Thank you for fully clearing that up for me...I was at first confused and almost intimidated by those four letters because i was not sure what it truly ment and if i was using them in the correct manor..i also thought that the picture coming straigt out of the camera ment that there was not post processing at all..But then it was brought to my attention that a photo is manipulated or can be manipulated and processed before you even take it out of your camera! Just Rotating a Photo can greatly change the image...so because i really dont have that much knowledge on this subject i will end it now..But i must say i have been learning so much from reading all of the comments that you all contribute on this site to make my time on here always a Great Learning Experience and im not afraid of post processing annmore..For some reason I always thought of it as cheating...( and in some ways i still do) But once again i Totally believe that Beauty is in the eye or eyes of the beholder ..so what my eyes might see and love may not be the same as others so...It really does not matter to me anymore..I may find a photo that i absolutly love just because it may have some unspoken meaning to me..and others may totally find nothing that stirs them at all....So Whiten the teeth,,,Enhance the colors make it look gritty or hipsta, The list goes on!!.... As long as your Client is happy or yourself with the Outcome..that is really all that matters!! Thanks again Dieter Tracy for the Great Expanation of SOOC!!
Great article - and nice to have a link to refer back to when (even further) threads about it appear on here.
It's become a bit of a minefield mainly because photography, like any other art form, is very much subjective. I often get asked by my friends/family if I photoshop my photos. The truth is, I shoot in jpg and then I'll "picnik" them as much or as little as I think suits the photo (i.e. tweaking the exposure and/or contrast a little). I don't own Photoshop and I don't understand what is meant by curves (on my "to learn" list though), levels or layers - all whilst I'm aware of how much "better" the photographs of people who use these often are.
A question I often ask myself whilst looking at a photo (my own, or others') is "is that photography, or is that art?" And if the answer happens to be the latter, then the next question is "does it really matter?!". Traditionally "artists" have much more flexibility to "do what they want" with a painting/sketch etc whereas photographers were limited to a certain extent (although processing/enhancing was still possible in the darkroom). These days I find the categorising a little more difficult. Where is the line?!
Two people can shoot an identical photo, say of a bird of prey in flight. Both shooting in manual mode. One has perfect settings, focus, framing etc. The other guy has sensible, but not optimal settings, and didn't quite get the focus right, and the framing was a bit iffy. Yet that second guy knows how to use photoshop, and got an amazing result, whilst the first guy shot it in jpg and got what he thought was an ace photo. When those photos are placed side by side and shown to a "lay person"(!) he's likely (but not necessarily) to say that the guy who used photoshop is a better photographer. Is he? Is he really? Or does he just have better IT skills? Or is he just a better "artist"? This is what I'm struggling to get my head around these days!
Slightly off on a tangent, this whole discussion brings me back to a pair of photos I uploaded in November. Both shot in jpg, one left as I found it, the other with increased saturation.
Whilst I was genuinely amazed at the colours I could see in the sky that evening I couldn't help but to bump up the saturation to get (what I thought to be) a more striking result. But having done that, a big part of me regrets doing that because "that's not what the sky actually looked like". I feel a big fat cheat.
Ultimately, what I'd like is for someone to condense your article to a sentence or two that I can say to people who ask me if I photoshop my photos, without making me sound as if I admit to being a big fat cheat (the latter of those two shots above not being a typical Elin shot!)
@lluniau even when we took film in to be developed, the people developing did stuff to the shots. It became a standing joke in my family as to what colour the film processors would turn bluebells into next.
The shots were taken of bluebells (which are blue) in the UK but then developed in South Africa, we ended up with pink bells, lilac bells and purple bells, never got bluebells till the film was processed in the UK.
At least when you control what's done to it, you can choose whether you want pink,purple,lilac or blue bells.
I'm going to go off on a tangent here. I think, that nothing about photography is "natural" or actually represents the world around us. Every photograph is an interpretation. I wrote about this a while back when I posted one of my doll photographs (and was trying to make the doll look "natural" or "alive"... I'm crazy like that) so I'll just copy and paste because I'm a lazy ass. 8P
"Isn't every photograph unnatural? Isn't every photograph, whatever the subject, an unnaturally frozen moment of time? Aren't photographers supposed to think about perspective and lighting, to follow the rule of thirds, to make sure the exposure is just right, to see where more shadow or more highlight is needed, to compose and frame a shot so that anything that interferes with it being an aesthetically pleasing image is not included?"
