Post-Processing

[skieur]

showoff

and I have seen it where people have taken a photo and edited it to the point where it does look like a painting - of course they intended to do that in the first place

To put it another way, postprocessing does not just suddenly become a work of graphic art unless it is intentional. Of course the reverse is true too. I intended to created a faux photo.

skieur

 

[Garbz]

Here's a view on it. Does a photograph ever change to graphic art if the original is still a photo?

I have seen plenty of times someone say "That's a nice photo" when looking at a car advert. They don't know that the car was photographed in the studio, the scenery was photographed separately often in various parts, and then the entire thing was combined and majorly changed on the computer.

The public believes it's a photo. It is something that quite easily possible in the darkroom. But why should we suddenly call something "digital art" which has for years been done exclusively by photographers simply because anyone can do it now and use the same techniques even with the complete absence of a photo?

 

[Overread]

Garbz - I think its a very tricky line to draw (if we are to draw a line) because there are many different situations many of them change depending upon how much editing is done.
Take your example - combining 2 images taken in different locations into a single composite shot - some might consider that simple photography whilst othes might consider the manipulation to be a bit beyond photography and a little more into graphical art.
I think all we can definatly say is that if it starts life as a photograph then chances are its photography of one form or another, but that if you work at and alter the shot enough you can end up with something which is more constructed than photographed. I think then we start to breach the boundaries since you are not simply painting with light, you are painting with light and brushes as well (even though they be digital brushes).

 

[skieur]

Here's a view on it. Does a photograph ever change to graphic art if the original is still a photo?

Good point! A photo is still a photo no matter what you do to it.

I still have to wonder that if you just took the outline or the edges from your photo using Photoshop and then painted in your own colours and a few objects, how would you define the result?...digital art or photo

skieur

 

[BTilson]

Questions like this have no specific answer, aside from each individual photographers personal opinion on the matter. It's like asking someone, "Should people eat meat?" or "Should you make a point to go to church every Sunday?". The people on either side of the fence are there because of their own personal convictions and will likely never jump ship to the other side. However, there is no "right" answer to any such questions.

Now, MY personal opinion is that every single digital photo ever could use at least minor PP. PP is like makeup on a woman. If it is subtle and artfully performed, the viewer will never even realize it's there, but the picture/woman is much more attractive for it. However, if you overdo it or otherwise mess it up, it'll be a trainwreck!

 

[NateWagner]

I agree with Tilson, there is no specific answer.

However, I will say that when I was younger and just starting out in photography I too thought, well, I should only take photos of things as they actually are.

My opinion has changed though.

If I view photography as an art, then I am trying to portray the scene as I see/imagine it to be. As an artist will leave out certain aspects of a masterpiece, and only include those pieces into the final work, so do I choose what to modify and change. Why not.

Also, It seems to me that saying we are trying to capture it as a moment in time and not changed makes me wonder, is it ok to use cameras with extremely shallow depth of field? I mean, on my 70-200 I end up with quite the blurred background on many shots. This resulted in images SOOC that looked nothing like what any passerby would have seen. Had I not edited them, would I still be presenting the image the snapshot in time as it really was? or was it specifically modified and changed from what it really was?

 

[rufus5150]

I should only take photos of things as they actually are

I gave up on this when I read an article describing the dynamic range the human eye can process vs. the limitations of a camera/lens/etc.

 

[skieur]

Questions like this have no specific answer, aside from each individual photographers personal opinion on the matter. It's like asking someone, "Should people eat meat?" or "Should you make a point to go to church every Sunday?". The people on either side of the fence are there because of their own personal convictions and will likely never jump ship to the other side. However, there is no "right" answer to any such questions.

Now, MY personal opinion is that every single digital photo ever could use at least minor PP. PP is like makeup on a woman. If it is subtle and artfully performed, the viewer will never even realize it's there, but the picture/woman is much more attractive for it. However, if you overdo it or otherwise mess it up, it'll be a trainwreck!

I agree in general terms however your personal opinion depends on your photographic eye and that is based on experience. With lots of experience, I recognize that the shot does not necessarily reflect what I saw at the time. The purpose of postprocessing is to get closer to what I saw.

skieur

 

[Fox Paw]

When I started to shoot in Raw, I got over whatever biases I had against processing. The original Raw image is not usually very appealing. Processing house-breaks it. As Rufus said, the camera is one thing and the eye another. Often a lot of processing is required to get close to what your eye saw.

With quite a few images on this forum, I'm too conscious of the processing to like the image very much, but that's a matter of how to process, not whether. And tastes vary a lot in that regard.

 

[notelliot]

since I am the Chuck Norris of photography....

my RAW files are immaculate

 

[Alpha]

I looked around, and couldn't find any recent topics on this.

Why do you need a recent thread? All of the older stupid responses are still stupid and all of the intelligent ones are still intelligent. Did you think that perhaps the tables had turned some time recently while you weren't looking?

 

[tsaraleksi]

Here's the question: did you print everything yourself when you shot film? If you did, did you print at a standard time, with no filters? Of course, you must have shot color, because the scene was not originally in black and white. And you only use a 50mm lens so that there is no distortion introduced, and an aperture of at least f/5.6 so that there would be no unnatural background blur.

 

[Garbz]

Good point! A photo is still a photo no matter what you do to it.

I still have to wonder that if you just took the outline or the edges from your photo using Photoshop and then painted in your own colours and a few objects, how would you define the result?...digital art or photo

Harder still if you define it as digital art here, what if you do it to the negative before printing, part of normal photographic process. This is why I personally would define it as photography. It could have been done in the darkroom as part of "the art of photography" so for me it would still be photography.

But as mentioned no end the lines are anything but clear.

since I am the Chuck Norris of photography....

my RAW files are immaculate

They say under the top of notelliot's camera is no popup flash, but a second camera!

Here's the question: did you print everything yourself when you shot film?

Exactly. Some of the so called purists who argue that they never did post processing were never part of the developing process. Every somewhat decent lab adjusts things slightly to bump up contrast either automatically with the large Fuji or Kodak printers, or manually in the case of some of the professional labs.

 

[Jedo_03]

Maybe the OP has a good camera...???

 

[tsaraleksi]

Maybe the OP has a good camera...???

What difference does that make? It is possible to set things in-camera so that you generally get a usable image straight off the card. However, because you set those things in camera, you have really just told the camera how you want your images post-processed, which doesn't provide any moral high-ground over people who take a raw file and edit it.