Do You Photoshop?

[AcadieLibre]

Do you photoshop? And if you do, do make corrections to the photo itself, remove something, blend, or whatever it is? I was just thinking, I was looking at two photos that have been posted here before, and one I removed power lines and the other it was mentioned I should remove a stack. Now looking at the two photos the one with the power lines removed looks like a fraudulent photo, I have altered enough to where I would not use it, show it or say it was a photo, but only it was a photo at one time. Now the other photo although I agreed aesthetically it made sense I never did remove the stack.

Now looking at the photo I am glad I didn't, I just deleted the other one because to me it no longer fell under a photograph but as a computer manipulation, I have the original still but with the power lines in the photo it just is a bad shot. I use Lightroom and thats it for any of my photos and I try to stick within very rigid guidelines for myself on what I can do to a photo with Lightroom. It is just personal preference, but just curious to how far others think you can photoshop a photo and still call it a photo, when does it become digital art? I have never shown a photo that has been computer altered in a way I would not be able to manipulate it in a darkroom. Although if you never did film I imagine it would seem foreign and the limitations irrelevant.

[Ben H]

Now looking at the two photos the one with the power lines removed looks like a fraudulent photo, I have altered enough to where I would not use it, show it or say it was a photo, but only it was a photo at one time.

Don't forget you are the only person that knew what the original looked like. No one else would look at your pic and see what you see, they would only see what's there - so I don't have a problem doing some fixes to make my picture better.

For me, it's about making good images, and I don't have the same "you must do it in camera or it's cheating" attitude that some photogs have.

But each to their own - if you prefer keeping your pics pure, then do what is fullfilling to you.

It is just personal preference, but just curious to how far others think you can photoshop a photo and still call it a photo, when does it become digital art?

I pose the question: if I show an image I'm proud of, that works, does it matter whether person A labels it a photo and person B labels it digital art? Does it matter what I personally label it as in my head?

[jjeling]

AL, its good to hear you say this. Although much of the work I have posted here lately has been EXTREMELY manipulated, I really prefer images that are taken straight from the camera. To me, the ART of photography is the ability to use the camera, not photoshop. My brother is a jazz musician and has his very stout opinions on anything in terms of creative arts. He thinks for any photographer to be considered exceptional, they must learn weddings and photoshop. Needless to say I tried explaining him its not that way, but he doesn't have open ears, only a closed mind. It is my opinion that photoshop is a great tool when used appropriately.
In order to know how to use it, you must learn through practicing with it. Sometimes I consider taking a year off and just dumping images onto my computer without touching up saturation, contrast, or sharpness. Generally, if it is a picture I think is great without any PP work, I only use photoshop to resize it at 8x10/8x12 at 250/300(depending on camera) dpi and then save it. These are the pictures I consider TRUE pictures. I like photography because it is something that is always teaching me something. I strive to continue learning, and having left the world of formal education, photography helps me with just that. Photoshop is another medium that allows me to learn something as well.
Back in the days of film, it was necessary to learn the darkroom and the camera come full circle in your understanding of things. This can also be true of digital photography these days. A lot can be learned about photography through photoshop. It does not mean that we rely on photoshop to create great images, but photoshop helps teach us how to create images without having to use it to "fix" them and getting it right "inside" the camera.
Im sure there is no doubt you have a full understanding of the debates around this question. It has been debated and argued since the two were in the same existence. There are ethics in photography and this is one of those debates.

A few other opinions/beliefs I have are...
People - are considered fair subjects if 1) you have their permission 2) taken in a journalistic/artistic sense

Not fair game if it people are used for exploitation (making fun of them, look at this, etc)

Wildlife(animals/birds/etc) - Only fair game if it is a wild animal.
(Pets are excluded/obvious to tell in most cases)
I have yet been to a zoo to take pictures of an animal. It is important for me to take images of animals in their NATURAL setting where they act in a natural manner. To me the images are always much more stiking to see. A bird catching a fish from a stream vs. the extreme close-up of a bald eagles head. A lion crouching in the grass stalking its prey/OR YOU! vs. the images of the cheetah or leapord standing only several yards away seperated by a concrete barrier.

Sometimes the viewer is never able to tell the difference. In the end, the weight always falls on your shoulders to decide whether or not the image is considered a photograph, or a real "wildlife" image.

[AcadieLibre]

I pose the question: if I show an image I'm proud of, that works, does it matter whether person A labels it a photo and person B labels it digital art? Does it matter what I personally label it as in my head?

