Is manipulation bad?

FoxT

this comment on another thread got me thinking...

"..you see a lot of photos on the forum here which are visibly manipulated, and if it's visibly manipulated,
i lose interest immediately. it undermines the photograph, because it's advertising itself as not reflecting reality."

( © Magicbastarder.)


I'd be interested in debating this!

The statement raises 2 questions for me...

- Is image manipulation a bad thing? Even when it is obvious?

Certainly there are instances where it produces rubbish, IMO...
Instagram/Instamatic/holga/HDR, generally fall into that category for me.
But cropping/split-toning/compositing/etc can produce excellent results,
even when it is obvious that the photo has been manipulated in some way.



- And, should photos really reflect reality?

I think that depends...

It is a personal goal, for sure. I want to take in-focus, properly exposed, and reasonably well composed photos.


But if you consider photography from a fine art perspective, reflecting reality is not necessarily
a primary goal, or even a goal at all, IMO...

Anybody want to jump in?

Prenderb

Photographers have been manipulating photographs and images since the "art" began, haven't they? Dodging and burning in the darkroom to correct exposure, double exposing for artistic effect, using different coloured filters to affect the light even before it reaches the recording medium - it's nothing new.

My view is, FWIW, that a little manipulation (e.g. exposure, cropping, etc) on a documentary or real world photo is fine and sometimes necessary, and for abstract pieces, sure yeah, manipulation is the way to go. I can sometimes find it hard to enjoy an image which clearly has Sky A and Foreground B or something like that.

As you've hinted, it depends on what the photo is for.

jpb1974

Instamatic/holga/HDR, generally fall into that category for me.

Not sure I'd just totally dismiss a photo because it was taken using Instamatic or a Holga camera.

I'm not sure that taking photos with a Holga camera really falls into the category of processing either... just a crappy plastic lens. Some amazing Holga photos of there.

Instamatic, I don't rule it out either. A good photo can still be a good photo, irrespective of colour manipulation and the like. Instamatic has it's uses... I like it.

FoxT

oops, I meant Instagram....

jpb1974

So did I...

5uspect

I guess you could argue that photography released painting from having to reflect reality. Why should any art form be constrained?

Splinters

I think it depends on the style of photography and what you're looking to achieve with the image.

Im noticing more people over photoshopping their images these days and often its an absolute eye sore. I must admit I do edit practically every image I take but theres a difference between a tasteful edit and just running off some awful looking photoshop filter preset on every image.

As far as reflecting reality, I honestly couldnt give a monkeys how much it looks like it reflects reality. I frequently shoot very high key or very low key type shots with various types of lighting. Even straight out of camera they look highly stylised because of the lighting, and certainly not at all what it might look like through the naked eye if you were watching the shoot....and intentionally so. Its really is very much depending on what you're trying to achieve with the shots.

I cant speak for magicbastarder, but I would guess his issue is more with images that LOOK overly photoshopped as opposed to images that ARE photoshopped.

Splinters

A relevant quote I recently heard from Jeremy Cowart....."increasingly photoshop is changing the game, and at times photoshop is the game".

al28283

Regarding reflecting reality, isn't the simple act of framing a photograph editing?

Mjollnir

This is silly. In digital photography (hell, in analog, for that matter, considering film speed, etc...) ALL photographs are 'manipulated' to some degree.

There are no exceptions. Every single photograph produced has some sort of artifice to it.

Splinters

Of course, but beyond a certain point it can look quite awful.

As with any form of art one persons turd is another persons gold, but personally Im not a fan of the whole over photoshopped, instagram, etc look.

jpb1974

ALL photographs are 'manipulated' to some degree

You'll always get this quote on these type of discussions. Maybe the discussion is about what over-steps the boundaries?

To be honest... this discussion has been had a gazillion times. I really think it's as simple a case as you either like a picture or you don't.

Personally there are pictures I see posted in photography forums that I would consider digital art, not a photo... but it gets a bit ground hog day-ish complaining about it. Been around forums for donkeys years now... you grow up and move on and just enjoy what you like.

