Photoshop: where do YOU draw the line?

[doxx]

I'm a full frame shooter by heart and never crop my photographs - ok,
I confess, there have been 2 or so... it also took me some time to find a
film / developer combo for b/w that I really like. Tri-X @1600 and Diafine
that is.
In PS I usually just do, what I would do in the darkroom - just much quicker.

A good print in the darkroom would take at least 4 hours, where it can be
done in PS in an hour or so, save the file and print it over and over - that's
where I see the benefit...
I seem to tweak color images from the digi SLR a little bit more than the b/w
ones, mainly to get rid of the standard look.

side note: I make part of my living as a digital retoucher, maybe that's why I
like to keep my photographs real 😀 when I do collages, anything goes...

 

[fgianni]

I am not feeling very well about this kind manipulation and I am not sure if I did the right thing.

Sorry but I think the whole debate is pointless, If you do manipulate your photographs, and have fun with it, then it is the right thing to do.

Do you think that, had it been easy to do in a wet darkroom, HCB or other great photographers of the past would not have cloned out objects, or added a different sky to a landscape (actually that can bee done on a wet darkroom)?

The fact that the wet darkroom (or real darkroom as someone prefers to call it) has bigger limitations than PS does not make the thing "wrong", you have a tool, just use it to the best of your knowledge!

At the end of the day cropping is like that, there is a part of the picture that you think ruins your composition, and you just take it out.

 

[jaapv]

I'm with Bertam: What I would do in a darkroom, including burning/dodging (for which, incidentally I do need layers) plus colour control, contrast control and grain management. Scanning tends to enhance grain in my experience so I do remove it partly. And "sharpening", which any digital or scanned photo needs. Oh and cloning dust/scratches. (and the occasional tree growing out of a person's head 😱 )

 

[Sedaku]

It depends for me. I have gone far beyond what is considered normal technique, to learn how to use the tools that are available and see what I can do. PS is amazing, and only using the "traditional" methods, IMHO, would be like using my camera in shutter priority 100% of the time. John Paul Caponigros book PS Master Class is a wonderful reference to loose countless hours to PS. These were two separate 6x6 photos combined for an illustration.

 

[Stephanie Brim]

I generally restrict myself to as little photoshopping as possible. I can demonstrate. The first shot is without the cleanup and the second shot is with it. I didn't mess with the colors or anything because I feel they're okay as they are, but I have hard water. 😛

 

[daveozzz]

I'll do whatever it takes to get the image I want at the time I press the shutter release...
Whether that's by influencing the scene & light before it hits the film plane, or after I scan it doesn't make much odds to me... For instance I'm just as happy using a grad ND filter as I am blending 2 exposures. Different means to the same ends.

 

[dmr]

I don't do much. Level adjustment and color correction if necessary. Cropping, fixing of obvious flaws (I love the new healing brush). Maybe some sharpening, but I'm not convinced that is always necessary.

I really hate looking at something that's obviously "Photoshopped", it ceases to be a photograph and becomes an illustration, and often a poor one at that.

 

[daveozzz]

I'd tend to agree - if it's badly photoshopped... just like I wouldn't want to look at something that's badly exposed or badly focused.

 

[Bertram2]

Sorry but I think the whole debate is pointless, If you do manipulate your photographs, and have fun with it, then it is the right thing to do.
.

No, sorry, if FUN is enuff to justify everything , even all kinda "creative" manipulation one can do to a photo with PS then then we include "graphic art " in the "photography" definition .
So for me this debate is not pointless at all, it's exactly about limits , where ends photography and where does graphic art begin.

bertram

 

[J. Borger]

If "traditional photography" and the "wet darkroom" are the norm there might be more allowed then we might think.

- double and triple exposures ...
- sanwiching several negatives to make a print ...

Both techniques go back to the very early days of photography.

How about some grease on the lens and other tricks for soft pictorial effects?
Using outdated film for effect?
Crossprosessing ??

W. Eugene Smith hired a shepperd and some sheep to walk in to a landscape .
Mario Giacomelli printed black dogs and craws lifesize on paper and put them in a scene.
Composites were normal routine for Callahan, Metzker and others.
etc...

So should there realy be limits??

Unfortunately my PS skills are too limited ...... no need to draw a line for myself sofar.

It's your own personal vision and the final image that count in the end!


