Editing Photos in Photoshop. Cheating??

jank

I would like to know your opinions on this.
Do ye all edit your photos in photoshop first before uploading/printing them out?
And if so how much.A crop here or there or are auto adjustments/ exposures done aswell?

I very new to photography and would ideally like to become good at it at some stage. Now i can take a picture and it will be ok, but can make it look much much better with a bit of photoshop.

To me this is a bit like cheating. Make the photo better then it actually was when taken there and then.

Am i off my game here or do you know where im coming from

Would like to hear peoples opinions on this.

I suppose i want to have a good grasp of the basics

sasar

Cheating? Don't know.
You can call it whatever you like. My opinion is that there is no perfect picture as there is always something you can enhance/edit in Photoshop or any other software.

A year ago, when I just bought my first camera, I had sworn that I'm not gonna edit my photos... and here I am - every shot I take I edit.

St0n3d

I honestly would have more value in a photo to want to change anything. Thats my character,

But it would depend exactly on the content of the photo.

I'd use photoshop for fun mainly, forum sigs, in game tags, game models. I have never seen the need to edit any personal photo, family photo etc, but if you want to experiment with Photoshop then by all means let her rip.

When you say make it better than when it was taken? IM confused? Its impossible to make the content better, unless yo photoshop in the 20 free pints that weren't on the table in front of you Or something to them likings.

If you mainly using photoshop to change the Quality of the photo then it's perfectly fine, get used to changing the colour scales or removing red eye etc. Plently of good guides on the net with pictures

@ sas, You have a point but now you see what your missing? Every pic you have the need to edit, you cannot accept something for what it truly was or is. Seems you lost all value to this new age photo editing software phase

Borderfox

Basically I want what comes out of the camera to be what I saw in that moment and sometimes photoshop makes that possible whereas the camera only provides the starting point.

sasar

St0n3d - not that I have lost anything, I would say I have learned that camera is not perfect. Whatever camera and lens you use it is not capable of reflecting the real life situation. What my eye can see and what slr shows are two different things, so I do not see that photo manipulation is in any way making photo more valuable (well, some cheap filters and other stuff in PS can be)

And there is another reason why I edit my photos - since I suck in painting, sometimes I use photoshop to get some visionary images.

AnimalRights

sasar wrote: »

Cheating? Don't know.
You can call it whatever you like. My opinion is that there is no perfect picture as there is always something you can enhance/edit in Photoshop or any other software.

A year ago, when I just bought my first camera, I had sworn that I'm not gonna edit my photos... and here I am - every shot I take I edit.

Same here, I did a similar post recently but now I do crop at times. I don't dabble with anything else really but that's only because I'm a newbie.

St0n3d

sasar wrote: »

St0n3d - not that I have lost anything, I would say I have learned that camera is not perfect. Whatever camera and lens you use it is not capable of reflecting the real life situation. What my eye can see and what slr shows are two different things, so I do not see that photo manipulation is in any way making photo more valuable (well, some cheap filters and other stuff in PS can be)

And there is another reason why I edit my photos - since I suck in painting, sometimes I use photoshop to get some visionary images.

Yep fully understandable!

The difference with us is, I can see what i want and how our technology lacks , but the whole photoshop idea is just a bit much unless i was entering a best photoshopped photo competition

Think back years ago when we had cameras which needed a small explosion, we never complained about these photos because we knew no better!!


So the fact is, we don't miss what we don't have. Nothing to say in 2 years time we wont have perfect cameras, and nothing to say in 2 years time we'll still need photoshop to do that perfect little touch. Its personal choice really mate

challengemaster

I think a lot of people would look at this with regards to film camera/processing

what comes off of your CF card/etc is your film

Photoshop is the equivilant of a darkroom processing

Really, in that sense, its not cheating, as if using that viewpoint, then using a darkroom to process your film was cheating..

It's just how things have developed with technology, really.

elven

Photoshop and raw conversion are just ways of choosing the settings to apply to the picture after it's taken, rather than letting your camera do it - sharpening, saturation, contrast etc.

There's an enourmous amount of alteration been done to most of the famous photographs you know throughout history - Ansel Adams being the main bloke famous for his skill in the darkroom. Do you think yosemite actually looks like that? I don't. Anyway, photoshop is the relatively new way of doing on a computer what he did with chemicals and light, to create a print.

As for cheating... well... *sigh* I don't have the energy to start that one again. Who is playing a game? Who said there were rules? Who said that what comes straight out of the camera should be taken as truth? It's already been distorted by your choice of camera, lens, viewpoint, framing, exposure, iso rating...

People tend to fall into two broad camps with processing: there are purists who claim that anything but cropping (and even then, some don't like that) is degrading the integrity of the photograph, and then you get the people who are interesting in making something look how they want, rather than taking what the camera gives them. They are different based on their expectations and requirements of photographs. The purists tend to think of it as a recording medium, and the others see it as more decorative, or art based - and I think that's the key to understanding why you'd go one way or the other.