I used to find myself irritated when someone's photo title would incorporate the post-processing technique used e.g. "Boats HDR", but nowadays it's just like rain.. it happens and there's not much you can do about it.

dirtyghettokid

i always take pictures for me, and in a way that i like. some i play with in photoshop, some i don't. i do put up pics that are straight off the camera.... but funnily enough, my most popular pictures are the ones that have a moon photoshopped in them.......

when it comes to landscape photography, i get the feeling that the vast majority of people want to see mega processed shots. look at 500px as an example. i'd say very few landscape shots are just straight off the camera (even bracketed shots merged together is still photoshopping to a degree)

it's all different strokes at the end of the day..

magicbastarder

Splinters wrote: »

I cant speak for magicbastarder, but I would guess his issue is more with images that LOOK overly photoshopped as opposed to images that ARE photoshopped.

this is it. with landscape photography, which generally would hope to be a reflection of reality, what turns me off is manipulation where you can see the belt and braces, so to speak - e.g. when you see an obvious gradient just above the horizon, which advertises the fact that the sky has been turboed up in photoshop. often it's fixed by something as simple as selecting a more gentle gradient.

as regards whether obvious manipulation is OK or not - it depends on whether the photo seems to be presenting itself as a reflection on what the eye might have seen, or flaunts its artifice as part of the work itself.

if someone can process a photo up the wazoo, and it still looks natural or realistic to the eye, more power to them. i've no objection to that.

when i said 'if you can see it's manipulated', i meant if you can see the manipulations themselves, it throws up a barrier.

AnCatDubh

FoxT wrote: »

Is manipulation bad?

too narrow a question for such broad subject matter. in other words I don't think the question can be answered universally.

FoxT wrote: »

Is image manipulation a bad thing? Even when it is obvious?

To me, its a genre thing. Some people like punk, some people like pop, some like classical - they are all music.

FoxT wrote: »

And, should photos really reflect reality?

The photographs which I tend to be drawn to (and i'd have to say at the moment) are of a documentary style, but then I get to something like Doisneau's Kiss at the Hotel de Ville and it makes me stop, only to find out after the event that the subjects *may* have been actors (roll on controversary).

I was treated to Doisneau's Paris, which I think is a fantastic volume of his work. But now, as I look at his work - at least in places - I wonder were they actors or did he just brilliantly capture the moment. Undoubtedly more often than not he did, and imho was a genius with a camera, but on occasion i've gotten to wonder about some of the scenes. Oh and yes, I realise there is none of what I say with any foundation other than this is what i've been thinking.

FoxT wrote: »

I want to take in-focus, properly exposed, and reasonably well composed photos.

In-focus, properly exposed, and reasonably well composed photos are a genre. So are soft, spirit of the moment, reactive photographs. Arguably one is only *better* than the other if the resulting visual image is the preferred genre of the recipient. The alternate may have zero interest to the beholder.

Art is subjective as is greatness as is photography. To me, once the foundations are reasonable, there is no right or wrong - there may be popular and not popular, like or dislike, but this may also be irrelevant if you are doing your photography for a specific reason.

pullandbang

The amount of manipulation that photographers could achieve in a darkroom was minimal compared to what even a rookie can do today. Photographers are becoming less concerned about getting it right in the camera as they are using photoshop as a crutch rather than a tool. It's a case of "sure I can fix it in photoshop"!

Like others I abhor overcooked HDR anything - landscapes, urbex, cars or whatever, but thankfully there doesn't seem to be as much of it around as there was a few years back. (Apart from urbex stuff which is totally polluted with bad HDR).

There was a case a couple of years ago of a Reuters (I think) press tog losing his job because he cloned his own shadow out of a shot - and rightly so IMHO. Documentary/reportage photography should be just that - record the scene with no manipulation. If cloning is allowed where does it stop? You expect to believe what you see in a news shot.

Bottom line is there is a fine line between Digital art and Photography and for me lots of images presented as "photographs" have fallen into the Digital Art category.

magicbastarder

FoxT wrote: »

It is a personal goal, for sure. I want to take in-focus, properly exposed, and reasonably well composed photos.

nothing wrong with that; but you also want to take photos which make you pause over them when you're scrolling through the 'random photos' thread.

birdwatchers use an unfortunate term for identifying birds by a 'feel' when they see it - jizz. at the risk of dragging the thread places where threads should dare to tread, you should want your photos to have jizz.