I don't care if someone uses an expensive DSLR or a point-and-shoot, if he photoshops or not. The end result is the end result, and some people will like and some people will hate it. Saying it's SOOC or HDR or whatever doesn't bother me at all. It does not cause me to lower or raise my expectations. It will not affect the way I react to the photograph. If I think it's beautiful, then it's beautiful to me, I won't change my mind just because I find out later that it's been photoshopped.
Then again, what do I know? I'm just an amateur with no ambition at all of becoming a professional, I have no idea what makes a better photographer. I just know there are photographs I like and I look for them on this site so that I can enjoy them. 8D
Thank you, thank you, thank you, that confirms what I know.
Apart from editing the RAW files, loading them into Photoshop, then applying a heavy crop, altering curves, levels etc. playing with layers and masks, all my photos are SOOC. ;). Hehehe
@lluniau Something along the lines of:
Of course...although PS is just an editing program, kinda like Ansel Adams used dodging and burning to bring out elements of a photo....you could add something about un-natural editing and how you abhor it, kinda like nature and a vacuum.
@myautofocuslife My cousin who is an artist, and I, talked about this recently. She compared photo manipulation to the process an artist goes through when painting a canvas and deciding when it's done or when it needs more work, like more shadow here and there, more texture on a particular element, less color on another and so on. I like to edit my photos and will see about learning Photoshop in the future. That said, it makes me happy when I find that a photo of mine looks better (to my eye) with very little processing than with more. Or maybe I just take bad pictures that are beyond fixing.
@meisen325 "That said, it makes me happy when I find that a photo of mine looks better (to my eye) with very little processing than with more. Or maybe I just take bad pictures that are beyond fixing."
I know what you mean!
It happens to me. Sometimes I would tell myself to do more processing, just to see if it is going to look better. But, most of the time, it turns out worse than what it was with little processing, and then I realize that I can't use that shot after all, processed or not. Because bad photographs can't be saved. *LOL*
Hear! Hear! Great article. I've always believed that post processing is NOT a cardinal sin: you either do it yourself or you can let the camera do it for you. SOOC is probably just another way of saying that the pic has been photoshopped by a micro chip in the camera.
Film was never SOOC, it would be near impossible to conceive the term with film.
Though, this is increasingly irrelevant. As time goes by, the folks who's only choice was film will put the lens cap on the final time. And the majority users of film will be the hipsters, "purists" and artists. The rest will only know digital.
As decisions are made regardless, I want as much control of those decisions as possible. While I appreciate the efforts of the programmers deep in the bowels of Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc., the result will be called "mine" so I will be responsible for as much as I can. @lluniau One should, in my opinion, make the effort to get the best possible exposure, composition and focus possible in camera in any situation. These are some of the most basic tenets of photography.
Regarding " cheating," it is only a cheat if you lie about what it is or took to get. The rest is opinion. And taste.
@lilbudhha Definitely agreeing about film! I'm in my second semester of classes for my photography degree and now that we're doing film work I'm finding out that photographers have always been doing neato things to adjust their images. Dodging, burning, cropping, using filters to alter contrast or color, using and misusing chemicals to interesting effect - many of those fun things you can do in Photoshop are also possible (and often necessary!) in the darkroom.
@lluniau You made the comparison of the two guys shooting birds in flight, one with "perfect" camera settings and one with Photoshop skills. I see your point, but a really good photographer that knows how to use all the settings on his camera will probably want to use the all tools available to make his/her image the very best it can be, including tweaking the image in Photoshop. So in the contest between the two guys the one with the technical skills to use his camera correctly wins. His properly shot AND properly processed photos will look better than someone who had to use loads of post processing to fix a crappy image up to halfway decent.
Great article "Beetle365" :) As a pro for seven years I'm completely fed up with Photoshop becoming a verb and even more sick of people seeing it as a bad thing! Too many people forget that photography is an art form and we don't have to love absolutely everything each other takes or creates. Yes many a shot can be overworked but it's no different to underseasoning in cooking or mixing flavours together that chefs who have gone before us say 'shouldn't' work.
There really shouldn't be a right or wrong when it come to post processing and all photographers should be encouraged to experiment.
After all, look into the origins of post processing if you need encouragement! A cock up with a few chemicals created a style whilst 'incorrect' which is still as trendy as ever!
Thank you for sharing your well written blog my friend :)
Jase (@jasehoad) got further than I did. I stopped reading at the point where it was regarded as an insult to ask someone what kind of camera they use. I just bought my first digital SLR a few months ago. I asked anyone I knew who already owned a DSLR what they had, and why. I still frequently look to see what has been used, out of interest and to develop my knowledge. I already knew that it aint what you got, its how you use it that really counts.
