Fascination with editing?

Melion

Can someone explain it to me?
Whatever happened to just taking a picture for what it is, why is it necessary for every photo to go through hours of editing before people want to show it to other people?

Is it just me that loves just looking at photos that havent been edited and the person who took it caught a perfect moment?

sheesh

for film ok. With film some frightfully clever person/group came up with how the colours/tones were to be reproduced. for digital not so, quiet often with digital what you get out is not what you saw when taking it due to limits of the dynamic range that. so its allowed. Editing allows you to add emotional depth and focus to an image that would not be otherwise possible.

Also very few images come out perfect. Are you going to discard an image because its not perfect even though you have the tools to get it there?

there is postprocessing in in film photography too ye know.

finally if you do it right it shouldn't be noticed.:D

Melion

Ill just use one example.

Someone on here put up a picture a while back of a skyline. They had destroyed the original picture, the sky was a ridiculous shade of purple. Yet, people said how brilliant the shot was.

Anybody can get good with photoshop and make rubbish photos look better, thats not photography IMO.

sheesh

not necessarily I personally have taken hundreds of images that photoshop could in no way help and I am fairly comfortable with photoshop

Thecageyone

What's the problem? It's all art far as I'm concerned, whether you think it's photography or not. There is skill involved in post processing.

Also, not everyone over does it. Some processing is required when dealing with RAW files. This is more often enhancing the RAW file, bringing it back to what you shot initially.

Purple sky isn't my cuppa, but, so what someone else loves it? I see it all as art. I find a lot of unprocessed images bland and boring tbh.

Randall Floyd

What ever looks right to you.

davmigil

It's nothing new really. Edweard Muybridge was dropping in skies to his pictures in the 1860s.

I know what you mean though, I sometimes like the one-shot get-it-right in the camera nature of slides (though I do confess to scanning them in and adjusting them in photoshop from time to time :rolleyes:).

Photography comprises many different approaches and diverse aesthetics. Healthy reaction and counter-reaction is part of the dialogue too. Go with your gut feeling and follow your instincts!

magicbastarder

some people like editing, some don't. personally, i find it tedious, and i'd regard any photo i shot which required more than a few minutes work in photoshop (usually just exposure, white balance and shadows in camera raw) as a failure. but that's me - i much, much prefer the taking the photo part of the process to the fiddling in photoshop bit. i'm sure you'll find people for whom the converse applies.

Thecageyone

I like processing. It's like therapy - mostly just tweaking, nothing OTT.

Though, at times, it's a must and can be very tedious. Last night I took shots at a Pole-dancing gig, and the night before at a comedy gig - such is the mad social life I lead ... hehe [both fund raiser events for our wee one, not always so exciting] anyway, on both occasions the lighting was brutal for photos. I didn't want to use flash at either event, because of the obvious - blinding the performers. I ramped the ISO up to 800 [and that is ramping up on an A200] and shot wide as possible with a 50mm f1.7.

They took a lot of fill light/exposure adjustment/brightening in PP, which meant more noise and more cleaning up. they turned out OK in the end, and the performers were happy with them. [shameless plug: you can see them on our www.helpkayleywalk.com web site under 'previous events'] I've seen a few use them as their new Facebook profile images. But the processing was boring and tiring. Copy/paste in LR wasn't cutting it, they all seemed to need individual processing work outs. Bah. Also, LR3 has been slow as a snail for me lately making it even more cumbersome.

But ... when I'm processing my own artsy/playful/random shots it's different. I'm not in any rush, I like to try a few different things in processing with certain images to get the best possible for 'me'. After all, I take pictures first and foremost for my own pleasure. If others happen to like them, all the better.

magicbastarder

longest i ever spent on a shot in PS was a wedding invite shot i did for some friends - they wrote it in sand, which i photographed - but the writing was hard to distinguish with all the footprints in the sand, so i had to photoshop the footprints out.