FoxT

ACD, I framed the question in very broad terms to encourage debate...

For me, one point you made was striking, I have learnt something from it...

"In-focus, properly exposed, and reasonably well composed photos are a genre. So are soft, spirit of the moment, reactive photographs. Arguably one is only *better* than the other if the resulting visual image is the preferred genre of the recipient. The alternate may have zero interest to the beholder."

For me that is a new way of looking at it. I'm an engineer by trade ( and also by disposition, I know I have a leaning more toward 'technical goodness' than 'artistic goodness' - and I see that as a weakness when it comes to photography) ...this has given me food for thought. Thank you, sir.

On a separate point - I have seen some comments in the SineadW thread to the effect that (at least some of) Adams negatives were mediocre & would have required very heavy manipulation at the printing stage.
This may well be true, but nevertheless he has produced many beautiful images, and I think that in art, the ends do justify the means (Provided you are not D. Hirst...)


-FoxT

amdgilmore

I don't like extensive manipulation (I think i might hate it, actually), and I try to limit my own editing to cropping, straightening and exposure. With digital I often find myself tweaking the colours a little, but that's mostly because I tend to shoot in raw and worry about the WB later.

I kind of see Photoshop and all its fancy tools as an ER for photos that can't be saved any other way - and even then, my normal reaction would be not to resuscitate them. Other than the occasional dalliance, I don't think of it as a creative tool.

But even though I don't like it, I understand that others don't necessarily feel the same way as I do with regards what a photo is, or what a photo should be. So I don't really object to others photoshopping their pics beyond recognition... as long as they're honest about it. I saw somebody upload one recently that was obviously a composite, but they kiiind of presented it as if it wasn't. That bugged me a little, for some reason.



Now that I think about it, there's a lot of nice photos on my HDD that I reckon nobody will ever see, just because I didn't want to clone out the big white van in the background, or 'shop in a better sky, or clone out the women in order to satisfy the Saudi Arabian market.

ScumLord

Photography along with video is a poor representation of what the eye see's. Driving home the other day the moon was low to the ground, and really yellow, it lit up the clouds with a yellow haze. It would have been next to impossible for me to capture that image without HDR techniques or the best of equipment. Maybe a better photographer could have but I always find pictures just don't do the eye justice, it takes effort to capture the mood.

Human eyes aren't even that good at capturing images, your brain makes up half of what you see on the fly so even what you see and witness with your own eyes is manipulated by your own inbuilt post processing (your mind).

To me if you're trying to recreate the image that a human see's it goes beyond what is physically there, you're recreating the image in your head and no camera ever made can do that. Post processing helps but even then it's still a poor representation of what you experienced at that particular moment.

Promac

pullandbang wrote: »

The amount of manipulation that photographers could achieve in a darkroom was minimal compared to what even a rookie can do today. Photographers are becoming less concerned about getting it right in the camera as they are using photoshop as a crutch rather than a tool. It's a case of "sure I can fix it in photoshop"!

That's crap, to be honest. The whole idea of "getting it right in the camera" is a complete farce (although it's extremely interesting to see the correlation between people with very nice digital cameras and people who believe in this tripe). Snubbing your nose at anything that's not "right in the camera" is like saying all paintings should be straight off the artist's eyeball. If it's not an exact, objective, unmanipulated representation then it's sh1te, right?

In my experience only absolute beginners have the "fix it in post" mentality. Most of us are smart enough to use the whole system to produce images and shoot with the whole system in mind. In exactly the same way that you shoot with the darkroom in mind with film. Unless you're just gonna send your film to a lab - and that's basically just jpeg'ing it. Ansel Adams, one of the founders of the original snobby-tog "right in the camera" club, did more than his fair share of dodging and burning to produce his HDR images (you don't need a digital camera to do HDR). Like someone said - should you be faithful to what the human eye sees or what the camera sees? What about a non-human eye? Should you go out and find a camera that can capture the full spectrum of light and the entire range too just because it's more "faithful" to what's actually there? Of course not!

squareballoon

I'm an illustrator as well as a photographer. I sketch on paper, scan the image and then refine the lines and add colour in Photoshop. At what point to I stop being an Illustrator? Photoshop is just a step towards the end image whether its for illustration or photography. A crappy starter image is only ever going to be a polished turd after photoshop.

amdgilmore

I've heard this argument about HDR being closer to what the human eye/mind perceives on many occasions, but I'm yet to see it in practice.

