Photoshop: where do YOU draw the line?

[eIII]

disclaimer: this is not film vs digital thread and i hope it doesn't go there. and there is no right or wrong answer. 🙂

we all know how carried away one can get with PS and image editing software, but we all have personal limits of how much PS is too much. i thought it would be nice to see how far different ones take their editing/ workflow when looking at their gallery.

i consider myself a "minimalist" and limit myself to simple brightness/contrast, and even then as little as possible. i crop only if there is a blemished border or negative due to processing. my goal is to compose for the whole frame while i am shooting.

what about YOU?

-billy

 

[aad]

I try to get close to what I remember at the time I took the picture, most of the time. Scanning slides, I try to get as close to the look of the slide as seen on a color-corrected light table and quality loupe.

Outside of dust removal, it's levels, saturation (maybe some color adjustments on print film) and USM as needed.

 

[sf]

I limit myself to doing only what I could do in a wet darkroom.

Cropping
Contrast
dodging and burning
saturation levels on colors

but go one step further when it comes to work with models/portrait subjects : I airbrush skin blemishes and things like that out of the image upon request. Don't use SoftFx filters and things like that, so skin is sometimes an issue, especially in natural light outside or without using strobes.

I do, sometimes, take a color image and print it in black and white.

But that is about the limit of it. I never airbrush or other wise modify the elements of an image outside of the portraiture realm.

 

[tetrisattack]

Anything I can pull off in a traditional darkroom is fair game, including layered exposures, toning, cropping, unsharp-masking, diffusion, heavy dodging/burning, perspective control, rotation, intentionally warping the negative, spotting out dust, etc.

No need to restrict yourself, people have been abusing their pictures since the mid 1800's. 🙂

 

[DougK]

Film or digital, my workflow is remarkably similar. I compose for the full frame although I'm not philosophically opposed to cropping an image if the result is a better image. I use Photoshop only to scan the image (if it started on film), spot dust and scratches, tweak levels (if needed), then save the file as a .psd file. If needed, I may touch up white balance, contrast, brightness, or add a touch of fill flash effect. From that file, I sharpen and save the various sizes of .jpg I need.

I'm not a big fan of over-processing an image, I'd rather get it right in the camera the first time. The only exception I make is I will convert color shots to B&W if it works better for that shot.

 

[Todd.Hanz]

I typically use the "wet process" tools, which most of PS was designed to emulate. Most all my images are cropped as full frame and toned for the added depth. If I had a wet darkroom nothing would be different except the time and money spent.

Todd

 

[wlewisiii]

No need to restrict yourself, people have been abusing their pictures since the mid 1800's. 🙂

Early 1840's more like. This got invented and it got twisted the next day. The first Pron came the next day :bang: :bang: :bang:

😀

<LOL>

William

 

[Bobbo]

Since 98% of all of my digital workload is for my school newspaper or my freelancing PJ gigs, I'm not allowed to do some of the more...non-traditional stuff. I crop, ajust brightness, contrast, dust spot, and sharpen (a little bit improves the RAW images from my 10D quite a bit). I'm not saying I don't know how to do more advanced stuff (I do, and I'm darn good), I just don't have a use for it...reminds me of the Tom Selleck movie Quigley Down Under, except I use a camera instead of a Sharps🙂.

Have a nice night,
Bob Clark

 

[JMP]

Although I have yet to set up my gallery, it's partially because I print everything in a wet darkroom and am usually disappointed by the scans, as well as the extra step. In any case, I only manipulate the scans so as to match the prints (levels, mild duotone to duplicate a warmtone paper). I really enjoy having things in my hands. For me, PhotoShop is just a necessity if I am to share the photos online.

 

[CleverName]

My photoshop use is limited to my photoshop knowledge. I crop if needed, adjust brightness and contrast, dodge & burn.

There are sooo many things you can do with photoshop. I've got the elements version and it still has much more than I'll ever need (or learn to use). If there is something specific I need to do to an image, I have to search the help menus to figure it out, then I forget it the next time I need to do it.

 

[einolu]

I am not skilled enough in photoshop to have a line, never mind knowing where it is.

 

[sf]

As far as I will go with photoshop

As far as I will go with photoshop

This is about it. Pretty heavy effects. Contrast, brightness, grain, cropping, some airbrushing, dust removal, and probably more.