K_user

I use RAW alot so PP is a requirement.

But in saying that Exposure and Contrast correction, level changes, maybe a bit of Dodging and Burning, is about as far as I take it.

Most of the above is done by any camera set to the JPEG setting and are based on Darkroom techniques.

PP is part of what photography is about, its what photography has always been about. Its just that Digital has made it easier to push the image further and alter it beyond recognition.

Personally I don't have the time to mess around with each and every image I take. I have a set list of adjustments that I make. If the image doesn't work after that then I move on to the next one.

Thecageyone

If I want to skip the processing side, I too will shoot in Jpeg/making sure the WB is best for the scene. I'm often happy enough with images off cam in that case. But since I only discovered RAW early this year, maybe it's the novelty of it? And I like the idea of tweaking it to my own taste, not letting the camera do it for me?

squareballoon

For me an in camera photograph relates as much to the end shot as a sketch does to a completed illustration.

I come from an illustration background (my site) and so when I got my first dslr I approached it in the same way. Maybe if I had studied photography instead of animation I would do things differently but photoshop for me has always been a step towards the end product.

achtungbarry

I'm going to post pretty much the same thing as I posted on the "Anti Processing Brigade" thread a while back.

First of all, I have to say that I love surreal photography. I love surreal art in general. As a result a lot of my own photography has a surreal and often unrealistic feel. I acheive this through a mix of HDR processing and sometimes the use of textures blended with the image.

Now, some people absolutely love this and others absolutely hate it. You should see some of the more negative comments I have rceived. I tend to get a 70/30 positive negative reaction. The negative stuff doesn't really bother me because I like what I do and that's the most important. I like that my stuff doesn't look like the majority. The negative comments used to bother me but with time you gain confidence and begin to not give a sh1t about the knockers. Many seem happy to accept surrealism in painting but not yet in photography..... and everyone is entitled to their opinion. I love Van Gogh's "Night Cafe" in Arles. I love the exaggarated colours, the huge stars, the bright light in the cafe. Of course that looks nothing like the scene that Van Gogh saw but his painting invokes the atmosphere that was there, the way he felt when he was gazing upon the scene. I love this and at least try to do this with my photography, although rarely sucessfully.

To me the beauty of photography or any form of art is the sheer variety of styles and ways of doing things that are out there. I obviously love certain heavily processed images. I love HDR as long as the sliders are not maxed out and there are halos everywhere but some do and that's fine. Live and let live. I also love some more simple photography too. A friend of mine shoots black and white film street photography, barely processed and I love it. Another friend does a lot of textures like me and goes heavy on the processing and I love that too.

The only people I dislike are the dogmatic "my way is the right way" types and everything else is not really "photography". I've come across them here, on flickr and elsewhere. I just ignore them to be honest. They are the same type of people who saidthat HDR is an abomination, that photoshop would ruin photography, that digital photography was not real photography, that colour film was not real photography. They were even the same type of people waving their paintbrushes in anger when cameras were invented shouting that photography could never be art. They tend to fear anything that strays from the norm, anything that is new and different. That something is not to a person's taste, that is fine but to declare that it is "not real photography" or just plain "the wrong way of doing things" is just pure ignorant. Thank goodness that we had artists who challenged the norms and "the right way of doing things". They gave us the Renaissance and Impressionism among other gifts. To think that salons, refused to hang Impressionist paintings beside "real paintings" at the beginning.

My philosophy is if you don' like the heavily processed look, great, everyone is entitled to their opinion but to be dogmatic and say that it is not real "photography" or the "wrong way" of doing things, well that's just pompous. As I said, I love all types of photography, heavily processed and straight from camera. It's all photography. I love the variety.

Just to make it clear that this copied from what I posted a while back and is in no way aimed at anyone in particular in this thread and my critisizms of the dogmatic types is meant in a general overall sense as Bill O Herlihy might say!. Just clarifying before anyone takes offence.

