I don't understand

I peruse a ton of photography sites and am continually dumbfounded by the continual berating of non-documentary "Photoshopped" images.
It's almost as if photographers don't understand the concept of digital, "o's and 1's, in-camera processing, and whatnot.

Is the carping solely based on the fact that Photoshop is not a very user-friendly application that has a lengthy learning curve?

I think everyone has their feelings on shopped images. I personally am not a fan of heavily editing an image and I prefer a natural look and feel. But Photoshop can have its place and use. There's definitely a learning curve and I personally think SOME people who berate shopped images are a little envious that they don't have the skills to do the same thing with their images.

If you will forgive the second response to your query being a "stock" answer, I'd like to post a reply I posted in a debate that was going on in this forum some years back that sums up my own feelings on the dichotomy involved here.

from this 2007 thread; https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?p=4057947

Why is it that no one questions or argues why we chose not to let our cameras do all the thinking at the time the photo is taken, but so many chose to question our need to take control after the photo is taken. What is different here?

When shooting, I do not use the "green Box".. I know better than the camera what aperture to chose, what shutter speed, what focus point, what ISO, what overall exposure, be it set manually or with AV/TV and EC,. so naturally I make these decisions.
Truthfully, any photographer worthy of the name would do the same.
Yet all of this stuff can be automated by the camera, we can set it to green and shoot and let the camera decide Aperture, Exposure, Shutter speed, ISO (in some cases) etc..

Yet we rarely if ever see threads knocking us for eschewing these auto controls.
When we do, it's a post of complete and utter naivety, one that comes from ignorance (in the real meaning, not to be insulting) of the benefits of taking control of your shooting situation and equipment.

And yet when it comes to the very next step of the same photography process, that of processing the image, so many can not grasp the need/desire for the same sense of control, for the same total hands on approach to the creative process involved with making the image.

Every step we take from the moment we put the camera into our hands is a step that we take to give ourselves the potential for doing a better job, making a better image than either the automated can, or we could last year, or even "the next guy" can. We strive for perfection.

In my mind, questioning the need/desire for us to have total control of the post processing workflow and adjustments, is just as naive and (sorry again) ignorant as questioning why I would not just allow the camera to shoot a portrait in Green box at f/8 instead of manually shooting open @ f/2

Of course I'm going to set the aperture to get the DOF I want, and would never trust the camera to make a better decision automatically.

Likewise, of course I am going to shoot in RAW and post process the image to my standards, and never trust the camera to make better decisions automatically.

Why does the Macro shooter use manual focus or rails when the lens is an autofocus lens? Because the Macro shooter knows they can set the focus more precisely when set manually. The Macro shooter can do it better.

Just as the Camera is simply NOT CAPABLE of bettering me with it's auto settings, it is likewise NOT CAPABLE of processing an image as well as I can with the tools I have at hand.

None of this should be surprising.
We will never likely see a camera with a green box mode that is superior in it's auto choices to those choices a photographer would make when setting up the shoot.

We will never see a camera with an automatically output file that is superior to the choices made by a studied photographer working on there own images in post.

chauncey wrote in post #17989394
I peruse a ton of photography sites and am continually dumbfounded by the continual berating of non-documentary "Photoshopped" images.
It's almost as if photographers don't understand the concept of digital, "o's and 1's, in-camera processing, and whatnot.

Is the carping solely based on the fact that Photoshop is not a very user-friendly application that has a lengthy learning curve?

Because most people who engage in this ridiculous debate do not understand that image making is a personal exercise and that it typically does not completely occur "in-camera" - especially if one bothers to shoot raw. Ironically, many people who insist on the purity of "in-camera" or "SOOC" images do not realize that the engineers who designed the camera and the software that runs it (or the raw converter that the photographer use to produce their "SOOC" images) have determined the look of their image for them, removing the "purist" photographer from the image-making process completely. However, if the purist photographer chooses this route to express their vision, then I guess it is a priority for them personally, so, okie doke.

The anti-Photoshop dogma is, I guess, meant to imply that one person's image is more "authentic" than another's. Ok - congratulations, the purist photographer wins (whatever they think they won). The precious discussions about getting the light perfect and choosing the perfect aperture or whatever are fine and are all part of being creative and worthy of technical perfection; however, it is only part of the process and it is not the end of the process. If you strive to make it the end of the process, fine with me - have at it! - you will have to accept that you are choosing to let Canon's (or Nikon's or whoever's) engineers finish your work, without your control. If that's how you roll, terrific! I have no problem with that.

On the flip side, passing your image through 10 different pieces of software doesn't make your image any better than anyone else's either. There is a lot of bad image processing that gets displayed all over the place. Like setting up lighting, determining exposure and all of that other stuff, processing your image is a skill and a craft that needs to be learned, practiced and refined.

I think we would all like to develop a workflow where we start with the "best" possible image captured by the camera and define it in post in a way that expresses our creativity, however we choose to do that. "Best" image from the camera means many different things to different people.

kirk

Carpers carp and the manner of processing is a cheap and easy target.

