Is it wrong to edit photos with computer programs?

[MLeeK]

Cheap: Photoshop Elements 10.
Free: I hear Gimp is decent. There's someone here who uses it quite a bit.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

It was the one from "imnewtophoto" or something...where he thought he was banned, and couldn't post images, and tried 8 times, and never succeeded, and then never came back.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Fixed.

 

[WesternGuy]

The OP should take a look at some of the images that were created, on film(!), by Ansel Adams. He may have been very good at composing "in camera", "in the field", so to speak, but his "art" was putting everything together in the dark room - post processing :thumbup:. Adams was probably one of the best (my opinion) darkroom technicians in the black and white world - even today a copy of one of his images will sell for a few hundred dollars and only a handful (or less) of folks remain that know how to reproduce his works. I would hazard a guess, that had Adams not been a darkroom guru, we wouldn't place so much value in his works today. For anyone to imply that because you or I, or anyone else for that matter, is not an artist because they "rendered" an image in the computer to their satisfaction, shows an absolute ignorance of the whole photographic, artistic process. Quite frankly, I do my best to ignore those folks.

My 0.02¢ FWIW.

WesternGuy

 

[Josh66]

Free: I hear Gimp is decent. There's someone here who uses it quite a bit.

That's all I use. Not saying I'm a pro at it or anything, but I can figure most things out in it.

Sparky uses it a lot too.

 

[rexbobcat]

Free: I hear Gimp is decent. There's someone here who uses it quite a bit.

That's all I use. Not saying I'm a pro at it or anything, but I can figure most things out in it.

Sparky uses it a lot too.

I used to use it. It was good for most editing functions, but I got frustrated at how....un-intelligent some of the tools were.

Like the Brightness tool. Instead of actually changing the luminance of the image, it would simply place a grey overlay (or pull the values closer to grey) over the whole image, so it would just look cloudy instead of brighter.

Maybe I was doing it wrong. LOL

To answer the original question: the darkroom was the Photoshop of yester-year. And EVERY time you shoot in JPEG, the camera edits the photo before displaying the image. There is no such thing as "pure" photography. Editing is done regardless of media, or era.

 

[Trever1t]

Glad someone above mentioned AA as he is well known for the art of photography and his skills in the editing process. The only form of photography that I can think of where one wouldn't edit an image is with a Poloroid..

 

[Josh66]

The only form of photography that I can think of where one wouldn't edit an image is with a Poloroid..

Polaroid manipulation is a whole genre... Nothing is safe, lol.

 

[ann]

:thumbup: Trever you need to do some research on just how much manipulation was done with polaroid and I don't mean the most well know, transfers, lifts, or sx70 work

Recently I was re=watching the Eloquent eye about Alfred Stieglitz and they mentioned that at that time with Stieglitz first began people would rant and rave about "the machine" taking over. The machine being a LF camera. They railed on about the person just putting their head under a black cloth with the machine doing everything else.

To be fully accountable, I had to be dragged into the digital world, screaming. It was purely a business decision.
Then I rarely did PP processing , after all, i had been trained to get it right in camera (this makes the darkroom work much easier and fun).

THen one day it dawned on me, what was the difference between darkroom PP and computer PP, nothing . So anything I would do in the darkroom I do on the computer. I have a personal line drawn in the sand when selling a photograph and when I cross that line it is called Digital art

 

[Village Idiot]

Sorry, I'm new here and didn't see any threads pertaining to my question..

So, no it is not wrong to edit photos?
Do professional photographers do it?

FFS, -10 internets!

No it's not wrong. Who ever told you that is an idiot. It depends to what extent they're edited and what purpose. Of course PJs doing composites to create an image crosses that whole ethics line in their field, but fashion photogs doing beauty touch ups, car photogs editing out rigs, commercial photogs doing images for clients, etc... can do what every they feel like and not be doing anything wrong.

EDITING to fix short comings-yes-kind of. If you have to fix what you screwed up it is wrong.

Explain to me why this is wrong? Would you rather deliver an image to a client that's FUBARed because your moral compass points so far to righteous that you wouldn't edited a photo that had a short coming in it? It's not like every single person has an hour to compose one photo. What about a wedding photog that under exposes the first kiss? Well sorry clients, I feel it's wrong to fix this because I didn't get it exactly right so you have to deal with this crappy image.

Depends on the genre. PhotoJournalists..yes but they get fired if they get caught.

Not true. PJ's don't get fired for adjusting exposure/clarity/sharpening and that sort of thing. They WILL get fired for falsifying reality though.

Adjusting exposure/clarity and sharpening isn't editing. PJs have another way to lie...they can crop judiciously.

Yes it is.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en...72&bih=399&cad=cbv&sei=OW9XT83WJoXm0QHc36XYDw

I <3 unedited photos:

 

[Geaux]

 

[MReid]

Absolutely it is wrong to process photos.
Take them in the camera, then take em down and get em printed.
What a wonderful world-photography is so easy.... then you decide since photography is so easy you want to turn it into a business and make some Real Money, cause everybody knows photography is easy and lots of money to be had.

....then by chance you happen across someone elses work....who does process their photos using those blankety blank computer programs-and they are really good at it.....then you make the mistake of comparing their work to yours.....

Hey that's not fair! That is cheating....that is not photography....

 

[DiskoJoe]

I'd assume so. Does it not take away from the photography aspect of it all and bring it more into the realm of graphic design?
I mean, I suppose you wouldn't edit a photo much, I try not to when I do. But even tweaking certain things; contrast, clarity, ect-- is it wrong to do so if you want to call your work actual photography?
Although, I see some people's work and I don't understand how they would take the photo with just a camera. I'm very new to all this, so I know there's plenty I don't know about camera affects and such, but I was just wondering what is the general consensus on editing photos?

people have been editing photos long before computers were ever invented.

 

[jowensphoto]

Free: I hear Gimp is decent. There's someone here who uses it quite a bit.

That's all I use. Not saying I'm a pro at it or anything, but I can figure most things out in it.

Sparky uses it a lot too.

Don't forget me!!!! I love GIMP.

OP, I'm curious to know exactly what you mean by editing? If it was a "real" photographer that told you this, maybe he/she had good reason... meaning the "editing" you were doing was more like photoCHOPPING. What do you consider editing to be?

 

[analog.universe]

Free: I hear Gimp is decent. There's someone here who uses it quite a bit.

That's all I use. Not saying I'm a pro at it or anything, but I can figure most things out in it.

Sparky uses it a lot too.

It's all I use as well (with UFRaw as a raw converter). The only limitation that it has that has ever bothered me is the fact that it only operates on 8-bit files. In a small percentage of my images, this is a problem, but most of the time it doesn't matter, because anything I need to do in 16-bit happens at the raw conversion step. The dev team has announced that they're working on floating point support for high bit-depth files, and it will be available in a future release.

I initially started using it because it was the most serious editor that ran natively on linux. I've since used Photoshop and ACR on Windows machines, and I can't believe the performance difference. The GIMP interface is so instantaneous in comparison.. makes every control in Photoshop feel like it has serious lag. A couple of times I've gone to Photoshop to try and do some 16-bit edits, and it was actually very hard to get used to, after working with the speed of linux software for so long.