Au Natural/Fixed v "Photoshopped"

Cork Boy

I was just wondering where people's opinions lie on this issue. Me, I've nothing against a touch up here and there myself or an interesting effect but when it comes to photo's that have been so processed they look like drawn/painted posters I just think, why not just draw/paint the bloody picture???

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2lnj1X/photography.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/Photography/Images/POD/y/young-turtle-french-polynesia-513638-xl.jpg

Now, I can see where people (photographers and non-photographers alike) will appreciate what this person has done with the picture but for me personally, I hate these overshopped images.

I only got my first dslr a fortnight ago so not a photography snob (yet) so I suppose it's purely down to personal taste*.

What do you guys think as photographers, photoshoppers and objectively?



* I just had an epiphany, I love reading but have no interest in fantasy, perhaps it's related?

.Longshanks.

TBH i'd say that national geographic turtle pic is 100% real. Looks like it was lit from some form of waterpoof flash from below....maybe the colours are tweaked afterward in LR or PS, but id say its real.

Can I ask why you picked that one as an example?

Placebo

i think thats real.
However i agree with you, anything over processed, looks cheap.
To the general audience thought it maybe the winner. Over the years i've grown to appreciate and love authentic compositions and tones, where as when i was new to all of this, the blue/green matrix hue of an abandoned warehouse was the bees knees to me.

This guy has some unreal shots: http://www.daviddoubilet.com/

artyeva

david doubilet is a really well respected [by me anyhoo] underwater photographer. doesn't mean that particular shot is 'shopped of course - but a guy who's been taking underwater shots for 30 years has a high probability of taking something so good, that to the casual observer it may seem 'shopped.

KarmaGarda

I'm anti-"straight off the camera". Once you take it off the camera it's like a negative, it still needs work. The camera just doesn't capture what your eye sees. And to be honest you can recreate the lighting/saturation/effects of a lot of photos without the use of photoshop anyway, so why not go that extra mile.

Which leads me onto this... and I might as well be the first to say it... photo manipulation exists long before digital, so it's not a modern thing. Digital made it more accessible, but hasn't really changed the amount of manipulation that occurs since the darkroom days. I saw a link on here a while back where they linked film shots where people and architecture were added to images. It was truly astounding what they could achieve.

peckerhead

http://www.cracked.com/article_16556_15-images-you-wont-believe-arent-photoshopped.html

sheesh

when ever i hear someone say something about how they don't use photoshop a voice inside my head says "noob".

melekalikimaka

sheesh wrote: »

when ever i hear someone say something about how they don't use photoshop a voice inside my head says "noob".

i used to love photoshop... i really have gone off it now, its a necessary evil with paid work imo.

saying that, a cheeky lightroom preset is not uncommon for me

sheesh

melekalikimaka wrote: »

i used to love photoshop... i really have gone off it now, its a necessary evil with paid work imo.

saying that, a cheeky lightroom preset is not uncommon for me

I wouldn't be really into doing loads of photoshop either but it has its place in the process, levels, contrast etc and sharpening

AnCatDubh

purely opinion but whether for my own work or appreciating others work, the scale of greatness starts with "less is more" ie. if a photographer produces something great from camera alone then it is truly great. The more processing which goes in thereafter the less great imho it becomes as again imho it is a different discipline - that of image or graphic manipulation. OTOH, if appreciating the art of graphic manipulation then the scale kinda reverses where the more manipulation leading to a greater result will be more appreciated.

genre exceptions exist though - fashion for example. lots of photoshop expected but you can still have excessive.

jaybeeveedub

AnCatDubh wrote: »

purely opinion but whether for my own work or appreciating others work, the scale of greatness starts with "less is more" ie. if a photographer produces something great from camera alone then it is truly great. The more processing which goes in thereafter the less great imho it becomes as again imho it is a different discipline - that of image or graphic manipulation. OTOH, if appreciating the art of graphic manipulation then the scale kinda reverses where the more manipulation leading to a greater result will be more appreciated.

genre exceptions exist though - fashion for example. lots of photoshop expected but you can still have excessive.

do you draw a line between the settings that the camera applies to the raw image data to create a jpg (sharpening, curves, saturation etc) and placing the conversion from raw image data to printable format in the hands of the photographer in that case? In either case there must be manipulation of the data, and in each case the photographer selects the parameters involved, either by action or omission....

KarmaGarda

AnCatDubh wrote: »

... if a photographer produces something great from camera alone then it is truly great.

I agree that less is more, but I don't fully agree with this bit. In that a "SOTC" type shot should ever be left as is. If you take a raw file off a camera, do nothing with it (i.e. save it as shot), and it's still wows you... I hedge a bet that it still needs work to bring out all of it's potential to wow you even more.

Even if we try argue this from Film vs Digital what a lot of people forget is that with Film you preempt the stuff you need to do where the opposite occurs in digital photography. If I'm shooting in a lot of tungsten light for Film I can do a couple of things - I can stick gels on flashes/filters on lenses/use tungsten film. So it all happens up front. With digital I could technically do all of that too.. apart from tungsten film, in the case of Digital tungsten film = white balancing so that's now post processing.

