Is it cheating?

Hi all,

Newbie here (to the forum as well as photography) and would just like to find out what people's opinion's are on using photoshop (or similar) to better images.

I'm not sure if it's just me, or it's the general consensus out there, but I feel if I didn't take a good photo straight up and then have to alter it in photoshop, for example the contrast, or cropping etc I feel like I'm cheating.

I'm not sure if I'm being too hard on myself for not getting it perfect the first time, or if it is ok to tweak the photo a bit in photoshop.

I understand with the different creative effects that a camera cannot do, but what about if you took the picture and the contrast is not right and you need to fix it up in photoshop later, is it cheating? I feel like I'm less skilled if I have to fix up a photo if I don't get it right straight away.

Or how about today's photographers compared to a photographer 20 or even 50 years ago where they don't have the technology available to them that we do today where they didn't have the backup of "I'll just fix it up in photoshop later". They had to rely on their skill to take photos and not a computer program.

Just wondering what people's thoughts are on the subject, as I am not too sure myself. If I take a photo that is overexposed then fix it up in photoshop I feel like I'm cheating and I should have gotten it right in the first place. Is this just because I'm relativley new to it all? Or is it just the norm?

Thanks in advance for people's thoughts!

Like many other things now days, it's a digital version of an analog past. Is using Quickbooks as apposed to a ledger cheating? (insert five more examplse here) In the hands of an artist, it will still produce art. Personally, I do not think it's cheating.

It isn't cheating.. welcome to the DSLR world. our cameras are designed for us to postprocess them.. It's no different than film photographers entering the darkroom.. Ours is just less expensive and easier.. ninety percent of the photos that you see on here have been processed by the photographers.. and even if you don't process yourself the camera still does a lot of the work for you.. anything short of carving images unto a cavewall has been altered from it's original form.. Photography is like every other kind of art and anything and everything that we bring to the table creatively is still considered photography and still considered art... this is one of my favorite questions and it comes up fairly regularly. My advice to you if you think that you are cheating is to go into any of the photo sharing forums and take a look around... ask some questions, you are going to find that just about everybody processes their shots.. I tend to consider my photos a little more than half done when I take them.. There is still a lot more work before I consider it to be presentable to the public... especially when shooting RAW as opposed to jpeg when your photos aren't quite as sharp or saturated... I consider the postprocess just another step that is involved in creating your compositions..

sari

It's just a form of digitizing your creativity. Obviously in certain situations, you could only do so much. And you should never misrepresent, fully disclose what happened.

Basically whatever you could do in the dark room, you should be able to do in photoshop.

Any world-reknowned photographs taken with a film camera have had hours and hours of PP done. The difference is these days that the hours and hours taken to PP film is replaced and takes 10-20 minutes digitally. hence, a digital darkroom. Or as Adobe put it for their new software: Lightroom

it just depends on how "fake" a picture look, to me, minor alterations is what I strive for, taking the best pictures I can with minor tweaks is for me the better route than taking a whole bunch of pictures (but its really nescessary for panning) and then going back and doing more processing later on. I don't really like spending time fixing pictures so I try not to, with minor work.

The usual newby dilema. If pictures had to come out of the camera perfect without any form of PP then a Sony P&S would be a hell of a lot better camera then the 1Ds2 because it takes crispy, contrasty and well saturated photos, then film photographers would have used polaroid instead of bw/color negatives, then Ansel Adams who used to spend countless hours in the dark room tweaking his shots would have been the worst cheater in the history of photography and the forensic/police photographers should be considered the best.

The truth is that if photography is an art form then the final result and ONLY the final results matter. Art can't come out of the camera - art need the human touch. The subject of the shot is only part of the picture. If the look of the picture has more to do with the camera then the artist then it's the camera we should appreciate, since all captures that come out of a Canon A510 will allways have the same look (same internal PP) and all the shots that come out of a Nikon D70 wil allways have the same Nikon DSLR look.

Take a look at this portfolio http://andrzejdragan.c​om/ and let me know if you can take those shots out of the camera. Perhaps he is just a cheater, not a young, world renowned photographer. Perhaps the fact that he spends hours in photoshop light brushing each pictures makes him less of an artist than you who expect to make a world class photo with just a shutter click.

As long as you don't overcome this silly prejudice you don't deserve anything more then "wow, your camera takes great pictures".

Dragos

As most others have said, PP isn't cheating and, in most if not all cases anything shot with a DSLR will need at least a little PP even if its just to sharpen things up a bit. As a newbie, you can't expect to take endless good shots right out of the box. Thats the beauty of digital you get to see your results right away and can tweak your technique so that you get better much quicker than you generally would with a film camera since it lacks the immediate feedback.

Having said that PP isn't cheating, there is much to be said for taking the time to learn and getting your photographs as close as possible to what you consider perfect before resorting to PP to fix everything. Your goal should be, in my opinion, to realize that you will need to use photshop or something similar for most shots, but to get to a competence level where you're using it minimally to improve already good shots, not to try to rescue bad ones. In the end you can spend endless hours trying to fix a bad shot or invest some time and learn to take good shots so that your usual PP will take only a few minutes per shot, if that.

Post-processing a digital photograph is no more "cheating" than the MANY steps a talented film photographer would have used in the past. The first thing he/she would do is to choose the film to use based on the characteristics of the film and the characteristics of the planned photograph. Next, there often would be a choice to under- or over-expose the film and modify the development process to change the contrast. Then there's the printing process with all the associated tricks - dodging, burning, cropping, contrast control via paper and/or chemistry tricks, etc.

The only difference today is the tools. The result is the same - a talented photographer still creates a great photograph while Joe Blow "takes" a snapshot.

You ideally need a beautifully composed and exposed shot to start with and then stage two is the PP. From applying the right settings and lifting camera to eye through to printing or viewing on screen it is all part of a unified workflow. No cheating involved. A crummy shot will always look crummy however much PP is applied IMO ... sure, you can hide a lot of stuff but even so it will always lack 'life' for me at least.

An artist uses an eraser when sketching, a painter may paint over certain parts of his painting, a sculptor may remove more as he goes on, a potter may make a pot and then add decorations.

Photographers dodge, burn etc etc.

Art is about creativity....and having a message....how you choose to convey that message doesn't matter. Being able to do it well, is the hard part.

Doesn't it depend on the intention of the picture? If it is reporting an action or news story shouldn't it tell the truth? Some manipulation to bring the tonal values into gamut of the final repro process is OK in my book, but that should be all, it isn't the place of the photographer for example to defame someone who is innocent. But I hate showing someone as something better than he is. It is a difficult area.

But if you are creating an image to grace someones wall then I think that you can do much more. An example is: www.christancock.com a mate of mine in Pembrokeshire who is increasingly manipulating his images and selling in conventional art galleries. In his case it is an enhancement of the truth and not defamation.

Basically you have to be true to yourself.

If you are a PJ, yes, you can't do too much. But you still are able to do the basic things you did in a darkroom with film. No cloning though, no HDR,, no alterations of the color.

But even then when you take a photo, you choose to put what's in it. The choice of lens can change it too. From a wide angle in making something distorted to a telephoto making everything compressed.