Creative Filters: To Use, or Not to Use?

[DGMPhotography]

Hey guys:

Below is an example of a photo I took recently, using a "creative" filter, and not.



I'd always been against using Instagram filters like these (I was told it was wrong, and it's an indicator of an amateur), but from a more holistic artistic standpoint, the edited image certainly looks more interesting/engaging. My photographer friend uses a program called Perfect Photo (which has tons of these filters) to edit his images, and they look really good, e.g. Kelly - Left-handed Photography Facebook

What do you think of using filters like these? Yay, nay?

 

[Braineack]

considering the first shot is pretty darn good and the filtered one is not so much...

...I say no.

 

[photoguy99]

Why not?

Every generation has its fads and considers their fads to be proper photography while previous and future fads are ridiculous.

Just because these things are currently frowned upon by the self styled experts doesn't mean you shouldn't use them.

Twenty (?) years ago people bought all kinds of things to screw on their lenses for portraits. Before that they stretched nylon stockings over the lens.

Nowadays that's all ridiculous. Instead you should use frequency separation techniques to turn your victim's skin into a plastic nightmare!

 

[waday]

IMO, I think it depends on the photo... and the filter... and, well, the purpose of the deliverable.

For this image, I personally think the filter is okay. The first one looks like a good snapshot of a Halloween costume. However, if you're going for the supernatural look, then I'd say the second one. It also helps take the focus off of the fact that her weapon has been cropped out of the photo.

 

[Braineack]

just considering how disgusting it made the model's legs...

 

[ronlane]

If it is what you like and your style knock yourself out. I don't see much creative in this filter. Looks like the highlight slider was just pushed to the right to blow out the details in the whites and her face.

 

[480sparky]

If using a preset gets you the results you wanted when you took the shot, so be it. More power to ya.

If using a preset is just to see what you can turn an image into, then I have no use for it. Unless I visualize the image using said preset when I push the shutter button on the camera, it's of no value to me.

 

[Derrel]

I see nothing wrong with using filters, pre-sets, overlays, whatever. As long as the effect used serves to advance the artistic vision, I say go for it. The way I look at it, the effectiveness of ANY post-processing treatment or treatments depends on the actual subject matter, the skill of the person at using the processing method or tool, and the desired end result. One thing that was brought up here was the result the filter had on the subject's legs; although her legs are not a big area, or well-seen, there are a number of creative filters and preset effects that tend to make human skin look dark, and mottled, or otherwise "unpleasant" to look at, a result I see quite often in some of the darker, more "goth" types of presets and filter effects, and in a lot of the color de-saturation type effects.

The whole blanket condemnation of "Instagram filters" and Lightroom pre-sets,etc. as automatically being "bad" is something I've seen before, and it's a pretty old-fashioned and narrow-minded way of looking at modern-era photography. It's yet another in a loooong line out outdated modes of thinking about photography; it's a mindset that values "straight" photography, representational photography, and traditionalism over innovation, experimentation, and progress and evolution. Photography has ***changed*** since the 1940's...there's no longer any need to idolize old, dead white guys like Ansel Adams and his ilk. "Straight photography" died out a looooong time ago.

 

[DGMPhotography]

I see nothing wrong with using filters, pre-sets, overlays, whatever. As long as the effect used serves to advance the artistic vision, I say go for it. The way I look at it, the effectiveness of ANY post-processing treatment or treatments depends on the actual subject matter, the skill of the person at using the processing method or tool, and the desired end result. One thing that was brought up here was the result the filter had on the subject's legs; although her legs are not a big area, or well-seen, there are a number of creative filters and preset effects that tend to make human skin look dark, and mottled, or otherwise "unpleasant" to look at, a result I see quite often in some of the darker, more "goth" types of presets and filter effects, and in a lot of the color de-saturation type effects.

The whole blanket condemnation of "Instagram filters" and Lightroom pre-sets,etc. as automatically being "bad" is something I've seen before, and it's a pretty old-fashioned and narrow-minded way of looking at modern-era photography. It's yet another in a loooong line out outdated modes of thinking about photography; it's a mindset that values "straight" photography, representational photography, and traditionalism over innovation, experimentation, and progress and evolution. Photography has ***changed*** since the 1940's...there's no longer any need to idolize old, dead white guys like Ansel Adams and his ilk. "Straight photography" died out a looooong time ago.

That's something I think I, and many others, need to hear more often. Thanks for your feedback, Derrel - always a pleasure, and I think I will feel more comfortable now using filters.