To me, it just comes down to personal taste, some people love barely processed photos, some like me love to push it a bit and go a bit more surreal. That's the beauty of any type of art, the variety. If we were all doing the same thing and following the same "rules" and agreeing with each other all the time, wouldn't photography be awful boring!

Thecageyone

squareballoon wrote: »

For me an in camera photograph relates as much to the end shot as a sketch does to a completed illustration.

I come from an illustration background (my site) and so when I got my first dslr I approached it in the same way. Maybe if I had studied photography instead of animation I would do things differently but photoshop for me has always been a step towards the end product.

I was always the arty type too. I was sketching and cartooning long before taking photos seriously. The artist in us is more concerned with the end result than how it got there. Makes perfect sense.

squareballoon

really well put Barry!

DualBladez

yeah Barry it was!!

stcstc

editing isnt something new that came with digital imagery

its been done for a long time before in film too.

a lot of film images were edited to give the final shot. i dont have an issue with editing.

and hey, like barry says if you dont like it, just look at something else

magicbastarder

the difference between film and digital editing was that you had to be pretty dedicated to do it with film, so it put a lot of the dabblers off, and thus the quality of editing was probably reflected in the dedication of those who did it.

now anyone can go out and get themselves a cracked copy of photoshop and play havoc with reality.

stcstc

i dont really agree

i think people who messed with editing in film could be assimilated to the people who mess with editing in digital

i think to do it well in either medium you need to learn or have some skill

what i was trying to say though was its not something new, its been around like forever. its just become more popular now

Edinduberdeen

"Don't paint [photograph] too much from nature; dream in front of it" - Paul Gauguin
:cool:

Thecageyone

stcstc wrote: »

i dont really agree

i think people who messed with editing in film could be assimilated to the people who mess with editing in digital

i think to do it well in either medium you need to learn or have some skill

what i was trying to say though was its not something new, its been around like forever. its just become more popular now

Completely agree.

magicbastarder

stcstc wrote: »

i think to do it well in either medium you need to learn or have some skill

that's what i was getting at - to do it well, you need skill.
however, because editing takes longer with film, it puts off those without skill. i'm not making a value judgement there; i don't have any moral issues with editing photos (unless they purport to be unedited, obviously).

smelltheglove

Does it really matter?

The majority of people who complain about editing shoot jpeg, the camera is then in charge of editing which means the image is not exactly the same as the scene, be it pumped colours and sharpness or extra contrast.

For raw a small amount of editing is required if you are looking for a photograph but lets be honest, when someone employs a photographer to take a picture for them they want perfection which means yes a bit of skin smoothing is required, a bit of contrast, colour maybe even cloning out a bit of dirt on the dress or whatever, if as a client you employed a photographer to take a picture and they produced you with an unedited jpeg would you be happy?

I have 2 ways of photographing, for myself or for someone else. When I photograph for someone else I will be presenting an image of themselves how they see themselves, i.e. a bride feels amazing on her wedding day which means I need to do everything possible that she comes across that way in the pictures, hence contrast, sharpening, skin smoothing etc. Then I photograph for myself, now when I photograph for myself I want to portray my scene the way I see it, examples, the other night I took pics of Slash, I see him as a rock legend, I photographed him as a rock legend, rather than standing and photographing like the photogs around me I was leaning down, leaning back, ensuring I was looking up at him to give the perception of him being high on a pedestal. This morning I did trash the dress, I love trash the dress and when I do it I use music videos as my inspiration, you know girl running away from a wedding or whatever, so my editing for this would be to make it look edgy, like a hard rock video, although trash the dress involves a bride I photograph it for myself as this is what appeals to the people who book a session.

Like Barry I have come across people saying oh no thats over done, or whatever, but I would rather be different and stand out from the crowd than samey.

Crispin

:mad:

I am not sure there has a great picture (film or digital) taken by a professional that hasn't been edited.

