retouching (1 Viewer)

[La La]

fuck it, let's talk about retouching. i want to know where people stand on this.

i've come across some streams on flickr that have hundreds of people commenting, loads of testimonials....and half the pictures would be ordinary at best were they not run through the photoshop mill.

seriously, what fucking gives? if you take a bad photo, you've taken a bad photo. would people agree with me that enhancing and retouching pictures to make them look in such a way [that the photographer was clearly incapable of doing so when taking the shot] is just plain old laziness and, dare i say cheating??

i'll be the first to admit that i soemtimes have to increase the saturation in my pics on iPhoto when i use digital, but only because flickr seems to suck the lustre and colour out of them when they are uploaded. (actually, has anyone else had this problem?) and it's cool to be able to see how a pic you've taken in colour would look in black and white.

but seriously, how can a person get better at their craft if they always resort to a computer to spruce up and 'better' their stuff?

i would have thought leave the bad photos be and learn from them. but dont go around taking mediocre photos and then manipulate the crap out of them.

this sounds like a rant, but really im just interested to see people's views on this subject.

 

[the strange guy]

The only thing that should be retouched is a hotty that has let you touch them before.

 

[La La]

zing!

one point for you.

 

[plug]

heheh. my thoughts exactly.

retouching is very useful obviously. but in a creative sense, maybe it is a bit... disingenuous? is that too strong a word? I'm in two minds about it. obviously it shouldn't be a short cut to good photographic technique.

having said that I'm not really non-photographer at all.

what about 'creative cropping'?

 

[La La]

what about 'creative cropping'?

what's that? i googled it but some baby gift site came up.

is that where you crop a photo in photoshop?

 

[Pantone247]

it's all a bit should you use pro-tools and auto tune in recording music. Yes if you are Girls Alound and just want a shiney, glossy, faultless gloss to what you do... or do you want to be Neil Young just capturing the 'truth' in a moment in as pure a way as possible

each has their place I suppose

In saying that I once did a massive 5 hour re-touching job on a certain pop star for the cover of a magazine I was working for, started with covering up some smokers wrinkles around her mouth and before I knew it I was smoothing out the leathery skin between her bossoms. A huge job, but a real education in how far you can go, and a massive shock when you'd compare the original image... yikes!!!

I really enjoyed it btw, I'd love to do more of that

 

[thairock]

I'l preface this with the admission that I'm not a photographer , but the way I see it is , well - first off , If you want to or don't want to touch up your pics , well that's entirely up to you and that's fine.

I've gotta ask though , if one objects to retouching , then they should object to artificial lighting , filters , even staging photos . I mean , this is all manipulating the outcome .

Would your favourite movie have suffered had it not been retouched.
I don't think anyone would argue that , say , O Brother Where Art Thou , only looks how it does because the Coen Brothers were just plain old lazy for not shooting it perfectly in the first place and had to resort to cheating.
I know these are different mediums , but I think the analogy is fair.
Basically, I'm saying what Pantone was saying ...only using a different example.
I guess you can edit to alter something so it is seen how you want it to be seen or not edit it for the very same reason.
It's your own choice , no big deal .

 

[Pantone247]

another time I once took the head off one photo of a chap and stuck it onto the a different photo (from the same shoot) of the same chap

it's absurd really, ad this was with photshop 5 and me not even being that hot with photoshop, but most people couldn't tell the the pix had been altered. I think the general populations default position is that photos are telling the 'truth', so it's much eaier to construct 'fake' images, working on this basis

 

[Scientician 0.8]

seriously, what fucking gives? if you take a bad photo, you've taken a bad photo. would people agree with me that enhancing and retouching pictures to make them look in such a way [that the photographer was clearly incapable of doing so when taking the shot] is just plain old laziness and, dare i say cheating??

Well you can make a bad or mediocre photo better by working on it. I don't think it's laziness or cheating. An artist uses the tools at their disposal or doesn't. Because you don't use filters etc. doesn't mean someone else who uses them and gets good results is. It can take alot of hours practice, and alot of fiddling to retouch a photo well. When I was studying photography our lecturer showed us a photoshopped project a guy had done on peoples' knees. It was amazing, beautiful and I haven't a clue how he did it. I bet he took 10s of hours doing it. I don't see this as cheating.

If photography is meant to be documenting 'reality' I suppose that it's a bad idea retouching.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

Oh yeah, for your consideration,
http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

 

[ann post]

at any rate i find that all equipent colours the original thing, like with mircophones they all have 'character' i.e. they all alter the sound that they are supposed to be picking up. camera's i've found the same, they all all have thier little nuances and add to the image in a way that you have to adjust to to use them. photoshop is definitley not photography, but camera's are definitley not honest either.