 

[limr]

You didn't give the choice of "Whatever, do what you want." That would be my vote.

 

[photoguy99]

Instagram style filters are LAME. Sliding a slider in an app to achieve different looks makes you stupid.
Spinning my shutter speed dial to different numbers to achieve different looks makes me AWESOME, however.

 

[Derrel]

here's a reallllly good essay. If you look in the photo dictionary under "incredible A-hole" there's an entry for Ansel Adams. Adams was the man who waged a multi-decade war to smear William Mortensen, one of the most-respected Pictorialist photographers in America by the 1930's. Mortensen was one of the best practitioners of a style known as Pictorialism, a style that featured a lot of less-than-sharp images, images with oftentimes a LOT of manipulation done on the negatives, and or the prnts, to make interpretive, artistic, sensitive photographs. Pictorialism was a style of photography that lasted around 50 years, give or take; it was Ansel Adams, and a small HANDFUL of other people who formed the f/64 group. These A-holes decreed that only SHARP, all-in-focus, B&W images done in the style known as straight photography, were the only kinds of serious photography that was worthy of producing and including in museums. Everything else was "crap", or worse.

Monsters and Madonnas Looking at William Mortensen - 50 Watts

Ansel Adams and the influence of the f/64 Group, the straight photography crowd, still holds a lot of sway among people who are not open to any new ways of thinking about photography. Narrow-minded thinking about "how a photo ought to look" has a long tradition among people who follow the ideals set forth by a small handful of photographers and curators and taste-makers who made their fame before WW II. Today we are confroning the SAME, exact issue: the battle of creative freedom and individualized treatment for each image as espoused by the Pictorialist school of practitioners, and a narrow-minded, very rigid, limited straight or "pure" dogma that Adams and his acolytes bitched and moaned about. We're on the brink of another era, just like when Pictorialism was squashed by influential people who had the ear of the museum curators, and the book publishers, and so on. The pendulum has made its long, slow swing, and now we are headed back, repeating history, but sort of in-reverse.

We see the same, exact type of reactionary thinking today, as old-fashioned thinkers raised on the straight photography premises often seek to condemn new ways of imaging that do not follow the basic ideas of keeping things "pure"...whatever the hell "pure" means at this point in time. There's a great lesson of history in the above essay, and in seeing how boring and clone-like the work of the Zone System fanboys came to be once their dogma spread to basically, the majority of photography practitioners.

 

[photoguy99]

An interesting thing about Adams photos I only recently picked up on is that they are very dependent on the processing.

Flatten out the contrast and pull the blacks up to some weak grey, and the images turn to incomprehensible muck. Do that to, say, a Weston, and it's still a pretty good picture. Ditto a lot of Adams' contemporaries. But not Adams.

It's surely not 100% or anything like, but I'm confident there's a general trend.

So, in a sense, Adams was "saving" crummy pictures with post processing effects long before the cell phone

 

[Buckster]

I'm in sync with Derrel on this subject.

Do what YOU want, and ignore the naysayers.

And I say that to everyone, from the wildest post-processors who spend a million hours working on one image, to the most instant of the filter-click edit crowd, to those who go so over-the-top that their radioactive images set off geiger counters, to the "purists" who are so against any modern technology or techniques that they write out their forum posts with a #2 pencil on well-aged lined paper and have someone else post them here for them:

Whatever you're into, that's your vision and your business alone - have at it, and let others do what they want in return without giving them any guff. When it comes to YOUR images, there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, there is only what YOU want to do with YOUR images.

Anyone who doesn't like it can take a flying leap off the nearest soapbox.

 

[Braineack]

I think a big reason you see a rejection of them, is just like with HDR, people overuse them without regard. A bunch of kids started applying them to every picture they took, beyond just selfies, and the concept leaked into real photography. Now we see them being applied to every sort of image, from landscapes, to foodscapes, to cat pictures.

I have nothing against technology or techniques. I have things against making your pictures look amateurish for no reason but to use technology or techniques. I mean have the instagram filters out there are just age old photo-processing techniques.

In my opinion, there was no benefit to using the filter on the image above--It just doesn't match the image. Does that mean never use them? no, but use them wisely. The filter above added heavy vignette, overexposed the girl, and added a yellow color cast, as well as going as far as adding a fake sun bleached edge and made her legs look nasty--almost hairy.

I could see the image benefiting from some filters/processing/chopping, just not the one as is.