Whether it's a great wedding photo or an award winning National Geographic photo it has taken a great photographer but also top class editing.

Even your average point and shoot digital camera will edit a photo without most people realising it.

Threads discussing the validity of editing in photography are almost as annoying as the "Nikon vs Canon" threads!!!!!! :rolleyes:

p.s. I am grumpy as f*ck today, hangover has still not worn off....

humberklog

There is a quick route to editing film though...do it digitally. When developing my own stuff years ago I really hated playing around with the image. Not through any purist notion but simly because it was a pain in hole trying to pull a slightly wonkily taken pic back towards what the mind thought it saw in the first place.

Being able to get film images onto a cd (with out the cost of print) and having digital software to fool around with has been a god send to me.

Sure there are loads of things that my eye doesn't feel comfortable viewing but that really is horses for courses. The ability to do creative PPing these days is such a fantastic and easily accessable route to fine tuning what you want to express in a picture.

Also @ Melion, while anyone can have an opinion of a anything without actually doing anything in the field they're commenting on I would find it handier to get a handle on where you're coming from if you had either some pics of your own or perhaps more specific examples (and in numbers too) of other peoples work to show where you think photography has gone wrong. The example you give is fairly random and vague and having a quick browse through The Random Thread I don't see too many examples of overly egged shots. Perhaps the badly done ones stand out to you more? But I don't see any evidence that heavily handed textured photos has started to out number gently persuaded ones. While you may have a point and an opinion...I just don't see your maths adding up.

PopeBuckfastXVI

PP is not a magic shortcut, there's no 'make photo awesome' button in photoshop, it's all just part of the process of producing the image you had in your mind when you pressed the shutter release.

I've said this phrase on here before in relation to something else, but it also works in this instance:

If it feels good, do it, if it don't, don't.

smelltheglove

This is irritating me so since I am editing here you go, firstly in camera raw I dropped exposure to -.50 for image 1 so I could use my guy gowan actions to reach image 2 then my extra pp, give it the feel that I wanted and I end up with image 3, one of my last shots of the day. So had I presented my clients with image 1 straight from camera in all likely hood they'd want a refund, many would be happy with 2, this is a standard edit I do and some images will be supplied up to this standard but being a trash the dress and being booked based on my artistic finish the clients are mor elikely to expect image 3 or similar.

magicbastarder

Crispin wrote: »

I am not sure there has a great picture (film or digital) taken by a professional that hasn't been edited.

Whether it's a great wedding photo or an award winning National Geographic photo it has taken a great photographer but also top class editing.

that presupposes the notion that there's no such thing as a photo which doesn't need editing, which is the opposite extreme of what the OP is about.

K_user

magicbastarder wrote: »

that presupposes the notion that there's no such thing as a photo which doesn't need editing, which is the opposite extreme of what the OP is about.

But most, if not all, do!

White Balance, Levels, Contrast, sharpness - these are all taken care of by the camera or by you at the PP stage.

Then how you view the image changes with the medium used. A picture on a PC Screen can be very different to that of a printed image. Even the printers use different techniques. Then there is the question about Matt v's Gloss, because that has an effect too.

Anyone who thinks that a photograph isn't edited from click to print just doesn't get all that goes on.

the_syco

My take on is that sometimes it has to be done.

Took 82 photos last weekend in a castle of one room (could have taken less, but couldn't really see what I was pointing at ). It was a rush job, so I didn't get to adjust the white balance correctly (was getting kicked out of the castle in a few minutes), so when I got home and merged them I could barely see anything. Had to increase the brightness a lot, and mess with the contrast. In the end, I got this. Will go back one of the days, and retake the shots, but I'm happy with what I got after some heave post-processing.

In saying that, some photos don't get edited, but those "perfect shots" are either excellent, or viewed through rose tinted glasses.