If you're happy with what the camera gives you, there's no need to feel some sort of pressure to photoshop that into an unrealistic, over the top scene for the sake of competing. If you're trying to create something (yep, I said create, not take) then it's difficult, and kind of masochistic, not to allow yourself to use the tools available.

Of course there are a million in-betweens of the two extremes as well, and most of us fall somewhere in that middle. Whatever you choose to do, just be aware of why you're doing it, and be comfortable with it.

St0n3d

Personal Taste.....

Fionn

since the early days photographs have been altered, so in the digital era it's not going to be anything different except to say there's much much more and varied tools to alter/manipulate images than ever before and as elven said almost everyone falls between doing no alteration whatsoever and doing some or a lot. Remember your camera will be altering the image as it's being captured. And i dont think theres really a case of capturing exactly what you see because of the way our eyes work in comparision to the camera lens. Like your eyes could never see flowing water the way a camera could capture it with a slow aperature, likewaise your eyes have a much greater tonal range than the light meter etc. etc.

ShakeyBlakey

Digital photography requires digital processing, and to be honest theres not a whole lot that photoshop can do that cant be done in a traditional darkroom, I used to develop and print my own b+w and sometimes colour. In the wet darkroom we crop, dodge and burn, even sasr's hdr pics could be done with a properly exposed negative and some selective dodging and burning, so all were really doing is the same as whats always been done. From one negative i could print 100 pics and they'd all be different.
I tend to do very little with photoshop, crop, adjust tone etc, but RAW images require processing otherwise just shoot jpeg, and even then your camera is doing the processing.

ThOnda

There is NO real or true photograph. Photograph is only 2D image of reality, twisted, distorted and alternated in dimensions, perspective, colour and transformation from 3D to 2D space.

Black and white photos are very alternated - they are manipulated to avoid colours, so they are the less true than Polaroid isntant photos.

As Elven said (again), it is only question of personal attitude and creativity how much is everybody of us willing to alternate the data coming from film/sensor. And by verb alternate I mean process of being creative.

There are some manipulations that are globally assumed to be "manipulation" and also break some basic rules in professional photography world.

It is not "how you do it", it is more "what you do" with your pictures.

To summarize my typing, all photographs are manipulated. It is the intention behind the picture, what could make the picture look manipulated with(out) some purpose.

RCNPhotos

As long as a photo isn't passed off as not being adjusted in photoshop then I have no problem with it, I do it myself. An example being the O.J case when Time magazine adjusted his mug shot so his skin was darker. They got a lot of flak for that.

Placebo

cheaping

nilhg

The whole area is totally subjective, take the same scene with different makes of camera or film and you will get subtly different pictures, which is true? Put a filter on the lens, it will be different again.

Most folks use PP to recreate the scene as they remember it, others go farther, so be it.

PopeBuckfastXVI

I don't have photoshop

I use bibble for raw processing, generally adjust the curves for contrast and sometimes a little noise reduction if I've shot on a high ISO. Will crop to provide the shape on the image I want, although sometimes there's no need.

The farthest I really push it is with my B&W conversions, I don't like the grey tones of a luminescence desaturation, so I generally put a 'filter' on it like red, green or blue.

I love high contrast B&W and my camera only converts in greyscale luminescence, so I've no choice but to post process for B&W.

gerk86

wouldnt say cheating, i might adjust the contast/exposure, colour levels etc. I wouldnt go as far as clonestamping something out if I didnt like it. Id usually make sure i got the comp right when taking the pic so I wouldnt have to do that.

Stephen

I usually just crop/rotate or adjust brightness/contrast. I can never get the horizon level in landscapes so I always end up rotating and cropping to fix that.

trishw78

challengemaster wrote: »

I think a lot of people would look at this with regards to film camera/processing

what comes off of your CF card/etc is your film

Photoshop is the equivilant of a darkroom processing

Really, in that sense, its not cheating, as if using that viewpoint, then using a darkroom to process your film was cheating..

It's just how things have developed with technology, really.

I think you're getting confused between processing the film and developing the print.

developing the print is when you'd burn, dodge etc. which is where the all those tools originated from in PS.

When you process the film your essentially not doing anything to it other than making the negative less light sensitive and printable.

Ricky91t

Well if you shoot raw you have to use photoshop to even get a photo printed

mike65

If you are a newbie then resist all temptation, and learn the art of exposure and composition. When you have that done you can start mucking about with software. If you start with PS as a rescue remedy than you'll never learn photography - which is an art first and foremost.

Mike.

Fajitas!

trishw78 wrote: »

When you process the film your essentially not doing anything to it other than making the negative less light sensitive and printable.

There are still controls you have whilst developing though - pushing, pulling, choice of film & chemicals, and how long you dev it for will change the end appearance...

