CP62:
When i look on the web I see many beautiful photo’s but if I look closer I see that these photo’s are manipulated in Photoshop. In the old days there were photographers who for me were real artists it looks now that there a lot of artists but if you look closer they can not compete to my heroes from the past. Gentlemen good photo’s are made with knowledge about what your doing and not by making average photo’s look better in Photoshop. My suggestion is that every body who manipulates there photo’s in Photoshop and are working beyond cropping and making it sharper should tell it. And all contests should be clean of manipulations of photo’s. I hope with this a discussions will start over manipulations of photo’s
Hey CP62, quite an interesting and topical subject that you've started here..
This thread is sure to be wide ranging and free spirited.
First a little introduction of sorts here i'm a relative amateur to photography and underwater photography having been only interested in this hobby for the past year or so.
So excuse me if my comments lack a bit of perspective here.
Generally when taking photos what I try to nail in order of importance for me are composition, having a relatively blur free picture, exposure and whatever DOF (snicker) that i'm trying to achieve...
For me that is half of the battle...
Depending on the image I usually adjust levels, contrast, tweak colours using hue/saturation, color mixer or whatever. Crop if need be, resize and then sharpen before posting to the web/
Most images coming from the camera are 'soft', perhaps have a little bit of a color cast (especially underwater) and maybe need to have the colors tweaked.
That is just the nature of the beast.
My opinion is that you're approaching the usage of Photoshop and image editing programs from a view that it's cheating and an unfair tool.
Photoshop is simply a tool to help you get the best out of the image, it's the equivalent of the digital darkroom.
But it's also important to understand that no amount of photoshopping can correct a poorly composed, or out of focus picture, or one that lacks 'punch'.
When i look on the web I see many beautiful photo’s but if I look closer I see that these photo’s are manipulated in Photoshop. In the old days there were photographers who for me were real artists it looks now that there a lot of artists but if you look closer they can not compete to my heroes from the past.
You mention the artists of old, photographers of old.
Didn't they spend hours in the darkroom, tweaking photos, dodging or burning?
Bringing what came out of the camera into what their version of reality is in their minds eye??
Ansel Adams comes to mind for me.
The photographers of today for the most part are digital and Photoshop is the 'digital darkroom'.
The 'rules' if I may call them that are the same, a good photo is a good photo regardless of the medium in which it was taken.
And to answer your question most people if you ask them will gladly tell you what steps they took to edit an image.
Just my 2 cents
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Oh and nice photos on your website
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