To me it does, to others I assume not. I am saying it is not Art, I just think at some point and to me that is a very fine line between a photograph and digital art, but one is not the other, one is Art and one is Photography. I know they used to air brush and do lots of other tricks to the trade but those were no more photographs than when you remove it digitally. They were airbrushed paintings, me knowing is all that matters, that usually is good enough for me. I think photography has to have a standard, if not when we get photos from real life disasters that are manipulated either to shock or to lie about the magnitude keeping what a photograph is then will matter, so yes there should be threshold for photography that only allows so much manipulation before it is not called a photograph but a digital rendition for lack of a better term. It is defiantly not photography at some point, looking through the small prism of ones owns work blocks out the over all importance to keep a photographic standard that makes something that can be truly called a photograph.

[BlueX]

This debate has raged on for a long time now and will continue to go on. My view is that Photoshop is a tool. Plain and simple.

If you really think about photography, the photographer is in some way manipulating what the view sees in his or her picture. There idea of the camera capturing what is there, what the eye would see, is very hard to believe. By cropping and changing you angle, you are choosing what to show and not show in the frame. Sometimes what is not shown can tell a lot more about a scene. By selecting different focal lengths, you decide how perspective is viewed. The golden hour light is beautiful, but is carefully chosen by the photographer and is hardly an "accurate" representation of a scene or landscape. Use of flash and artificial lighting also alters how a picture is capture.

Everything coming out of digital cameras is digital art. Just like I can use my computer to spit out a pic, you can use a camera to do the same. I admit, there is some satisfaction to getting it right in the camera and not having to rely on any pp. But I just see that as mastering one tool, the camera, over another, photoshop.

In the end, the import thing is the image. Photographers strive to make the perfect image, how they go about it is their choice. It can look better with fast glass or with a levels adjustment. I don't look at a good photoshopped image and think anything less of it. Skill is skill, whether it is camera skillz or photoshop skillz.

One thing I would draw the line on is trying to pass off a post processed image as straight out of the camera. This mainly refers to news and photojournalism when we are lead to believe the images we see are "true." But other than that, I assume any pictures out there have had some pp done to it.

[Ben H]

Yep. Photography is not true. It is (or "can be") art, therefore it is a presenting imagery in an artistic context.

Whether you used the camera's inbuilt digital processing to darken it down, or you used the digital processing in Photoshop is irrelevant to me. One is not magically better better is happened in computer 1 rather than computer 2. It's not less of a photography because the picture style I had set in my camera boosted the contrast, saturation and sharpness of the data.

And I don't really see much of a difference between dodging/burning an image to make it look artistically better (whether in the darkroom, or the computer) compared to removing some blemishes in a persons' eye to make it look artistically better.

If a photographer has a personal thing where they like their images to be all done with the camera (which after all, is partly a digital image processing computer) then fine - I just don't have the same level of purity

[casil403]

I think Photo shop (and I don't have it yet) allows for a bit more artistic license to a photo. I have looked at many paintings and seen the real image (as I'm sure many others have also) where the artist manipulated the scenery added/removed images to get the image they wanted in their head on canvas.

I think photo shop allows photographers to do the same.

[F8&Bthere]

... although I agreed aesthetically it made sense I never did remove the stack...Now looking at the photo I am glad I didn't....

This may only be half relevant to what you're getting at, but of many photos I see posted to any critique forum, there's a lot of "I find that element distracting" or "I would have cloned out this or that..."

I guess it really it depends if you are staging a shot or if you are just witness to something that's happening. If the latter, and if there's a distracting element in the frame, ahhh so what. That's the way it was. If it doesn't feel right to manipulate it, don't. We're kinda spoiled these days with all this easily accessible software.

[AcadieLibre]

I think it is good people have different ideas, what I wanted to hear, and I think you can have a civil discussion like what is going on here. It is something that photographers on whole needs to look at. Our image is becoming well anyone can take a photo now, and thats not true, and the issue with so much PS is it has a far more far reaching effect on photography than anything in the past because those who take a photograph, take the time and are selective enough are being bunched in with the computer generated image makers. There is an international Standards for Photography for the news media, not mandatory but backed by some of the largest news sources on the globe. I just think the Arts Photography need a body to classify what is a photograph and when enough of the image has been manipulated to the point in no longer falls under that classification. IF we do no learn to implement Standards I fear we will lose a true form of art. I know photoshop inside out, I use for a ton of things outside my photography. I just think maybe it is time to differentiate between a photograph and computer generated art from a photographic image.

[Gem]

I'm actually more interested in how the general public views this. I didn't even know PP existed until I got into photography. Now, if someone asks about a photo and I say "oh, i adjusted that in GIMP" I can see the light go out in their eyes (so to speak, lol). For me, at least,almost everyone I know thinks that the image printed is the exact same image on the camera. It doesn't seem to matter how much I stress that pretty every image is PP'd, as soon as they hear the words "touched up" they automatically skill/technique/effort required in creating the image. It's half annoying and half guilt trip. Anyone else run into this sort of thing?

I don't have photoshop but I do use GIMP. For the most part, I try to do most of the work on the photo in camera. I find PP tedious, and while it's useful (sometimes even fun to use), I try to use it minimally.