I don't think I've ever seen a HDR that wasn't instantly identifiable as HDR - and not because of the dynamic range, but because of the tone-mapping artifacts, halos and loss of sharpness. They just don't look right. They don't look like anything any human has ever seen or ever will see in person.

If the HDRs I've seen are supposed to be a realistic estimation of what our brains see - and some of them were indeed presented in this way - then there are some very strange minds out there!

I think the idea of HDR is a good one, and I'm looking forward to the day when the tech is truly ready for market, but it seems like it's almost impossible to create a realistic image using the current crop of HDR software.


(I realise that realism isn't always the goal with HDR, some people just like the look, but that's a question of taste more than anything else)

dirtyghettokid

the problem is that most people think real "HDR" is the overcooked look. they may not see it as overcooked, when it is.
on the software i have, there's two different ways of using bracketed shots - "tone mapping" or "exposure fusion". the latter looking more "natural". you'd need to do a lot of work though, to make it look as close to natural as you think it should look.

ScumLord

amdgilmore wrote: »

I've heard this argument about HDR being closer to what the human eye/mind perceives on many occasions, but I'm yet to see it in practice.

You may have seen it without realising. I've used HDR practically for taking a picture of something on a couch beside a window on a sunny day. You can see what's on the couch without the window being way overexposed.

amdgilmore

ScumLord wrote: »

You may have seen it without realising.

I have my doubts about that. Like I said I've seen quite a few photogs claim they were proponents of realistic HDRs - which in reality were just less offensive than the overcooked ones.

But if you're willing to give a few examples I'm open to checking them out.

(Can be anybody's photos, not necessarily yours).

For those of you using Photomatix et al, why not just use layers in Photoshop? I've always wondered. Editing the exposures as layers seems to produce a more realistic effect - especially if you have moving objects like grass or leaves in the frame. Is it just too time consuming?

dirtyghettokid

amdgilmore wrote: »

For those of you using Photomatix et al, why not just use layers in Photoshop? I've always wondered. Editing the exposures as layers seems to produce a more realistic effect - especially if you have moving objects like grass or leaves in the frame. Is it just too time consuming?

effort. photomatix is fairly quick. photoshop is all manual. it all depends on the picture -- i'd use photoshop the odd time if i am unhappy with photomatix results. i don't use photomatix all that often though.

pullandbang

Promac wrote: »

That's crap, to be honest. The whole idea of "getting it right in the camera" is a complete farce

Are you for real? Are you saying that photographers should not try to get it right in the camera?

Promac

pullandbang wrote: »

Are you for real? Are you saying that photographers should not try to get it right in the camera?

Of course not. I said the whole discussion of getting it right in the camera was a farce. It has little value and it's snobbish - it's up there with the people who say you should only ever take 24 shots when you're out with the camera. To say that you can get any given photograph "right in the camera" is nonsensical. It implies that someone who doesn't edit their photos afterward is more talented than someone who does, even though the requirement to edit is completely dependant on the type of photography you're trying to do.

A lot of us will take photographs in a very specific way for the exact reason that it will be edited later in order to produce a specific image. If I'm shooting a landscape I'll often underexpose so that there's no blown highlights and then bring up whatever part of the histogram needs it afterwards. That doesn't mean the landscape with the levels, colours and white balance chosen afterwards is less of a photograph than a street portrait of some weird lookin old fart that's had nothing done to it afterwards. That's fine if that's all you're into but it's completely different from the landscape work or real estate work or fashion work or food work or car work, etc, etc. The goal is to produce an image that meets the requirements of the shoot, be that the requirements of a client or your own aesthetic.

sineadw

FoxT wrote: »

On a separate point - I have seen some comments in the SineadW thread to the effect that (at least some of) Adams negatives were mediocre & would have required very heavy manipulation at the printing stage.
This may well be true, but nevertheless he has produced many beautiful images, and I think that in art, the ends do justify the means (Provided you are not D. Hirst...)


