whe lensbaby, not PS?

[rehab]

I find it a nice balance of both, do everything you can in camera and when there is nothing left to do, take it to photoshop. If i take a picture of a girl i will properly expose it, compose as best as i can in the camera, and then when all else is done go to photoshop for any "enhancing." I notice alot of photographers my age (im 21 years old) using photoshop to FIX photos rather than to ENHANCE them, which is where i draw the line. I will use to fix if i have to but wont if i dont.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Yeah, rehab, Timoris also needs to understand digital images, particularly when shot in RAW always need a little tweaking in post. If shot in jpeg, the camera applies post processing IN camera, so again it is still being done.

I find the argument rather esoteric myself. When I shoot my jewelry products, I do a fair amount of post work, including removing missed finger prints, or replacing blown facet reflections on stones. It's not lying, it polishing. It's paying attention to details to make the final product, the absolute best it can be.

This argument is one of my favorites!


The FACT that the most revered photographers do post processing, should say something.

Which is something of pride, Have an Amazing untouched photo with an Intact Certificate attesting to the fact that your picture did not pass through any software to end up as it is.

Oh, and Timoris, your digital photos have to pass through software to print them, soooo, so much for that.

 

[Timoris]

Ansel Adams did lots of post processing!!!

This is true... yet altogether different?

Certain things you can get form Photoshop just by reading a guide on the internet, where as developing film takes a lot of time, skill and trial and error. Real life does not have CTRL+ALT+Z.

Exposing your paper to juuust the right amount of light - too much and it's ruined. No undoing. You could probably develop it again and it would take time, you'd gain experience.

Lets take the industrial revolution as an example. Thousands of farmers and labourers went bust because of steam power. Developing film is a manual art perfected over 100 years. Lightroom was released 4 years ago, the computer compensating for what was missed while shooting, practically automatically.

Or another example, Schools have stopped teaching children how to write in cursive. Why? Overuse of computers. Cursive was developed to be able to write at length with speed and ease. (wait, that's not the point...), the manual art of cursive may be lost within the following generation giving way to computers. You receive an e-mail. Okay, you get them everyday. You receive a handwritten posted letter of thanks, it goes to your heart.

Same thing with the overuse of wikipedia, children are losing an ability to figure things out for themselves, they don't know what it is to scourge a library for three different Encyclopaedias, R volume, to look up Romulan (sic) Romanian history. It's long, difficult and tedious. Just Wiki it.

Same thing with the highly interconnected world, children are no long bored. Which is a bad thing, the lose of introspection and growth. Sorry, I'm going off on a tangent.

Yes, I do use a dSLR and I find them wonderful. However, you'd be missing a lot by shooting in Pure Automatic or Program modes (and hopefully if some one reading this does, I am hoping they will read a guide and try Av). You need to have a certain understanding of theory.

I find myself at a lack of words. It is merely the way I feel. The more I photograph, the more I find myself moving towards a purer and purer medium. I activated the Image verification Certificate to be able to say "I really and truly took this.". More and more I am wanting to shoot film, the development of film an extension of shooting it.

I do realise the same could be said of Digital and Adobe, a lot can be handled within the Camera itself. Hues, Tones, White Balance, Colour Correction, blurring the right part of the image, filters, etc - you don't need Adobe for that, just an understanding of the way things work.

Again, it's just the way I feel. I would be much more impressed by a nice unAdobe'd picture than an amazing spectacular one which was.

In case all this makes it sound as though I'm 60, I'm not. I'm 23 and am just starting to learn about photography, even if I have been trying things out, reading articles and learning from my father since in my mid teens. I don't know everything, which is why I'm here, to improve without the crutch which is Adobe.

Because knowledge is power (and that's half the battle).

 

[Josh66]

I have a Lensbaby (plastic optic). I won't say that it's impossible to do in PS, but I will say that I would never try it.

One, I have the lens, so there's no need to try it. Two, even if it could be done - it wouldn't be the same.


Sometimes it's a cool effect, sometimes it's not.


Here's one I liked:

02261102 by J E, on Flickr

Here's one that didn't exactly turn out how I hoped:

01221156 by J E, on Flickr




It's fun to play with (unlike PS), but you have to be willing to waste frames on pictures that might suck. :lmao:

[ADDED] Woah, talk about resuscitation (also known as Necroing on the intertubes). Two years old *whistles* sorry folks, but I wanted my two cents

LOL. ...Just noticed. Oh well.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Sorry that you wrote so much, but post work is post work.

Again, it's just the way I feel. I would be much more impressed by a nice unAdobe'd picture than an amazing spectacular one which was.

Looking at a final print, on a wall, in a gallery, you would have no clue what was done to it.