Ok, the sooc thing. Before I came on this site, I never heard of SOOC, and I didn't know much about Photoshop, or all the different kinds of editing you can do. Even now, I look at a photo and am not always sure whether it has been edited or not. I like to know, again, to see what is possible, and to understand how effects might be achieved, out of sheer interest. Sometimes similar effects can be achieved in different ways.
e.g
vs.
I think there is massive skill in using Photoshop well (skill I don't yet possess)
there is also skill in catching a shot that looks amazing without any enhancement at all (working on that one, still a long way to go). I have unfollowed someone who IMO used photoshop to make often dull photos look a bit more exciting (it worked for a little while, but not for long)
So SOOC doesn't have to be a badge of honour, nor an apology, it can just be information, which people can choose to ignore, but some may appreciate, and likewise, editing. It can be good, bad or indifferent. I just am interested to know and appreciate when the info is available to me.
BTW the top (orange/apple pic) is photoshopped, the bottom (unzipped orange) is not.
I think both are brilliant, and am grateful for the photographers telling me what they did.
End of Rant
I read the whole thing and think it's not only very well written but also very true although having said that I still see sooc as exactly that. We all know that there is in camera processing going on and that some cameras do it more/better than others but the photo you get after you press that button is still a sooc photo. I see the term sooc as referring to a photo that has had no post processing edits and I don't see the admission of it as either a badge of honour or an apology but more a statement of fact or information tool for the viewer.
@kjarn --- I agree but why does it matter? Why say SOOC? I've found myself caught up in that also. It's because people are proud they had to do nothing more to get the great photo. Depending on the camera it really means nothing. Some people do type out what editing they did so on that this means about the same on the other end.
@kjarn @dmortega @myautofocuslife
Yes, I went back and read the whole thing, and my rant stands. For exactly the reasons Kathy said, a couple of posts ago.
Dorrena, I throw it back at you. Why not say SOOC? It is information, not bragging. It isn't always possible to tell, and some people like to know. If you aren't interested, just ignore it. Personally I am interested to see what camera people use, and why, whether or not they used editing, what they did, and etc., etc., etc. At the end of the day, I agree with Livia. If I like a photo, I like it, if I don't, I don't. But I do aspire to learn more and all information contributes to this.
I think I saw this as an opportunity to explain that post processing isn't the work of the devil and not a criticism of anyone displaying that their image was SOOC :) Just wondering now if I got the wrong end of the thread?! lol
There is a large sector who believe no image should be SOOC and that basic post such as sharpening should be added to all digital images.....would this constitute a 'photoshopped' image?...just asking :) I post process everything I take as I shoot RAW.....
Hey everybody - just wanted to say thanks for reading my blog and for taking part in this thread! Apart from the tongue-in-cheek headline (couldn't resist it), I'm completely fine with people using or not using SOOC for information purposes, and I certainly take @jenirainbow's perspective on board :) The post is an explainer more than anything else, and hopefully I've made a few people feel better about their workflow and relax about their skill level or approach to editing. 365 is the hardest thing I've done in photography and unfortunately no amount of gear or software will make this particular challenge any easier! It's a great equalizer!
I have to disagree... The way I have my Canon set up, I shoot in both RAW and JPG and have turned as many automatic settings off as the camera will allow.... when I transfer the images from the camera to my computer, I review each photo in both formats. There is NEVER a huge distinction like the one you show here in your blog. There is certainly NEVER light and contrast corrections in the jpg. file. If anything, it is the RAW that always looks better, because it contains more info on LIGHT than the jpg (which is the reason for shooting in both formats in the first place). If I tweak a photo at all, I do so because I didn't take the time when shooting to get the settings just right (or because I shot the subject with the intention of doing HDR). Perhaps I'm using an "inferior" camera that doesn't do all those corrections you talk about (I say this because some people turn their nose up at my Canon), or maybe I actually have a really good camera that allows ME to decide what corrections need to be made, if any. I don't know... but that's my two cents.
I'm going to throw a couple more cents in here....it seems the people who are bent out of shape over the term SOOC are praising this article as a means to justify using Photoshop to get professional looking photos and falsely claiming all photos are corrected by the camera itself. They don't have to be corrected by the camera. Sure, if you shoot in auto all the time the camera makes all kinds of adjustments and tweaks, but you CAN control what tweaks are done if you really go through the menu on the camera and set up your camera so that when in manual mode, it is truly MANUAL (or at least you can on my camera... I know because I took a great deal of time to set it up that way). I do have to complain about the people that shoot for money and when you look at the un-photoshopped photos and the ones they ultimately charge the customer for, you can tell the person is NOT a good photographer, but a good PROCESSOR. As such, they should not call themselves professional photographers, they should call themselves professional photo editors IMHO. Cropping and editing can make someone that knows nothing about photography appear to be a great photographer, but its an illusion. Does this make me anti Photoshop? Not at all, but if that's what makes you seem so talented, I'm going to call you an artist or photo editor, I won't call you a photographer..... I can't help but get caught up in semantics.