It was a snapshot taken with a Mamiya, highly underexposed, or maybe just underdeveloped - more likely. But you can tell from the flatness that some of it was certainly my fault. Photoshop was needed to make something of it. I just couldn't throw it away.

 

[dostacos]

disclaimer: this is not film vs digital thread and i hope it doesn't go there. and there is no right or wrong answer. 🙂

we all know how carried away one can get with PS and image editing software, but we all have personal limits of how much PS is too much. i thought it would be nice to see how far different ones take their editing/ workflow when looking at their gallery.

i consider myself a "minimalist" and limit myself to simple brightness/contrast, and even then as little as possible. i crop only if there is a blemished border or negative due to processing. my goal is to compose for the whole frame while i am shooting.

what about YOU?

-billy

I may go for improvements in light, dark etc. basically fixing my shooting errors 😱 as I would do in a wet darkroom and I have no problem with adding some color to a B&W picture [obvious photoshop work] which I could also do in a wet darkroom

I do have a problem with major changes like I saw in a photo mag the other day of a Moose. they added fog breath and snow to the picture, but not as big a problem as when a newpaper photo is manipulated to ADD people to make a crowd look bigger than it was which I also saw a while back

 

[sf]

I do have a problem with major changes like I saw in a photo mag the other day of a Moose. they added fog breath and snow to the picture, but not as big a problem as when a newpaper photo is manipulated to ADD people to make a crowd look bigger than it was which I also saw a while back

Absolutely. Adding things to a picture, that is, adding subject matter to an image is truly tacky. In my opinion, at least. Only time i can see doing that . . . let me find a great example of when it IS nice to add something.

 

[RML]

I do some work first in the Epson RAW convertor, which is similar to selecting film.
In PSP (can't afford PS, never bothered to learn Elements or so) I normally just do the inimal appraoch: some Curves, some cropping if need be, some unsharp mask. Sometimes I might use some Saturation.

 

[eIII]

shutterflower,

very nice example and a great save. love the slight grain! OT, but you have a very nice website. you have looked at some beautiful things in your viewfinder.🙂

very interesting thus far! i enjoy hearing about others' workflow. i am new to PS, but maybe i am limiting myself....

-billy

 

[pvdhaar]

I only use PSP, don't have PS. Never do more than
- contrast/brightness adjust
- colour cast correction
- desaturation to B&W
- dust/specs removal
- cropping/resizing

Time spent with PSP is time not spent with a camera in hand..

 

[Bertram2]

i consider myself a "minimalist" and limit myself to simple brightness/contrast, and even then as little as possible. i crop only if there is a blemished border or negative due to processing. my goal is to compose for the whole frame while i am shooting.
what about YOU?
-billy

Yeah, what about ME ? Good question, I have limits but got more ambivalent by the time than I had thought first.

Speaking about montor presentation only, i don't do ink jet printing ( yet ?):
.
As the most folks here the wet darkroom is the limitation, I do with PS what you can do in a wet darkoom too, a bit more than you do, gradation curves are included at B&W for example and of course USM to balance the scanner's influence.
I adjust colours too but this work mostly refers to the scanner's impact and not to the print itself.

In some very few case tho I could not resist to replace objects, for example I once cloned out an roof antenna in one of my "timeless series" which would have destroyed the complete impression of the rest of the pic. And I once cloned out
a traffic sign from the same reason.

I am not feeling very well about this kind manipulation and I am not sure if I did the right thing. What I never do tho is to ADD anything, like clouds for example.
That is painting, not photographing.

I also correct tilted horizons and converging lines, which do not happen to me tho very often since I work with a level, which bought exactly for avoiding this kinda correction, which is often paid with an unacceptable loss.

Extreme cropping makes no sense to me either, if you have to throw away 50% of the pic or more to get what is acceptable you simply have failed IMHO.

And I don't work with layers for a separated back - and foreground manipulations.

The best photo is still the one which looks fine as a print , you scan it and you just
do some little adjustments to balance the scanners impact and to get on the monitor what the print shows too. One can't photograph with PS.

bertram

 

[varjag]

I try to be minimal in posprocessing, but as anyone else have to do it to an extent.

My standards are different for documentary photography and studio/still-life/pictorial stuff. With the latter am fairly liberal, while for doc shoot I crop extremely seldom, and effects limited mostly to curves or dodge/burn: to bring the shot more in agreement with my eye's perception of the original scene.

 

[wdenies]

I think Bertram and I are on the same line.
My results are (for me) better from the pixelroom than from the wet room

Wim