Digital manipulations

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CP62

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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
 
And photo manipulation is not an art? It's a lot harder than it looks or sounds
 
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 :wink:.
Oh and nice photos on your website :).
 
I too am a rookie at Photoshop but I do, as I have posted before, do some basic editing. You posted that anything beyond sharpening and cropping should be divulged. Why not sharpening and cropping too? You can't have it both ways. I agree with Jam, it is another skill of the photographer to be able to manipulate images, the same as choosing the right shutter speed. As he says, we exchange work flow tips all the time. Just because someone can't use digital editing programs does not mean it is unfair for the next guy to use them.

Jam is also correct in pointing out that very few images you see in print have never been altered, digital or not. There are darkroom tricks that have been used for years, so there is not much difference in what is done today. If someone can take a mediocre shot and make it better why not? I'm no PS pro by any stretch but I don't hold it against anyone who is.

Lastly, PS does not a photographer make. There is only so much you can do with an image and if it is very far out of focus it goes in the trash bin. Composition is an art in itself and even if you crop in PS, which you seem to think is OK, you have to have a good eye for composition to make it work.

I don't mean to be argumentative but frankly it sounds a little like sour grapes on your part. If this does bother you, remember that a truly great photograph can be enhanced but not made in Photoshop or any other editing program in my opinion. You have to have the eye and the skill to have something good enough to edit in the first place.
 
I went to a photo club once, as the rookie I still am. There was a certain old guard still shooting film that treated everyone else in the room as fakes. (there were quite a few people with digital cameras)
You would have thought they had done their images with oil and brush.
The thing about photography, is that it is all some form of manipulated technology.
You are certainly not alone in this sentiment, as many contests don't allow certain types of manipulation. (I think, where do I get this stuff?) Seems like I have seen rules regarding it...
 
Also, remember that the human eye sees differently than the eye of the camera. In order to make a photo look like what we actually saw in the field, it may have to be manipulated a bit.
 
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.

How do you know?


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

Do you consider Ansel Adams an artist? He was manipulating his images until his dying days. He wrote books about it!
 
Can you explain the difference between choosing E100VS over Velvia and tweaking the color and saturation in a raw converter or even photoshop?
 
catherine96821:
I went to a photo club once, as the rookie I still am. There was a certain old guard still shooting film that treated everyone else in the room as fakes. (there were quite a few people with digital cameras)
You would have thought they had done their images with oil and brush.
The thing about photography, is that it is all some form of manipulated technology.

That old guard is probably using print film and sending it to a professional photo lab where they let the lab do their "enhancing" for them.
 

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