Is digital color manipulation cheating?

[Spectre]

I've been in a slight quandry, trying to decide if color correction of digital images is cheating. I originally felt that it was, but then I realized that the Kodak Sea Processing is digital manipulation in the processing of photo negatives, so if that's not cheating, then your own digital modifications aren't cheating.

But is any digital manipulation cheating? What about digital filters... e.g. if I set my camera up to enhance the reds and yellows when taking the shot... is that digital manipulation, or is that just using a filter?

I've not done any pictures with color correction from inside the camera, but this is what I have from the picture I took [due to a vast amount of backscatter I had turned off the flash, and this is the first shot without the flash...

 

[MNScuba]

No, it's a way of life. Anything you can do to make your pictures look better, go for it.

 

[Dee]

I had the same thoughts. Just how much manipulation is too much? I don't do any correction within my camera.

Cloning out backscatter and removing the 'haze' can save an otherwise trashy shot. And sometimes sharpening can save a slightly out of focus one. I'll use the auto levels to see what it does to a picture but if it changes it drastically I'll undo it.

For me alot of it depends on what I'm going to do with the picture. If it's for my own enjoyment and I can make corrections so that the pic looks more like what was actually there, I'll do it. But if the picture is going to be entered into a contest or put forward as a representation of your skills, then manipulation is cheating.

On the other hand, film photographers have been using different types of film to get warmer/cooler colors, Black and White, etc. for different effects and this was never considered manipulation.

The whole question of manipulation possibilities is the major reason digital pictures are seldom allowed into photo contests.

With film photos, we used to ask what film someone used. In digital, we ask if it's been corrected.

 

[Ontario Diver]

Nothing wrong with it. Haven't you seen some of the tricks that can be done with developing and printing? enhancing and reducing colours, cropping, blurring, under and over exposing have been done for years on print and slide film as well. It just got easier.

 

[Zept]

If it's all right to light up the ocean with a strobe, I don't see how using a digital filter can be wrong. Either way you're changing the colours, it's just the tools that are different.

Zept

 

[vicky]

The colors are there, to be sure.
We can't see them properly while diving because Nature has done a good job in cheating us from the very beginning!
So we carry our own light source underwater and revive the colors that otherwise we couldn't see. Nothing wrong with that, right? It's the same with taking a torch to a nightdive: Isn't it a little of cheating nature? (What about taking a drysuit? And isn't SCUBA-diving a hell lot of cheating?)
And what are the colors if not what our RGB photodetectors in our eyes perceive them? Did you know that our brain quite often deceives us with color perception? That what we THINK we see depends a lot in contrast, background color, etc?
So what's the big deal with correcting colors of an image? Why not correct the colors so they look more natural? Every monitor screen does that anyway (Gamma correction), every photofilm does that (you can only guess how much $$$ film manufacturers invest trying to make the perfect "film-cheat" so we get "Natural colors"), every printer does that, our visual system does that, everyone/everything actually corrects colors!

If you think that correcting colors is cheating then using a strobe is cheating too, depth of focus is cheating too, and so on.

 

[Starfish]

I know folks that have their photos professional judge and they say digital manipulations are the equivalent to using a filter or light.

So it 'aint cheating unless you don't acknowldege to the judge that you did enhance the photo.

 

[scorpiofish]

Generally no. All photo's are manipulated to some degree. Even slide film can be pushed, pulled and edited.

Unless you stare at the negative, print film is also manipulated via various processes.

Ansel Adams spent hours manipulating his exposures, dodging and burning to get the exact result he wanted.

Excessive manipulation can turn a photo into something completely different. Is it cheating? Or maybe it changes from a photo to digital art.

I've heard some subscribe that even cropping is cheating, but an 8"x10" print has to be cropped from a 35mm piece of film.

A lenient intrepretation would be: Was something added that wasn't there to begin with or was something deleted that was there?

I shoot slide film. In order to get the digital image even close to the slide quality requires some level of manipulation. It's just a fact of life.

 

[diveaway]

Definitely not, just because it's easier nowadays it does not become cheating.

In the earlier days we had to accept whatever the photo labs produced for us. They use filters and setting which 'please' the average point-and-shoot consumer. But you all know the the filter settings from the labs don't work very well for UW photos. That's why we all run for digital ... or stick with slides.

Every professional photographer crops his pictures in his OWN lab, changes colors chemically to better reflect what he wanted to express with the pictures, uses filters etc. etc. ... I guess you get were I'm going.

So go ahead, use photoshop or Adobe! If we are honest about it, there's nothing wrong!

Cheers

 

[92630Diver]

I'm a web developer by profession and work with digital images on a regular basis. There's never been a digital photograph that I have not had to manipulate through Photoshop or similar image editing software package. For that matter scanned images also require manipulation.

In fact, if I see an image here on the board or elsewhere that hasn't been "cleaned up" my first impulse is to volunteer my services to the photographer so that he/she can see just how incredible their photographs can be. The goal being to return the image to as near a proximity of the original subject as possible, eliminating the color ambiguities caused by shooting without filters, at depth, etc.

If you have the software and can make a digital image better... by all means go for it. You'll be much happier with the results.