"As a photographer, when you reach a certain level, people start to ask you what kind of camera you use. As one friend likes to put it, this is about as insulting as asking a chef what kind of oven they used to cook the food, but I never mind because most people have never played with a serious camera and seen what truly crap photos you can take with one."
Very interesting discussion... in some respects, i wonder if photography is a bit like writing...
with some teaching and practice, most anyone can learn to write... there are many different types of writing, for many different purposes... one might write letters, scholarly papers, short stories, novels, poetry, news articles, plain language explanations of complex topics, technical manuals...
many can become quite skilled at using the written word... however, it is likely that, at least to a certain degree, artistic talent is something one is born with - not something that can be readily acquired... there are tools that can help one write better, but they are not a substitute for artistry...
and ultimately, views on writing can be quite subjective... not everyone likes tolstoy or the bard...
???
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ok... silly moment over...
It's become a bit of a minefield mainly because photography, like any other art form, is very much subjective. I often get asked by my friends/family if I photoshop my photos. The truth is, I shoot in jpg and then I'll "picnik" them as much or as little as I think suits the photo (i.e. tweaking the exposure and/or contrast a little). I don't own Photoshop and I don't understand what is meant by curves (on my "to learn" list though), levels or layers - all whilst I'm aware of how much "better" the photographs of people who use these often are.
A question I often ask myself whilst looking at a photo (my own, or others') is "is that photography, or is that art?" And if the answer happens to be the latter, then the next question is "does it really matter?!". Traditionally "artists" have much more flexibility to "do what they want" with a painting/sketch etc whereas photographers were limited to a certain extent (although processing/enhancing was still possible in the darkroom). These days I find the categorising a little more difficult. Where is the line?!
Two people can shoot an identical photo, say of a bird of prey in flight. Both shooting in manual mode. One has perfect settings, focus, framing etc. The other guy has sensible, but not optimal settings, and didn't quite get the focus right, and the framing was a bit iffy. Yet that second guy knows how to use photoshop, and got an amazing result, whilst the first guy shot it in jpg and got what he thought was an ace photo. When those photos are placed side by side and shown to a "lay person"(!) he's likely (but not necessarily) to say that the guy who used photoshop is a better photographer. Is he? Is he really? Or does he just have better IT skills? Or is he just a better "artist"? This is what I'm struggling to get my head around these days!
Slightly off on a tangent, this whole discussion brings me back to a pair of photos I uploaded in November. Both shot in jpg, one left as I found it, the other with increased saturation.
Whilst I was genuinely amazed at the colours I could see in the sky that evening I couldn't help but to bump up the saturation to get (what I thought to be) a more striking result. But having done that, a big part of me regrets doing that because "that's not what the sky actually looked like". I feel a big fat cheat.
Ultimately, what I'd like is for someone to condense your article to a sentence or two that I can say to people who ask me if I photoshop my photos, without making me sound as if I admit to being a big fat cheat (the latter of those two shots above not being a typical Elin shot!)
The shots were taken of bluebells (which are blue) in the UK but then developed in South Africa, we ended up with pink bells, lilac bells and purple bells, never got bluebells till the film was processed in the UK.
At least when you control what's done to it, you can choose whether you want pink,purple,lilac or blue bells.
I'm going to go off on a tangent here. I think, that nothing about photography is "natural" or actually represents the world around us. Every photograph is an interpretation. I wrote about this a while back when I posted one of my doll photographs (and was trying to make the doll look "natural" or "alive"... I'm crazy like that) so I'll just copy and paste because I'm a lazy ass. 8P
"Isn't every photograph unnatural? Isn't every photograph, whatever the subject, an unnaturally frozen moment of time? Aren't photographers supposed to think about perspective and lighting, to follow the rule of thirds, to make sure the exposure is just right, to see where more shadow or more highlight is needed, to compose and frame a shot so that anything that interferes with it being an aesthetically pleasing image is not included?"
I don't care if someone uses an expensive DSLR or a point-and-shoot, if he photoshops or not. The end result is the end result, and some people will like and some people will hate it. Saying it's SOOC or HDR or whatever doesn't bother me at all. It does not cause me to lower or raise my expectations. It will not affect the way I react to the photograph. If I think it's beautiful, then it's beautiful to me, I won't change my mind just because I find out later that it's been photoshopped.