As for what you see on your monitor, versus what you print, I remember a while back when I worked in a company that had a special monitor. The monitor was big and expensive, and showed what the end product would look like when printed, as opposed to what you'd see on a "normal" VDU (monitor). Monitors have come a long way since then, so something so drastic is not needed now for the most part, unless you're dealing with large scale print jobs, where you must know that the image is perfect before sending it to print.

charybdis

The problem with this discussion is that we don't have a definition for "editing". People are caught up attacking composite photographs made by people with no taste and others defending "editing" on the basis that a white balance setting is a form of "editing".

Photography is an exclusive art. The act of photographing is literally an act of editing, a true subtractive process. Exposure, framing, focus, all aspects of photography are ways the photographer has to restrict the information available to the viewer. Editing isn't a part of photography, photography is editing.

I realise the discussion isn't really about editing in the sense I'm talking about, but talking about post processing you find distasteful in these terms isn't useful.

magicbastarder

K_user wrote: »

White Balance, Levels, Contrast, sharpness - these are all taken care of by the camera or by you at the PP stage.

i could show you hundreds of slides i've taken where i don't think anything needs doing.

charybdis - might be fair to distinguish between selection and editing.

DeVore

I find the challenge to be capturing what I see in the camera. The less I have to do with photoshop the happier I am.

My personal line is drawn at pixel-pushing in the sense of "healing" brushes and cloning etc.

On the other end of the spectrum I find almost all my pics are improved by a touch of sharpening (because the Canon 400D isnt all that sharp) and a touch of saturation for the same reason.

Mostly thats all I will do and if I do more I will generally say so on the photo description. For my Charleville shots (in sig) I was heavy handed with the contrast and levels because I wanted a slightly burned out look to some of them. That was me trying to find a "style" rather then just snapping holiday shots.

But by and large I prefer a lighter editing touch to the heavily PPed photos (even though I admire them as "art" but just a different kind of art).

In a moment of cognitive dissonance, I also agree with charybdis that in a way photography IS editing.
Film was no different by using varying mixes of development fluids etc. Lets not fool ourselves that any "art" is pure, or a mirror to reality.....

DeV.

K_user

magicbastarder wrote: »

i could show you hundreds of slides i've taken where i don't think anything needs doing.

Creating a slide is a post processing method in itself. And the viewing of the finished transparencies is very different to looking at a printed image.

K_user

DeVore wrote: »

I find the challenge to be capturing what I see in the camera. The less I have to do with photoshop the happier I am.

My personal line is drawn at pixel-pushing in the sense of "healing" brushes and cloning etc.

And for the most part I agree with you. I like to "get it right" in camera too, at least as much as possible. PP'ing is just a few fixes to get the most out of the image. That and I'm far too lazy to be making massive changes to an image

I wouldn't knock "healing brush" or "clone stamp" though. There are times when a great shot is ruined by a bit of rubbish or dirt that you didn't spot on the day. Two seconds work and the problem is solved.

DeVore

Ah yeah, but creating objects in a pic is a big no no for me... I have, once or twice, removed objects from pics because I wanted a simpler pic.

DeV.

magicbastarder

K_user wrote: »

Creating a slide is a post processing method in itself.

i'd usually argue that creating a slide is more processing than post processing. post processing would be what you do *after* you have an initial image.
to compare a standard E6 development with selecting optimum color balance/exposure/shadows/saturation is pushing it, let alone compared to what else photoshop can do.

magicbastarder

btw, the healing brush was a godsend for me, cos most of my work in PS used to be cloning out dust from my scans. the healing brush sped that up no end.

Heebie

I much prefer the color, and the level of detail in the dress, in photo #2. I think the vignetting action appears to have diminished the quality of the image... but the vignette without the drastic change in the color.. and without losing the highlight detail in the dress, would be a killer wedding photo.

smelltheglove wrote: »

This is irritating me so since I am editing here you go, firstly in camera raw I dropped exposure to -.50 for image 1 so I could use my guy gowan actions to reach image 2 then my extra pp, give it the feel that I wanted and I end up with image 3, one of my last shots of the day. So had I presented my clients with image 1 straight from camera in all likely hood they'd want a refund, many would be happy with 2, this is a standard edit I do and some images will be supplied up to this standard but being a trash the dress and being booked based on my artistic finish the clients are mor elikely to expect image 3 or similar.

