs (or hats).

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  • There's also an "image-processing" tag, FWIW. – Please Read My Profile Mar 25 '11 at 18:32
  • So, I think this is correct, and I think it's better to make a big distinction than to try to make a subtle divide between some photoshop operations and others. To that end, I'm going to radically alter the photo-editing tag wiki. And maybe retag some stuff. – Please Read My Profile Mar 26 '11 at 1:51

I think they are different, though the image-processing tag looks like a duplicate. The reason I think they're different is:

  1. Post-processing implies darkroom-like activities on the image. This would include sharpening, cross-processing, etc.

  2. Photo-editing implies image alteration. This would include cropping, rotating, chroma-key removal, etc.

The differences are a little subtle, I would agree, but I think they exist. My general dividing line is basically based on what would have been typically a darkroom function versus an editorial function. If that makes any sense...

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  • Some of those — particularly rotating — get a little blurry (no pun intended) in the digital world. But the overall distinction you (and Stan) suggest seems basically good. The problem is; how to make the distinction to users of the tags? – Please Read My Profile Mar 25 '11 at 22:58
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    Also, on reflection, image-processing has, to me at least, a software sense that the others don't. It could apply to the jpeg processing algorithms in a camera's firmware, for example. – Please Read My Profile Mar 25 '11 at 23:06

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