-FoxT

Just for clarity - what I meant was that the images were manipulated heavily in the darkroom, and that was the result of a 'wow race' between landscape photographers and may not have been necessary. I'm guessing I would have *preferred* the unmanipulated images, and not that they were mediocre.

jonnybangbang

Photography is an art form and art is interpretive.

The photographer/ artist produces the photo/art that they want and like. This does not mean that everyone has to like it. Some people will and some people wont.

ScumLord

Promac wrote: »

A lot of us will take photographs in a very specific way for the exact reason that it will be edited later in order to produce a specific image.

I more or less started with photoshop and then got into photography because of it so I'm always thinking of photoshop when I'm taking photos. Photoshop is just an integral part of the process of making a proper photo in my mind.

magicbastarder

Promac wrote: »

Of course not. I said the whole discussion of getting it right in the camera was a farce. It has little value and it's snobbish - it's up there with the people who say you should only ever take 24 shots when you're out with the camera. To say that you can get any given photograph "right in the camera" is nonsensical. It implies that someone who doesn't edit their photos afterward is more talented than someone who does, even though the requirement to edit is completely dependant on the type of photography you're trying to do.

it's hardly a farce - it's setting yourself a worthwhile goal; that of mastering the moment of capture, rather than using other tools to produce the completed result.
personally, i find using photoshop kinda tedious. i rarely spend more than a few minutes working on a photo; it's the wandering around with a camera for a few hours with nothing else on your mind, which is what i like about photography.

i often use the 'take as few shots as possible' advice, in the 'make life difficult on yourself' way if people (foolishly) ask me for advice. it's more rewarding if you get a good shot, and if you take time, you learn more per shot.

regarding whether someone is more talented if they can get the shot without post processing; if two photographers get equally good shots, one straight off the camera, and one after moderate manipulation in photoshop, i would consider the former to be the more talented photographer.

and of course it's horses for courses too, no-one is going to give a job to a photographer who turns up for a football match shoot with a large format camera with 20 sheets.

AnCatDubh

ScumLord wrote: »

proper photo

sorry in advance, I realise i've quoted rather narrowly, but define a proper photo please?

What a photographer yields may be the artist's canvas but, the two should not be generalised.

magicbastarder

AnCatDubh wrote: »

sorry in advance, I realise i've quoted rather narrowly, but define a proper photo please?

one that's at *least* 8 megapixels.

Promac

magicbastarder wrote: »

it's hardly a farce - it's setting yourself a worthwhile goal; that of mastering the moment of capture, rather than using other tools to produce the completed result.
personally, i find using photoshop kinda tedious. i rarely spend more than a few minutes working on a photo; it's the wandering around with a camera for a few hours with nothing else on your mind, which is what i like about photography.

i often use the 'take as few shots as possible' advice, in the 'make life difficult on yourself' way if people (foolishly) ask me for advice. it's more rewarding if you get a good shot, and if you take time, you learn more per shot.

regarding whether someone is more talented if they can get the shot without post processing; if two photographers get equally good shots, one straight off the camera, and one after moderate manipulation in photoshop, i would consider the former to be the more talented photographer.

and of course it's horses for courses too, no-one is going to give a job to a photographer who turns up for a football match shoot with a large format camera with 20 sheets.

There is no such thing as straight off the camera. Your argument is based on an idea that's almost completely wrong.

magicbastarder

if you want to get ultra legal about it, probably. however, i think you know what i mean.
it's not as if there's no fairly definable continuum as regards processing, because there is no absolute zero point.

Promac

The legal side of it only applies to press photography which the vast majority of photographers aren't concerned with.

Producing a photograph with a digital camera is a 2-part process - capture data via the sensor and then create an image from that data using a computer. You can use the computer that's in the camera or the computer that's in your house. A lot of us prefer the latter because you have more control over the image you produce, you can more accurately reproduce what you saw in your mind's eye when capturing the scene and you can more accurately reproduce the scene that you had in front of you by fine tuning the dynamic range, colour, contrast, sharpness, etc. These are all things that, if you were shooting with film, you'd choose at different times by choosing the type of film, the process for the negative, the settings during enlarging, etc.

So there's no such thing as "getting it right in the camera". You can talk about correctly using the camera to complete that part of the image creation process but the camera on its own can't produce images.