K_user

magicbastarder wrote: »

i'd usually argue that creating a slide is more processing than post processing. post processing would be what you do *after* you have an initial image.
to compare a standard E6 development with selecting optimum color balance/exposure/shadows/saturation is pushing it, let alone compared to what else photoshop can do.

I can see what you are saying.

But just to be pedantic…A slide isn’t what the image was created on. It isn’t even what the image looks like at time of capture. There is a level of processing to be done in order to make it into a viewable slide. And that processing is a skill, one learned, there are methods and variables involved.

Now I’m all for those that are happy with straight out of the camera shots. But it is my experience that photographs, from Digital cameras in particular, do suffer from contrast problems. Minor tweaks and adjustments improve the images and make them closer to what the photographer intended and how our eyes perceive things. How could that be wrong?

And lets not forget that an awful lot about photography is “cheating”. We use flash and reflectors to fill in those natural shadows. We use ISO to help in dark situations. Zooms to get closer, wide angles to fit more in. Grads and filters to improve lighting conditions and lens hoods to stop flare. And lets not mention DOF - which is basically an optical trick at time of capture.

If we really wanted to photograph something exactly as we see it then most landscapes would be taken in the afternoon, on a cloudy or wet day, they would include the road, the parked car and the industrial estate just to the left of that lonely tree. Wedding photographs would seldom show the bride and groom smiling and alone. And portraits wouldn’t be taken using plain backgrounds.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Whats levels and white balance correction compared to the time honoured initial capture tricks that most photography enthusiasts use on a day to day basis?

johnmcdnl

The thing with digital photography is that when you press the shutter the camera does some internal processing... how good this processing is comes down to the make and model of the camera... therefore all doing post processing is attempting to refine the processing process basically or make improvements as we all know that the human eye is a better judge than a computer sometimes..

charybdis

My point was that "editing" isn't a useful term for what I think we're really discussing. What I think the discussion is really about is people aimlessly manipulating digital files to a point where they feel they're sufficiently different enough from what one might expect them to look like so that they'll superficially seem merit-worthy purely because of the novelty of how they look. In that sense, I wouldn't consider what I think we're trying to discuss "editing", I'd call it "post-processing", particularly that of a heavy-handed or directionless bent.

I should say, I don't think manipulating photographs is inherently bad, I just think it should be done purposefully and methodically. I distinguish between post-processing that is not of a style that I enjoy and what I consider to be bad or lacking in taste. I find that bad or tasteless processing is often characterised by an appearance of indecisiveness and unintentional ambiguity or an attempt at correcting poor decisions at the time of capture, not just a legitimate stylistic choice that I dislike.

Also, I consider using a particular film stock effectively the same thing as taking a digital photograph with the intent of post-processing it in a certain way; the difference is that, with film, the decision is executed before the photograph is captured.

As I said above, I would consider the act of photography a far more accurate definition of "editing" than post-processing. Editing, in this sense, is the refinement, exclusion, and reduction of elements to a coherent form; while much of this is done in-camera, some of this may have to be done is post. The end-to-end production of a photograph is a form of editing, not just what happens in Photoshop.

The trappings of photography are the ways in which information is selectively lost. A camera doesn't faithfully capture what it was pointed at at the time of exposure; even our eyes don't perceive all that was in a scene in a given moment. The art of photographing with a view to capturing something is to select what little of the information it is possible to preserve in order to produce an image with the gestalt of what the photographer wanted to convey.

I understand that art is subjective and everyone isn't going to agree what makes a good photograph, but if we're discussing abstract ideas like this, we really should use appropriate terms.