Edit: Oh, and temp! Hotter temps tend to show more grain - Anyone know the name of the photographer that uses a blow torch and special dev'ing and printing gear to heat all his water to boiling for golfball grain?

trishw78

Fajitas! wrote: »

There are still controls you have whilst developing though - pushing, pulling, choice of film & chemicals, and how long you dev it for will change the end appearance...

yeah I was going to mention pushing and pulling etc. but thought I better not start confusing myself again

Placebo

Fajitas! wrote: »

There are still controls you have whilst developing though - pushing, pulling, choice of film & chemicals, and how long you dev it for will change the end appearance...

Edit: Oh, and temp! Hotter temps tend to show more grain - Anyone know the name of the photographer that uses a blow torch and special dev'ing and printing gear to heat all his water to boiling for golfball grain?

but isnt there a general default threshold now probably being used universaly. Like a standard build into the machines [not people developing by hand] Where no matter where you get it developed, colourwise it will almost always look the same.

Fajitas!

No.

While what I mentioned above was mainly based on doing it yourself;

Each film has it's own characteristics - That's why there's different types of film. The 'standard build' tries to standarise the process across all the developers, but it still dosn't work.

There'll be a difference in the outcome based on the chemicals used.

challengemaster

trishw78 wrote: »

I think you're getting confused between processing the film and developing the print.

Well, never used film myself, but you knew what I meant!

sheesh

I have just come onto this thread so To answer the op:

it is if you want it to be. as a non-professional camera owner you can set the criteria with which to create your images just as everyone else does. if you want dedicate yourself to creating images just in camera good for you you will eventually with an awful lot of work and dedication be able to produce moderately good images (from a technical stand point).

you could also decide to try to make the best of each photograph you take and create images like everybody else amateur and professional.

one pro i know uses the camera program settings and does all the work in photoshop. remember photoshop does not save a crap photo it can only change it to a crap photo that has been photoshopped. you still have to get to know your camera figure out what works as a photograph and what does not what you like and what you don't. photoshop is a very good tool that is all.

Calina

sheesh wrote: »

remember photoshop does not save a crap photo it can only change it to a crap photo that has been photoshopped.

I don't actually agree with this statement per se if only because I've managed to save photographs using digital processing techniques. One of the photographs concerned is considered by some photographers to be the best photograph I have produced and yet the basic jpg off the camera was laden with technical faults. A good photographer willl be able to see the possibilities in a photograph and act accordingly.

Ultimately - on the OP's point. I came to photography via film like a lot of people. Because I didn't do my own developing, I was dependent on knowing exactly how my camera worked and by and large, how my processors worked. For that reason I systematically only used one lab to do my processing because I could predict with a fairly high degree of success what the print would look like. The net result of that is that you do - effectively - a massive amount of work at shutter stage and not elsewhere.

There is a lot to be said for doing that first up if only because it makes the learning curve at digital processing stage somewhate easier.

As to whether it is cheating or not - I would fall on the fence. By and large, it depends on what you are doing.

By and large I do not photoshop out elements of a photograph like telephone wires. It's not that I consider it cheating, per se, but I do consider it wrong. At the same time I would see a value in using digital imaging techniques to achieve other effects. I produce sports sequence shots and no one has come to me and said "that's cheating". Usually they come to me and say "that's amazing". Most people would say the same about some of the outstanding HDR stuff that gets bandied around from time to time. On the other hand, using photoshop to make a model thinner than she is, or to insert a person into a photograph when they were not present at the time; that is in my opinion dishonest.

In other words, as with so many other things, there is no clear line that I can identify where "wrong" starts and "acceptable" ends in the grand scheme of things.

Monasette

Borderfox wrote: »

Basically I want what comes out of the camera to be what I saw in that moment and sometimes photoshop makes that possible whereas the camera only provides the starting point.

I agree with Borderfox. For me, the line (however blurred) between adjustment and 'cheating' is creating something that didn't exist when the photo was taken in order to enhance the composition (and not admitting it). I am always uncomfortable when someone is advised to "drop in a sky" into a landscape to liven it up.

I was flicking through a book of pictures recently when I came across a shot of Blackrock diving board at the end of Salthill Prom in Galway. Anyone with a camera in Galway has taken a picture of that diving board. The book was for charity and was a compilation of images sent in the general public. The shot has been adjusted for saturation and contrast to make it more 'dramatic' - the picture showed the diving board on a stormy day. Fair enough, I suppose. But there was a blob visible which looked like an attempt to add extra waves to the sea. To me, that crossed the line.

The exceptionis long-exposure photography which usually involves compostitions that you can't see in real-life (except in your imagination).

Third_Echelon

I like trying to get the picture how I want it directly on the camera.... The only thing I would use PS for is some cropping if necessary..

Now, that's not to say that I don't use PS if it is needed. Sometimes you just have to in order to get the picture looking as you want..

It's a necessary evil in the digital age