Just my 2 cents

Han

 

[jaapv]

Now HERE I have a photo I really PS'd to-or beyond the limit.

 

[fgianni]

So for me this debate is not pointless at all, it's exactly about limits , where ends photography and where does graphic art begin.

bertram

Well let's say for the moment that I agree with you that above a certain level of manipulation it becomes graphics art , actually let's say for the moment that as long as you don't print exactly what is on film (or memory card) but you start to modify it you are in the graphics art domain, I still don't understand why you care.

My personal point of view (which might well be wrong) is that if you can do it with Photoshop then it is photography, if you need a 3d modelling software, or something like Illustrator to create it then it is graphic art.

Nice and simple, now someone else migh thave a different idea, but as I said before, why should we care?

 

[Bertram2]

So should there realy be limits??
Han

To each his own limits, I spoke about mine only. :angel:

I have all this "creative" stuff in mind , we had all this 40 years ago when photography was detected as beeing art and and beeing an entertaining toy for amateurs.

Jean Loup Sieff has written about this with very enlightning words.

I haven't forgotten anything, all those funny split-filters and colour filters, the greased filter for nudes, colour foil for the flash, and what else strange stuff.

In fact the issue of manipulation is pretty old , and it has not much to to with the computer age. It has ALWAYS beeing part of the story, because photography
had been a medium easy to manipulate, in many ways and for many purposes.

The question has always been,and each photog has to answer it individually , where is my definition of photography ending and where begins the play with technical possibilities of photography , pressing ALL of it's buttons so to say, to see if someething new appeals. The intentions are decisive here, I suppose.

If I want a painted rose I paint one . But I don't photograph it and make it look painted then. One example for my limits.

bertram

 

[Bertram2]

, I still don't understand why you care.
?

Because we should work with a proper use of terms , which helps not to mix up things like apples and cherries, , which helps avoiding misunderstandings and which avoids unnecessary polarization followed by agressive undertones. This is what discussions in this forum often suffer from.

bertram

 

[J. Borger]

To each his own limits, I spoke about mine only. :angel:


In fact the issue of manipulation is pretty old , and it has not much to to with the computer age. It has ALWAYS beeing part of the story, because photography
had been a medium easy to manipulate, in many ways and for many purposes.

bertram

Well said Bertram ....... that was my point ... nothing more or less.

If you think about ..... you start manipulating reality:

- the moment you choose a longer or wider lens than normal
- you choose a certain kind of film (is not B&W the biggest departure from reality possible?)

Last but not least are not you manipulating reality the moment you compose a picture and decide to leave things out or not?
Is there a difference between cloning things out in PS or burning or dodging away a face or pole in the background in the darkroom?

Who shot the "true" American Landscape: Ansel Adams or Robert Adams?

How different would a photo reportage from Bagdad be if shot by Bin Laden or George Bush .. even without using PS! Different visions of "reality".

There is no objectivity in Photography the more you thinks about it ...... with or without PS.


Han

 

[GeneW]

For anyone interested in learning basic "photographic" Photoshop techniques, I've found the e-book by landscape photographer John Shaw to be very solid and straightforward:

http://www.johnshawphoto.com/ebook.htm

Gene

 

[Bertram2]

No, there hasn't ever been objectivity in photography.
But there the still the question of honesty , do we have to be honest ?
If so HOW honest ? Depends on our individual intentions I think.

bertram

 

[fgianni]

If I want a painted rose I paint one . But I don't photograph it and make it look painted then. One example for my limits.

However I am really hopeless at painting, so if I want a painted rose my best bet is to photograph one and then manipulate it with photoshop.
I find it a reasonable way to overcome my limits.

 

[fgianni]

But there the still the question of honesty , do we have to be honest ?
If so HOW honest ? Depends on our individual intentions I think.

bertram

The honesty issue does apply to potographers that do very heavy manipulations and then claim that the result came straight off the camera.
However you will find that 99.99% of photoshoppers are quite proud of their manipulation skills and they will tell you, often in much more detail than you are interested in, how they achieved this or that effect.

On the manipulation side my only limit is that with a day job and two kids, I don't have the time to become really proficient with photoshop.

 

[Richard Black]

As little as possible! I try to captue on film what I want in the photo, nothing more nothing less. Sometimes I succeed sometimes ...