Except in special circumstances like photojournalism, teaching or adherence to contest rules I think nothing much matters except the image itself. I've found processing excellence much easier achieved than the rest of the photographic process.

I have been a photographer for over 40 years, in so much as I have attempted to make more than snapshots with, at that time, a Kodak Instamatic. I had been doing that for a few years before I started to get more serious with photography. Right from the beginning of my interest with photography though it was with the whole processes, exposing the film in the camera, then developing the (Black and White initially) negative, and taking that negative in to the darkroom and turning it into a print. I was about ten years old when I started, and seeing that first print appear on the paper in the dev tray under the red safelight is till with me now I am in my 50's. I eventually moved on and got to the point where I was developing my own E6 process slide film, and printing from them onto Cibachrome paper, some of the most vibrant colour prints you could get back then. Although I really only stuck with a bit of basic dodging and burning during my printmaking, I still took the time to learn about all of the other rather specialist techniques that you could carry out in the darkroom in producing some rather special results, that were pretty far from standard photography. Of course I still also took snap shots at certain events, and I defy anyone to deny that they don't still do this even today. In those instances I would often drop the roll of film that the 1hr process place on the high street, and quickly have a set of prints to share with friends.

Even so back then there were a number of photographers, seen in the letters pages to the photography magazines, since this was pre the WWW, that disparaged anyone who went in to the darkroom and actually worked on their prints to get the optimum results. Get it right in the camera they would say, and "standard" development and printing is all you need, that is real photography. I was never involved in the club scene then, nor now, but I'm sure that the general consensus was that along with the choice of film stock, the exposure was just the start of the photographic process, for those who actually wanted to produce a high standard of work.

Now I still consider that the exposure, and the choices we make when we expose the sensor to light, are only the start of the photographic process, but instead of the developing tank, and enlarger our tools are the RAW processor, and the pixel editing programs that we now use. I also think that the best exposure is one that will give us the optimum starting point for processing the image we had in mind when we pressed the shutter button. It might even be that what we see is actually beyond "photography" and is more about art. I have a classic example of what I mean. I made an exposure of a subject while visiting the RAF Museum in Hendon North London. This is a version that was simply processed in the RAW converter, ready to send to PS It's not really much of a picture.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/f9bE​md

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qg7y​FU

chauncey wrote in post #17989394
I peruse a ton of photography sites and am continually dumbfounded by the continual berating of non-documentary "Photoshopped" images.
It's almost as if photographers don't understand the concept of digital, "o's and 1's, in-camera processing, and whatnot.

Is the carping solely based on the fact that Photoshop is not a very user-friendly application that has a lengthy learning curve?

For me it comes from the often very rigid parameters that are set by those who buy image licensing rights to nature photos.
Many of the publications that I submit photos to have submission guidelines which are very strictly adhered to. Many of the submission guidelines state that they will only accept unedited images. That's right; many magazines and books that use nature photos will not accept an image that has been edited by the photographer. They want unedited image files. So no matter what one may be able to do to an image to "enhance" it, it really doesn't matter when it comes to making sales to these publications.

This very factor has also been responsible for my obsession for images that are very "clean", meaning free of noise grain. This is because, according to the rules of those I am trying to sell my photos to, I am not allowed to do any noise reduction in post processing. The editors are comparing my unedited files with other photographers' unedited files. They will choose the images that are the most technically sound before any post processing is done. If my file has grain that is visible in the dark, out-of-focus parts of the frame, and another photographer's photo is free of grain, they are going to pick the other guy's photo, regardless of whether the noise in mine could be "cleaned up" or not. That's just the way it is.

I can't speak for other photographers and why they disparage photoshopped images. I speak only for myself, and my comments are specific to the genre in which I work; Nature Photography.

I think that those who put out publications that are about nature and science think that their readership expects or assumes that any photos they see in those publications will be representing nature in a way that is pretty close to reality. I think that they are probably right, and hence it makes sense that they would reject photoshop creations. It also makes sense that they would want unedited files; that way, they can make any adjustments themselves with their own in-house editors. By doing it this way, they have more control over the extent to which the photos are manipulated, and they can make sure that the editing that is done does not alter reality to an extent that would violate the trust of their readership.

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Agreed Tom. Fulfilling technical or editorial guidelines or requirements sets boundary conditions on the issue that cannot be changed. In that case, Photoshop is irrelevant and you must submit image files that adhere to whatever guidelines or requirements or constraints your client imposes upon you. Makes total sense.

However, your clients will "Photoshop" (image process) those files for publication to their readership. It is a simple fact of life - the camera does not know what the final output will be and does not see the world like a human, or a reader expecting nature in a way that is pretty close to reality. The extent to which they manipulate the image is obviously, as you point out, in line with the expectations of their readership, etc. both for preserving the "pretty close to reality" factor, as well as the look of the publication, the intended output requirements, etc. It is more efficient for their art people to do this, not someone who is capturing the images and may not be familiar with the process of their publication, the intent of the image, the look of the spread, etc.

"Photoshopping," I think, implies more of a pejorative, negative, fake, overdone manipulation of an image as opposed to the things most people (maybe unknowingly) accept all the time that are the result of Photoshopping.

kirk

Being a hobbyist does have it's advantages in that quantity of images is no longer necessary.

