I know this post is a little late, considering the chat was over 2 weeks ago, but better late than never, right? For those of you that were in the 2 chats we held a couple of weeks ago, this will be a bit of a review, but for those of you that couldn’t make it (we held one at 2pm and one at 7pm EST), here’s what we talked about:

The main topic of discussion for the chats was the idea of creating a “Post Production” forum where people could a) ask for help post processing a specific photograph, or b) give advice and try to walk people through various post processing techniques. For example: I post up a photograph and go “Look what I did – isn’t this cool? This is how I did this…” Or I post up a photograph and go “I want to do ________ in post processing with this photo, but I don’t know how – can someone show me how to do it?” Do you get the idea? Basically a hands-on, photo-editing-help forum.

The majority of those in the chats really liked this idea, however there were some concerns. The first was that we need to make sure that whoever is posting up a photo to ask for help is not vague with their request. For example, simply asking for help “fixing this photo” is not useful, nor will it garner much in the way of help. However, if one was to ask how to do selective color on the photograph, or how to create _____ effect, it’s a lot more meaningful, and a lot easier for people to give specific feedback and help. The same would apply to those posting up responses to the help threads. Posting “desaturate this” or “blur that” isn’t helping to most until you actually tell them how to do it. One idea would be to create a certain formula people must use to post up photos – almost like an outline. What do you think of that idea? Let us know in the comments.

The other main concern with the Post Processing Forum concept was the issue of copyright and image theft. Honestly, there’s not much more that we can do that we’re already doing. Photographs uploaded to the Corner Forums are only viewable, and therefore downloadable, by members of the forum. So if you’re already uploading photographs to the internet, you’re already aware of the risks involved there. Another point that was brought up was if you are asking for help on a certain photograph, odds are, you’re not selling that photograph, so it may not be as big of an issue if it does get lifted. Know what I mean?

That’s pretty much where the discussion on the Post Processing ended. The result? I think we’re going to give it a go. It’s now on the Corner ToDo List, and, once the proposed changes to the Critiques Corner & Feedback Corner are complete, we’ll implement this – probably a month or so away (it does take some preparation on this end, you know!).

In addition to the Post Processing Forum discussion, these other points were also brought up:

• People are still finding some bugs in the forums from our recent software upgrade. We’re aware of most of them, and fixes are in the works. If you come across one, please PM or email them to me.
• Suggestion: Create a dedicated thread (sticky) in the Questions & Suggestions forum for making requests to mods to do things like move posts, report spam (though you can click on the little exclamation mark on the top-right of each post to do that as well), correct typos, etc. We will implement this, and it should be done within the week.
• Suggestion: Change the name of the Photo Gear For Sale forum to the Gear Marketplace to better reflect the type of posts in there. This, too, will be done within the week.
• Suggestion: Replace “Reminder Emails” with “Reminder PMs.” We’re looking into the possibility, and it looks like it’s doable. No promises, but this could be implemented in the next week or two.
• Suggestion: New smilies. There seems to be a want/need to have some more smilies added to the Corner Forums. I’ve reluctantly decided to add some more, but we’ll do it creatively. Look for some sort of announcement here on the Corner Blog within the next month or so for more about this.
• Suggestion: In order to encourage more people to become Premiere Members, why not give read-only access to the Premiere Members Section of the site for a day or two, to encourage more people to take the plunge and become Premiere Members. I’ll look into this as well, but don’t hold your breathe, because this will take a while to get the logistics figured out.
• Suggestion: Merge the Insects forum and Macro forum together, and move Still Life and Abstract into Miscellaneous. I think before we start moving and merging forums (again), we’re going to wait to see how the “new” Critiques Corner merged with the Feedback Corner works out. In a couple of months, we’ll look at what additional changes, if any, need to be made.

And that about does it for the 2 chats we held on August 20th, 2008. We managed to pack in quite a bit in a little over 2 hours of chatting, eh?

Our next Corner Community Chat is scheduled for September 10th, but I’ll post more about that in the next couple of days (we’ve put together a chat schedule for the entire fall!). Make sure you’re subscribed to the Corner Blog to get the skinny on all upcoming chats and events here at PhotographyCorner. Oh, and thanks to all those who participated in the chats - it’s YOUR suggestions and feedback that help the Corner to continually adjust and evolve!