Then again, what do I know? I'm just an amateur with no ambition at all of becoming a professional, I have no idea what makes a better photographer. I just know there are photographs I like and I look for them on this site so that I can enjoy them. 8D
Apart from editing the RAW files, loading them into Photoshop, then applying a heavy crop, altering curves, levels etc. playing with layers and masks, all my photos are SOOC. ;). Hehehe
Of course...although PS is just an editing program, kinda like Ansel Adams used dodging and burning to bring out elements of a photo....you could add something about un-natural editing and how you abhor it, kinda like nature and a vacuum.
I know what you mean!
It happens to me. Sometimes I would tell myself to do more processing, just to see if it is going to look better. But, most of the time, it turns out worse than what it was with little processing, and then I realize that I can't use that shot after all, processed or not. Because bad photographs can't be saved. *LOL*
Though, this is increasingly irrelevant. As time goes by, the folks who's only choice was film will put the lens cap on the final time. And the majority users of film will be the hipsters, "purists" and artists. The rest will only know digital.
As decisions are made regardless, I want as much control of those decisions as possible. While I appreciate the efforts of the programmers deep in the bowels of Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc., the result will be called "mine" so I will be responsible for as much as I can.
@lluniau One should, in my opinion, make the effort to get the best possible exposure, composition and focus possible in camera in any situation. These are some of the most basic tenets of photography.
Regarding " cheating," it is only a cheat if you lie about what it is or took to get. The rest is opinion. And taste.
@lluniau You made the comparison of the two guys shooting birds in flight, one with "perfect" camera settings and one with Photoshop skills. I see your point, but a really good photographer that knows how to use all the settings on his camera will probably want to use the all tools available to make his/her image the very best it can be, including tweaking the image in Photoshop. So in the contest between the two guys the one with the technical skills to use his camera correctly wins. His properly shot AND properly processed photos will look better than someone who had to use loads of post processing to fix a crappy image up to halfway decent.
There really shouldn't be a right or wrong when it come to post processing and all photographers should be encouraged to experiment.
After all, look into the origins of post processing if you need encouragement! A cock up with a few chemicals created a style whilst 'incorrect' which is still as trendy as ever!
Thank you for sharing your well written blog my friend :)
Ok, the sooc thing. Before I came on this site, I never heard of SOOC, and I didn't know much about Photoshop, or all the different kinds of editing you can do. Even now, I look at a photo and am not always sure whether it has been edited or not. I like to know, again, to see what is possible, and to understand how effects might be achieved, out of sheer interest. Sometimes similar effects can be achieved in different ways.
e.g
vs.
I think there is massive skill in using Photoshop well (skill I don't yet possess)
there is also skill in catching a shot that looks amazing without any enhancement at all (working on that one, still a long way to go). I have unfollowed someone who IMO used photoshop to make often dull photos look a bit more exciting (it worked for a little while, but not for long)
So SOOC doesn't have to be a badge of honour, nor an apology, it can just be information, which people can choose to ignore, but some may appreciate, and likewise, editing. It can be good, bad or indifferent. I just am interested to know and appreciate when the info is available to me.
BTW the top (orange/apple pic) is photoshopped, the bottom (unzipped orange) is not.
I think both are brilliant, and am grateful for the photographers telling me what they did.
End of Rant
@dmortega
@myautofocuslife
Yes, I went back and read the whole thing, and my rant stands. For exactly the reasons Kathy said, a couple of posts ago.
Dorrena, I throw it back at you. Why not say SOOC? It is information, not bragging. It isn't always possible to tell, and some people like to know. If you aren't interested, just ignore it. Personally I am interested to see what camera people use, and why, whether or not they used editing, what they did, and etc., etc., etc. At the end of the day, I agree with Livia. If I like a photo, I like it, if I don't, I don't. But I do aspire to learn more and all information contributes to this.
There is a large sector who believe no image should be SOOC and that basic post such as sharpening should be added to all digital images.....would this constitute a 'photoshopped' image?...just asking :) I post process everything I take as I shoot RAW.....
wow. hit the nail on the head.
with some teaching and practice, most anyone can learn to write... there are many different types of writing, for many different purposes... one might write letters, scholarly papers, short stories, novels, poetry, news articles, plain language explanations of complex topics, technical manuals...
many can become quite skilled at using the written word... however, it is likely that, at least to a certain degree, artistic talent is something one is born with - not something that can be readily acquired... there are tools that can help one write better, but they are not a substitute for artistry...
and ultimately, views on writing can be quite subjective... not everyone likes tolstoy or the bard...
???