And then there's the other side of it. Producing a photograph for a fashion shoot or a make-up ad or a car magazine requires that the image be processed in photoshop (or similar) to produce effects that are impossible or impractical to produce with a camera alone. This is "Photography" just as much as a guy shooting slides in perfect lighting that will never be scanned or printed.

magicbastarder

you're still seemingly making the argument that simply scanning a neg or putting a jpeg straight from the camera up is equivalent to hours spent poring over the photo in photoshop, as there is some level of processing involved in both. there is. but there is a very practical, obvious difference between them.
i'm not arguing that a scanned neg or jpeg on default settings is some unalterable record of The Truth, just that there is a skill to taking a photo and there is a skill to processing a photo, and they are not necessarily the same thing.

Splinters

You're both right.

In the example of the two photographers who both end up with identical images, one who nailed the shot and the other who made up for it in post processing. Of course they first guy is the better photographer, but thats getting into the area of why people use photoshop in the first place. In that example the second guy is presumably correcting mistakes, under/over exposure, sharpening a soft image etc and in that case yes I do firmly believe they should be getting it as close to "right" in the camera as possible rather expecting to correct afterwards.

But the other side of it that Promac rightly mentioned is for an enahnced reality look, fashion or editorial shoots etc that would be next to impossible to get without post processing. Its worth distinguishing between the two as that side of things is very different then "fixing mistakes".

If you look at some of the heavily processed images by guys like Joey L and Jeremy Cowart, who by their own admission heavily edit their shots afterwards, you'd be very hard pushed to call them a bad photographer because of it.

I remember years ago when I got my first prime (50 1.8) and every single shot I took had a ridiculously shallow DoF and I thought it was amazing. I read a comment (could even have been on this forum) which really made me think, and for me the same applies to post processing. Shallow depth of field can really enhance a picture, but if its a case that its the only appeal of the picture i.e it would be a bad shot without it, then its being misused. I feel the very same way about post processing too.

Farmers reducer

+1

Splinters wrote: »

(cut)
I remember years ago when I got my first prime (50 1.8) and every single shot I took had a ridiculously shallow DoF and I thought it was amazing. I read a comment (could even have been on this forum) which really made me think, and for me the same applies to post processing. Shallow depth of field can really enhance a picture, but if its a case that its the only appeal of the picture i.e it would be a bad shot without it, then its being misused. I feel the very same way about post processing too.

magicbastarder

Splinters wrote: »

Shallow depth of field can really enhance a picture, but if its a case that its the only appeal of the picture i.e it would be a bad shot without it, then its being misused.

i don't think one follows the other; if a shot would be a bad shot without shallow DOF, then it's a good thing to use.
if it's purely a novelty, then yes, it's a bad thing.

ScumLord

AnCatDubh wrote: »

sorry in advance, I realise i've quoted rather narrowly, but define a proper photo please?

I can't.

Promac

magicbastarder wrote: »

you're still seemingly making the argument that simply scanning a neg or putting a jpeg straight from the camera up is equivalent to hours spent poring over the photo in photoshop, as there is some level of processing involved in both. there is. but there is a very practical, obvious difference between them.
i'm not arguing that a scanned neg or jpeg on default settings is some unalterable record of The Truth, just that there is a skill to taking a photo and there is a skill to processing a photo, and they are not necessarily the same thing.

That's not my argument at all. You seem to have totally missed the point in fact. A jpeg straight from the camera is an image that's been processed by the computer in the camera. My point is that the raw file is being processed by software to make it into a proper image - either by you manually or the camera's computer automatically. That does not imply spending hours poring over an image in photoshop but it does imply that no matter what way you do it, the image needs to be processed before it's ready for printing or displaying and "nailing it" will have very little effect on that.

magicbastarder

we can agree to miss each other's points so.

Paulw

There is no right or wrong, good or bad.

I shoot for the papers sometimes, so I know I can only do best basic PP - crop, white balance, brighten/darken.

But, there are plenty of times where I shoot for myself. For prints for my wall. With those, I can edit/manipulate them to my hearts content. Who cares??

It's like photography - it's subjective.

magicbastarder

Paulw wrote: »

There is no right or wrong, good or bad.

but that doesn't make for entertaining debates.