Why Do People Hate "Editing"?

[CowgirlMama]

I leave just enough room in the frame to be able to crop my 4X6 photo into an 8X10, which is what I usually want to be able to print. They frame so close that you can't even take a sliver off a side to print 8X10 without losing an important part of the image. I like close shots, but I want to be able to frame it on my wall.

Here's a more typical before/after for me. I really don't do much to the vast majority of my pictures. I clipped just enough to make it 5X7, no other cropping. It's another just being silly shot, rather than a portrait. It's hard to get my 3 year old to do his cute stuff when I put him somewhere that looks nice.

 

[DarkShadow]

You cant hate editing if you shoot raw.

 

[Alex_B]

Did not read all this .... but my 2 cents:

This is not "editing", this is "processing" ... full stop.
(To cite Wikipedia and sources therein: Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete work.)

If you consider the decision to alter the default raw settings as editing, then also the decision "to select the default settings of the people creating the processing software" is editing.

The first image comes with some default settings for RAW-processing the second image was processed with some customised/optimised settings.

Nothing more, no magic, no dogma, no drama.

Of course there is also good and bad processing in this photography world, and that makes part of the difference, just as it used to be in the old darkroom days

 

[Gavjenks]

There is no such thing as a "true" photo.

Every chemical type of film will look a bit different than the same shot made by another type of film. And different camera companies have different digital technologies with different dynamic ranges and strengths and weaknesses in different ranges of color, etc.

Obviously there's also different exposures, different speeds with different grains, etc.

And presumably, your aunt would not be upset about using filters in front of your lens, or using one lens versus another? But the lens will add different types of distortions, which is very much changing the image, and filters are MADE to pre-edit the image.



There's no real logical reason why photoshopping is fundamentally different than any of these other differences, all of which you not only can but MUST intentionally choose between in order to take a photo.

NOT photoshopping is essentially just as much of an editing choice as photoshopping, because neither one of them is any closer to any underlying objective "true" image. And neither of them is neccessarily even closer to what the human eye sees (by the way, if you want what the human eye sees, you would need photoshop to add in veins and to selectively lower resolution outside of the center of the image, etc. etc.

 

[Tailgunner]

How is image stacking considered? I mean is it considered general processing or Photoshoping/photo altering?

 

[Alex_B]

How is image stacking considered? I mean is it considered general processing or Photoshoping/photo altering?

To me that is a different photographic technique: Hence I would call it processing. Here you alter not the parameters in a single exposure process, but you chose an alltogether different process.

If you however remove a scar in a persons face in a portrati, then that I would call altering or editing.

 

[Tailgunner]

How is image stacking considered? I mean is it considered general processing or Photoshoping/photo altering?

To me that is a different photographic technique: Hence I would call it processing. Here you alter not the parameters in a single exposure process, but you chose an alltogether different process.

If you however remove a scar in a persons face in a portrati, then that I would call altering or editing.

Sounds reasonable.