 

[Timoris]

Yeah, rehab, Timoris also needs to understand digital images, particularly when shot in RAW always need a little tweaking in post. If shot in jpeg, the camera applies post processing IN camera, so again it is still being done.

(...)

But that's the entire point. Basing yourself on this alone, why bother adjust anything on the camera itself? Just fix it in post.

The FACT that the most revered photographers do post processing, should say something.

Which is something of pride, Have an Amazing untouched photo with an Intact Certificate attesting to the fact that your picture did not pass through any software to end up as it is.

Oh, and Timoris, your digital photos have to pass through software to print them, soooo, so much for that.

This is true, but you can't right click and view details in real life. Exchanged as a purely digital medium, it has its merits.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Yeah, rehab, Timoris also needs to understand digital images, particularly when shot in RAW always need a little tweaking in post. If shot in jpeg, the camera applies post processing IN camera, so again it is still being done.

(...)

But that's the entire point. Basing yourself on this alone, why bother adjust anything on the camera itself? Just fix it in post.

*ugh* :facepalm:

The FACT that the most revered photographers do post processing, should say something.

Which is something of pride, Have an Amazing untouched photo with an Intact Certificate attesting to the fact that your picture did not pass through any software to end up as it is.

Oh, and Timoris, your digital photos have to pass through software to print them, soooo, so much for that.

This is true, but you can't right click and view details in real life. Exchanged as a purely digital medium, it has its merits.

Done!

 

[Timoris]

Looking at a final print, on a wall, in a gallery, you would have no clue what was done to it.

This is also true. And in that context you are right.
However, two galleries, one showing film, the other digital, which would have people more impressed?

Why is Ansel Adams considered soo good?
Would we still see him as such if he had access to Adobe software?

Anybody can get wonderful creations with it. I'm not saying they shouldn't.
I'm saying not using editing software, to me, has more reverence and respect than doing so.
I'm not saying that I don't have any for using it, just that I have more for not.

In the end my entire thesis can be summed up as such:
Why bake a cake when you can just buy one? Because in the end, baking a cake has more merit. Anybody can just buy one.

[ADDED]

I have no problem conceding that there is great use for Adobe and in professional circles, where there is a need to make pictures perfect, it can be necessary. In any case, who would not want their pictures to be the best they can be? I just find there is too much of a dependence on editing software.

As I've repeated before, this is my opinion. If I want to separate myself from software, concentrating on improving my photography rather than editing skills, this is my choice.

If you, on the other hand, do not need to improve your photography and therefore feel confident that your pictures are great and are just improving them, That to is okay.

 

[Gavjenks]

3) It takes 40x longer to do it all in photoshop realistically for every single stupid photo you want to have that look.
4) It will always looks different, because photoshop will blur out everything 2 dimensionally, whereas lensbaby or a holga or whatever will blur things out with depth information involved as well. In other words, if an object is near the focal plane, it will be slightly less blurry, even if it is far into the blurry zone, than an object far from the focal plane, also in the blurry zone. This is not just an additive relationship. It is nonlinear, and although possible to replicate, would require really complicated gradient masks to mimic correctly in software.
5) Most importantly, the composition of a shot, if you're doing it right, should depend on the blur effect. How can you choose what the best composition is if you don't know even roughly what the photo will look like until you're at home?! Doing an effect as dramatic as that in photoshop is therefor very restrictive creatively. It's the equivalent of only taking photos from a train or a bus, and not allowing yourself to choose your position or walk around. The result will be not very compelling, because your composition will be all wrong for the type of photo. Seeing it through the viewfinder doesn't have this problem.

Looking at a final print, on a wall, in a gallery, you would have no clue what was done to it.

No, but it would be less likely to get INTO the gallery in the first place, because taking a photo blindly without being able to see it's #1 most defining characteristic when you take it is a recipe for poorly composed hack jobs 90% of the time.

Sorry that you wrote so much, but post work is post work.

No, it's not. Some things are much "safer" to do in post than others, and make more sense.

For example, burning and dodging make sense to do in post, because it's vastly easier to do there than it is to craft some ridiculous partial/patterned custom ND filter for every single shot.

Whereas rotating your composition correctly is really stupid to rely on doing in post, because it's vastly easier to just turn your damn camera the right way when you take the photo, and if you do it in post, you'll also lose like 20% of your shot from cropping the rotated trimmings out to make it a rectangle again.

 

[Overread]

Like it is best to let sleeping dogs sleep its best to let old threads sleep as well.

If you wish to revisit the debate I would post a new thread to open discussion on the topic since it helps keep things fresh and means that you won't have several earlier references and an opening post made by people who might not be as active currently in the forum and won't be around to respond.