 

[RSJ]

I don't think anyone would argue that , say , O Brother Where Art Thou , only looks how it does because the Coen Brothers were just plain old lazy for not shooting it perfectly in the first place and had to resort to cheating.

What? There are any number of AMAZING shots in in oh brother. It's roger deakins for chrissakes! Possibly the best cinematographer working in big budget movies these days. Assassination of jessie james, man who wasn't there, jarhead, the village, shawshank redemption... Man's a legend. STEP OFF!

Inanyways, photoshop retouching is just a digital version of darkroom trickery. I don't do it so much myself, but look at half the album covers of the 60s/70s. At the end of the day, a photograph is only an image what you show someone. If you can take a deadly photograph straight from the camera, deadly. If you can take something mediocre and doctor it around until it's something that's deadly, then more power to you. If you believe photography is art, then whatever process it takes to make the final piece of art is unimportant.

Because you don't use filters etc. doesn't mean someone else who uses them and gets good results is.

Word. You'll find a lot of the old school film dudes who are 100% against photoshop would have about a foot and a half of filters on the front of their lenses, or as someone else said, used holgas/lomos etc that take very ordinary images and make them very interesting. They use filters/obscure cameras, other people use photoshop. End of the day it's how good/interesting the image is that makes all the difference.


I do however reserve the right to change my opinion on this tomorrow when i'm sober. Oh and roger deakins ftw!

 

[CitySickness]

I have a fairly strict personal rule about not retouching portraits (because generally all you end up doing is erasing people's character) or stretching photos, but as for anything else, what's the big deal?

There's no such thing as pure objective photography - the very fact that you're framing an image means you're supplying context that wasn't in the original "scene" - so as long as your retouching is smart and unobtrusive (unless you want it to be obtrusive), then commence au festival.

 

[CitySickness]

another time I once took the head off one photo of a chap and stuck it onto the a different photo (from the same shoot) of the same chap

I remember this incident vividly, but I don't think it involved photos.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

John Heartfield did some very famous photoshoppery, sans photoshop in the 1920s and 1930s.
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/heartfield/

 

[mr pharmacist!!!!1]

i always need a nap afterwards.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

I have no problem straightening or reframing something. Sometimes you catch something interesting but can't frame it right, either because you physically can't get any closer or don't have time. A bit of correcting can isolate the interesting part and filter out the crap.

That said the link of my photoshop stops there and I wouldn't be able to do the manipulation they do to magazine covers even if I wanted to.

 

[thairock]

What? There are any number of AMAZING shots in in oh brother. It's roger deakins for chrissakes! Possibly the best cinematographer working in big budget movies these days. Assassination of jessie james, man who wasn't there, jarhead, the village, shawshank redemption... Man's a legend. STEP OFF!

I think perhaps you misinterpreted my comment .
I'm not knocking Roger Deakins ,indeed ,the opposite .

I'm saying that , it's down to his skills as a dp , including his decisions on grading that make Oh Brother ( and indeed his other movies ) look so amazing .

Just as an aside, Roger takes some beautiful photographs as can be seen on his site . Here is a quote from him ( admittedly out of context ) regarding taking reference shots for his films .

"I make minor adjustments in Photoshop to the images before E-mailing them to the lab."

 

[nooleen]

fuck it, let's talk about retouching. i want to know where people stand on this.

i've come across some streams on flickr that have hundreds of people commenting, loads of testimonials....and half the pictures would be ordinary at best were they not run through the photoshop mill.

seriously, what fucking gives? if you take a bad photo, you've taken a bad photo. would people agree with me that enhancing and retouching pictures to make them look in such a way [that the photographer was clearly incapable of doing so when taking the shot] is just plain old laziness and, dare i say cheating??

i'll be the first to admit that i soemtimes have to increase the saturation in my pics on iPhoto when i use digital, but only because flickr seems to suck the lustre and colour out of them when they are uploaded. (actually, has anyone else had this problem?) and it's cool to be able to see how a pic you've taken in colour would look in black and white.

but seriously, how can a person get better at their craft if they always resort to a computer to spruce up and 'better' their stuff?

i would have thought leave the bad photos be and learn from them. but dont go around taking mediocre photos and then manipulate the crap out of them.

this sounds like a rant, but really im just interested to see people's views on this subject.

i dunno, some pictures on flickr are ridiculously over-processed, but changing the brightness/contrast/saturation after taking the picture isn't so different from adjusting the settings on your camera before taking the picture - except you have the benefit of a much bigger view of the picture to base your judgement on when you post-process.

 

[Space]

I firmly believe the end justifies the means with photographs. A good photo is a good photo end of story. That said it goes without saying that you can't polish a turd...

Photoshop (or any other software) is just another tool available in creating photographs so why not make the most of what you have available. Over processing looks shit but that's just using the tools badly the same as using the camera badly.