Do you consider post production cheating?
Most photos today are edited. Colours are saturated, exposure altered and items erased from a picture completely. And you can turn a boring picture into a great picture with just a few clicks of the button.
I recently started picniking my pics and have seen some great results and big differences between the edited and original. Just by a little bit of cropping and intensifying the colours slightly.
But do you think it’s cheating a little bit? How were brilliant pictures taken before photoshop, picnik and gimp?
Well your first sentence "Most photos today are edited" implies that post processing started with the advent of digital.
As most of the other answers say, that is simply not true. The vast majority (if not all) of the common tweaks in exposure (dodging & burning) and retouching have been done since the advent of photography!
Even HDR type exposure blending was done as early as the 1930’s (although the idea had been mooted in the 1850’s).
You also need to realise that the camera cannot capture what you can see - it just doesn’t have the ability of the combination of human eye & brain. Quite often I hear ’snapshot’ photographers looking at a scene they shot straight out of camera saying that it doesn’t look like they saw it (ie their eye saw it in more detail or with more colour/contrast). Hence then the need to try to get the post processing to better emulate what your eye saw.
Then there’s the artistic,creative side of photography (ie ‘making’ pictures, rather than ‘taking’ pictures) such as adding/removing elements of a scene which enhances the final image. Again if your intent is to create a particular scene or mood, then what of it? Only in ‘record’ photography is it strictly necessary to record, without adjustment, the scene. This again comes back to the purpose and intent of the photographer - to merely ‘capture’ a scene or to create a scene.
As far as glamour/fashion/celebrity photography goes, there has again always been a trend for photo retouching. All that happens now is that it’s done on computer rather than having to huddle in a dark room breathing chemicals. Although I do feel nostalgic when I get a whiff of fixer (!) I much prefer to sit in comfort & edit!
Having said all that though (phew!) Perki88 is spot on - a good photographer gets the basics right in camera - and a poor image will always be a poor image, Photoshop or not.
May 29th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
You will be surprised - but very little of what Photoshop is capable of was completely unavailable in the film days. In fact, Photoshop is made to resemble the tools you would use in a real dark room.
Back in the film days people were using dark room techniques to saturate colors (or b+w tones), to remove blemishes and of course to crop. The more skilled dark room users knew the tricks to remove things from images completely, or to introduce things that were never there to begin with. They’ve dodged and burned to alter exposure to whole or parts of picture, they’ve used masks to alter image content, etc. etc.
The difference - Photoshop made it all a lot easier. It used to take very skilled photographer to do good post processing. Now some (but not all) of these things require someone just barely capable of using a computer.
So no, post processing is not cheating. That said - just like in the early days, same today - post-processing should be a tool to remove minor blemishes and do fine adjustments, or on rare occasion save a good shot with major problem. It should not be relied upon for everyday shooting beyond adjusting levels, mild color corrections and blemish corrections. Getting it right, or mostly right in a camera is essential.
LEM.
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May 29th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
it has to be a good photographer to catch the moment ….. photo-management or altering is just that….not the real thing….by the way i usually do not like blonds that are not naturally blond….but that is just an opinion or preference…
when the picture is good there is no need to do much more then cropping and that its just fine…
practice taking better pictures and not snapshots…
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Christ followers
May 29th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Good answer above. Its not cheating to the viewer if its well done. The only person it cheats is the photographer, I know lots of photographers enjoy and feel half the process of a good photo is the dark room bit. Its more satisfying to do it manually
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May 30th, 2010 at 12:09 am
To remove a few zits–no. http://www.flickr.com/photos/little_pooky/4261101450/
On the other hand.. http://www.flickr.com/photos/little_pooky/4627948548/
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May 30th, 2010 at 12:18 am
Here is a very famous film image :http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29516/
Do you think it was cheating when a thumb was retouched out on the lower right? Original:
http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.23845/
Post production can make a good image better. It can not make a bad image good.
Composition,impact and focus begin at camera level.
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May 30th, 2010 at 12:51 am
Lem gave an amazing answer. and, pretty much, closed the conversation.
I can’t really think of any item that my father couldn’t do in a dark room back in a day that I can do in a PS..
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May 30th, 2010 at 1:38 am
Well your first sentence "Most photos today are edited" implies that post processing started with the advent of digital.
As most of the other answers say, that is simply not true. The vast majority (if not all) of the common tweaks in exposure (dodging & burning) and retouching have been done since the advent of photography!
Even HDR type exposure blending was done as early as the 1930’s (although the idea had been mooted in the 1850’s).
You also need to realise that the camera cannot capture what you can see - it just doesn’t have the ability of the combination of human eye & brain. Quite often I hear ’snapshot’ photographers looking at a scene they shot straight out of camera saying that it doesn’t look like they saw it (ie their eye saw it in more detail or with more colour/contrast). Hence then the need to try to get the post processing to better emulate what your eye saw.
Then there’s the artistic,creative side of photography (ie ‘making’ pictures, rather than ‘taking’ pictures) such as adding/removing elements of a scene which enhances the final image. Again if your intent is to create a particular scene or mood, then what of it? Only in ‘record’ photography is it strictly necessary to record, without adjustment, the scene. This again comes back to the purpose and intent of the photographer - to merely ‘capture’ a scene or to create a scene.
As far as glamour/fashion/celebrity photography goes, there has again always been a trend for photo retouching. All that happens now is that it’s done on computer rather than having to huddle in a dark room breathing chemicals. Although I do feel nostalgic when I get a whiff of fixer (!) I much prefer to sit in comfort & edit!
Having said all that though (phew!) Perki88 is spot on - a good photographer gets the basics right in camera - and a poor image will always be a poor image, Photoshop or not.
References :
May 30th, 2010 at 1:56 am
1. you cannot turn a "boring" picture into a "great" picture with just a few clicks of the button.
For post processing to work then a good picture is required in the first place.
2. If you need post processing to make your pictures "great" then you should throw your camera away, you will never be a photographer.
3. Brilliant pictures were taken by brilliant photographers who knew their trade. Today it is obvious that people don’t - hence the total crap that you see on a daily basis linked in questions on here and the total rubbish that people post on flickr, myspace and the like.
4. Many of the great photographs being taken today have very little manipulation. Yes there may be tweaking of the sharpness or saturation but that is no more than was previously done in the darkroom or through the cameras settings with film.
5. it is people with your attitude who are going to end up totally ruining photography if we are not careful.
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