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PPA CPP (Photography) study materials
PPA CPP (Photography) study resources

PPA CPP (Photography): Post-Production and Image Editing

PPA CPP (Photography) · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Post-Production and Image Editing

What this domain tests

Post-Production and Image Editing tests workflow judgment: non-destructive editing, local adjustment, retouching ethics, sharpening stages, and file hygiene. The exam cares about repeatable, reversible craft.

Core rules

  • Work non-destructively: raw conversion, smart objects, adjustment layers, masks, and versioned files. Keep the original capture intact.
  • Tone and color edits should be sequenced: exposure and white balance, then contrast and tone curve, then local dodge/burn and color grading, then output sharpening.
  • Masks and luminosity selections let you edit tonality without changing content. Cloning and healing change content; use them with disclosure and ethics in mind.
  • Sharpening has three stages: capture sharpening to restore detail, creative sharpening for local emphasis, and output sharpening for the final medium and size.
  • Frequency separation separates texture from color/tone for retouching, but overuse produces plastic skin and halos.
  • Save layered masters as PSD or TIFF; deliver flattened, profile-embedded files in the requested space.
  • Keep catalogs, backups, and naming conventions consistent; a lost file is a production failure.

Worked example

A client wants a natural portrait with softened skin but retained pores. Duplicate the layer, separate low-frequency color/tone from high-frequency texture, blur only the low-frequency layer, and mask the effect to skin. Keep texture visible at 100%. Then add capture sharpening at the raw stage and output sharpening only for the final print or web size. If you blur the high-frequency layer, pores disappear and the retouch reads as fake.

Traps that cost marks

  • Repeatedly saving JPEGs and then judging quality from the degraded file.
  • Sharpening before resizing, then sharpening again without control.
  • Using destructive dodge and burn on the background layer.
  • Retouching away documentary truth without disclosure.
  • Delivering a file without an embedded profile or with the wrong profile.
  • Flattening the only master file.