I suppose the point I'm making is that for Digital I think a lot of post processing we perform now *after* we shoot on digital is the kind of stuff that used to happen *during* the shoot in the film days. Ok, a lot of that can happen within the camera. Or you can take the raw file off the camera and apply your own settings directly on the raw file. But for me that level of processing is required to really squeeze the full potential out of every shot (even the amazing straight off the camera ones!).

kelly1

KarmaGarda wrote: »

The camera just doesn't capture what your eye sees.

I think that's a very good point. My approach is to try to recreate what the eye sees. SOTC images can look quite bland and nothing like the real thing.

jaybeeveedub

it depends once again on whether you are talking about jpg SOTC or raw SOTC

RAW files have a linear gamma (response curve)

the human eye has a non-linear gamma, fortuitously the response curve of negative film almost exactly matches that of the human eye

jpg in-camera applies a response curve calculated by the manufacturer to match that of film...

so if the jpg SOTC does not match what the "eye sees" then it's a capture error and not due to its being a digital camera

if it is RAW SOTC in order to match what the "eye sees" then a response curve must be added later in PP

AnCatDubh

jaybeeveedub wrote: »

do you draw a line between the settings that the camera applies to the raw image data to create a jpg (sharpening, curves, saturation etc) and placing the conversion from raw image data to printable format in the hands of the photographer in that case? In either case there must be manipulation of the data, and in each case the photographer selects the parameters involved, either by action or omission....

I think (only a personal opinion), that in general a cameras processing which produces a JPG is *mostly* out of your hands - excepting scene modes such as portrait, landscape, etc... and I accept of course that this in itself is manipulation or in camera photoshopping - that is, taking the raw sensor data, applying algorithms to it to achieve the desired scene mode, and discarding sensor data not needed.

But, since the first photograph (as you could call it) was taken in the early 1800's it is conceptually similar - photographers selected types of film for their chemical properties which yielded particular results. Now, we select in camera scene's perhaps - that is if you are getting a jpg out of your camera. Even if you are shooting raw, that which is shown in camera is a jpg which has been embedded in your raw file. So, i think there always has been some manipulation if even in your selection of a vibrant, or b/w, or expired film.

In terms of drawing a line, its more a scale than a line i guess. I accept it all but personally prefer images which are 'great' when at the end of the scale where little has had to be done to achieve it. As it move onward towards the end of the scale where lots has been done, i think the discipline changes to "graphic artist" first and photographer second, while also accepting without the photographer you wouldn't have the raw materials to work with - composition, perspective, negative space, etc., etc....

Promac

I know this argument is a little bit tired and keeps recurring but you can't compare digital processing to film without talking about film processing too.

When you take a shot with a film camera you'll already have chosen how much vibrance, saturation, grain, colour treatment (either colour or black and white) etc, just by choosing the film-type. This equates to opening a raw file in camera raw and simply adjusting the colour/white balance.

Then you have brightness and contrast and the like which is completely analogous to the exposure time under the enlarger plus some dodging and burning.

Due to the time and money expense of film photography you'll never look at a print that's almost there and just dump it as if any less than "straight off the camera" is crap - you take the negative back to the dark room and correct the print. You adjust your colours, your exposure and dodge/burn as required to bring out the range of tones you want. And that's not restricted to colour prints either - with black and white you can get away with a lot more dodging and burning.

Shooting JPEG with a picture style is pretty much the same as choosing your colour film type - velvia for example. There are slight differences but for argument's sake they're about the same. And if you accept that argument then you must logically extend it - instead of letting the camera do the picture style, you take the shot in RAW and do the picture style yourself on the computer.

TLDR; Shooting in RAW and adjusting the captured image is, for all reasonable definitions of the term, straight out of the camera.


Edit: I do agree with AnCatDubh - the less you have to adjust an image, either in the darkroom or on a computer, the better the shot was to start with.

KarmaGarda

AnCatDubh wrote: »

I think (only a personal opinion), that in general a cameras processing which produces a JPG is *mostly* out of your hands - excepting scene modes such as portrait, landscape, etc... and I accept of course that this in itself is manipulation or in camera photoshopping - that is, taking the raw sensor data, applying algorithms to it to achieve the desired scene mode, and discarding sensor data not needed.

But, since the first photograph (as you could call it) was taken in the early 1800's it is conceptually similar - photographers selected types of film for their chemical properties which yielded particular results. Now, we select in camera scene's perhaps - that is if you are getting a jpg out of your camera. Even if you are shooting raw, that which is shown in camera is a jpg which has been embedded in your raw file. So, i think there always has been some manipulation if even in your selection of a vibrant, or b/w, or expired film.

In terms of drawing a line, its more a scale than a line i guess. I accept it all but personally prefer images which are 'great' when at the end of the scale where little has had to be done to achieve it. As it move onward towards the end of the scale where lots has been done, i think the discipline changes to "graphic artist" first and photographer second, while also accepting without the photographer you wouldn't have the raw materials to work with - composition, perspective, negative space, etc., etc....

Yeah, agree with all your points here. Especially with the fact that rather than "drawing a line" it's quite like "drawing a scale" (or possibly even a gradient!). One thing I've noticed recently though is that the amount of processing pushed on an image and whether I'll like it or not really depends on what they do and what image they do it to... It's hard to explain in a forum, easier to explain over a pint!

jaybeeveedub

KarmaGarda wrote: »

easier to explain over a pint!

isn't everything...!!