IMHO, when one is interested only in images for their own prints, they do tend to be more
selective in the subjects, perspectives, and post-processing than does the average shooter.
It's that seeking of the journey toward non-existent perfection that draws me.

chauncey wrote in post #17990541
Being a hobbyist does have it's advantages in that quantity of images is no longer necessary.

IMHO, when one is interested only in images for their own prints, they do tend to be more
selective in the subjects, perspectives, and post-processing than does the average shooter.
It's that seeking of the journey toward non-existent perfection that draws me.

That's a good insight, Chauncey. In fact, the selectivity and the seeking of perfection is playing itself out right now in my life. I just got a house several months ago. There are some big, wide, empty walls that I would like to hang prints on.....big prints, like 5 feet by 3 feet. Why have I not gotten the prints yet? Well, it has to do with Photoshop! You see, if I am going to spend hundreds of dollars to get a big print made, then I only want to do so if the image is perfect. I have several images that are close to perfect, but in order to get them exactly the way I want them, there is some Photoshop work that must be done.

So I bought Photoshop (the latest version of Elements). I had been planning to use Photoshop to tweak a few of these images so that I could feel good about having them printed. However, I have been brought to a rude awakening; Photoshop is not for me. Why? Well, the fact is, that learning how to use Photoshop, I have found, requires that my brain go to places that it does not frequent, with regards to focus and concentration.

I have tried over and over again to figure out a few basics, but there is no one to show me, live, in the flesh. So I have to resort to the internet for instructions and tutorials. But to gain anything useful from the instructions and tutorials, I have to get my brain to really focus and concentrate on the information that is being presented....and I just cannot get my brain to do that. I then realized that for almost my entire adult life, I have managed my life in such a way so as to avoid any situation that requires me to think really hard about anything at all. I have avoided jobs that require such a level of thought, and sought out jobs that can be done while daydreaming. Most of my free time is spent watching stuff on Netflix or hanging out and talking with friends or surfing the internet or driving my car around and looking for stuff to photograph. When surfing the internet, as soon as I come across something that requires me to really think (like reading walls of text), I just close it out and move on to something else like looking at photos or something.

So, I am kind of stuck. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on the big prints that I would like to hang in my new home unless the images are "just right". And I know that with some Photoshop work, those images could be just right. And I have the software I need to do the editing work that needs to be done. Yet my own brain and its inability to function at a high level of concentration is preventing me from being able to do the Photoshop work. This makes me wish that Photoshop didn't even exist, because then I would have just been thrilled with the prints the way they are, and would have had them printed and hung where I could enjoy them. Instead, every time I look at the images on my computer, they bother me, because there are things about them that could be improved.

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'Auto' should be called 'Average', a far more honest description of what the camera is having to do, what it normally achieves, and it may hopefully push more people to exploring what their camera can achieve. Imagine spending thousands on a camera to be always told your pictures are average, that would motivate you to get a bit better wouldn't it

Tom, I would suggest that you are selling yourself short...we all have different skill sets.
My history, in a different lifetime, involved putting folks to sleep for surgery, a skill inherent to left-brained folks.
The artistic skills of the right-brainers is totally devoid of my consciousness...someth​ing that aggravates me to death.

The serenity prayer comes to mind...
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #17990597
'Auto' should be called 'Average', a far more honest description of what the camera is having to do, what it normally achieves, and it may hopefully push more people to exploring what their camera can achieve. Imagine spending thousands on a camera to be always told your pictures are average, that would motivate you to get a bit better wouldn't it

No, 'A' stands for 'almost' as in 'amost right', not 'average'.

'Average' connotes 'mediocre' and not 'exceptional'. In reality the 'A' achieves 'almost got it right', as evidenced by the underexposed shots we see so often, where the camera tries to make skin the same tonality as 18% gray. Similarly, in post processing one gets things 'almost right', better than the camera but still not right, most of the time. And getting it right, in camera or during postprocessing, requires an eye and a brain to interpret the photo content correctly.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17990561
So I bought Photoshop (the latest version of Elements). I had been planning to use Photoshop to tweak a few of these images so that I could feel good about having them printed. However, I have been brought to a rude awakening; Photoshop is not for me. Why? Well, the fact is, that learning how to use Photoshop, I have found, requires that my brain go to places that it does not frequent, with regards to focus and concentration.

I have tried over and over again to figure out a few basics, but there is no one to show me, live, in the flesh. So I have to resort to the internet for instructions and tutorials. But to gain anything useful from the instructions and tutorials, I have to get my brain to really focus and concentrate on the information that is being presented....and I just cannot get my brain to do that.

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Have you tried Lightroom? Good compromise between Photoshop and Canon software and far easier to learn than Photoshop.

patrick j wrote in post #17992539
Have you tried Lightroom? Good compromise between Photoshop and Canon software and far easier to learn than Photoshop.

Yes, I have tried it. But my "Photos" program is good for doing that kind of stuff.

Unfortunately, the things I want to do with Photoshop are things that Lightroom and Photos are not capable of.

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