Do you feel that it is cheating to use Photoshop (or the photo editing software of your choice) to remove elements from your picture or to substantially alter the photo?
Take my photo from today for example http://365project.org/jwlynn64/365/2012-03 , I almost used Photoshop to remove part or all of the branch going through the top left portion of the photo.
Setting aside your opinion about whether that would have made the photo better or not, do you feel that is cheating to alter the photo in post processing?
I'm a little torn myself. I have a thought that a good photographer shouldn't have to do much processing after the fact but then I think why have these tools if you shouldn't use them? (for this discussion, lets ignore HDR processing for now because I love it!)
Torn myself John. Though I wouldn't even consider myself in the amateur level yet, I started this saying I was gonna do every shot natural. But then there were one or two photos that needed something removed or needed a little adjusting to make the photo better. For me, I like to keep it as is as much as possible. But I've seen amazing visually stunning photos that clearly were adjusted. So if it works, it works.
To me photography is a form of art. It's in the eyes of the beholder. You interpret it and mold it into whatever you want, however you have to do it, to reach the creation you are after
"Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (i.e., documentary photography, social documentary photography, street photography or celebrity photography) by complying with a rigid ethical framework which demands that the work is both honest and impartial whilst telling the story in strictly journalistic terms. Photojournalists create pictures that contribute to the news media."
I've seen this description in 5 different sources.
If you are trying to depict something in its true form, illustrate something in its true state, I think you wouldn't want to affect it. If you are photographing as an art form, process away.
Even Ansel Adams altered his photos. Editing is a part of the art. Check out one of the "what would you do" threads. You take one picture, then you can see what everyone would do to it in editing. Sometimes it's better and sometimes it's not.
Does it make the photo "better" artistically? Sure, go ahead and do it....Are you trying to skew a story line and mis lead someone? That's a gray area that I prefer not to go into.....morals and all. But I'm not someone who is using my photos to persuade people one way or the other on an arguement so I don't usually have to go there anyway!
no throughout the history of photography darkroom tricks have been used that resemble pretty much everything you can do in photoshop, the fore front of photography is all about pushing the boundaries of what is possible if you look at photoshop as cheating then you must look at digital images as cheating, and so on and so forth back to the very start. the tools are there to enhance the images you create, if you take a truely bad photograph there is no editing software in the world that can help you make it better :) I say carry on shopping :D
My opinion is, that if the picture isn't interesting in itself, than photoshop won't help it. It's the idea, the creativity, the composition that really matters.
After that, using photoshop isnt anything wrong I think. It just underlines the qualities of the picture, and it still depends on the artist how does he post process him picture. Photoshop seem quite similar to setting the exposure time, or f stop. It's just another phase of taking a picture.
Personally I dont use it, but I dont have anything against it. It really depends on the photographer himself :)
I see it this way. The fact that you are taking a photo is in affect altering the original image, because it was you as the photographer that chose to see what you have before you in that way...
What do I mean by this... You composed the image, you set the camera to a setting to as to blur or not to blur the background, you may of used flash, you change the white balance and you may of adjusted the exposure.
These are all forms of changing what you see before you to suit what you as the photographer want to see. Photoshop is just an extension of that creative process. You can choose to use it or not, just as you can choose to compost the image or not.
As has been stated, images have been manipulated since the dawn of photography.
Pretentious Rant Alert!/
I would argue the mere taking of a photo is an alteration of reality to some extent regardless of lack of manipulation. At times, one could say manipulation is necessary to accurately represent a particular situation. /end Pretentious Rant Alert!
A few forms of photography aside, do what you feel makes the image the best it can be. There are no rules beyond what you can get away with.
No. If you're going to take a picture and not edit it in any shape or form then so be it. That's how you like it. I edit my pictures to a way it appeals to me. And by the way, I'd say digital post-production is an art form by itself. Having an editing software does not guarantee amazing results. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has Photoshop nowadays and if you don't have the eye for it the picture will still turn out to be crappy even after editing.
I agree with @agima. Photoshop is just another step in creating the image you want to share.
I was shocked to hear that one of my favorite Civil War at Gettysburg photographs was manipulated. And this is an iconic photo. The photographer didn't have the light he wanted, so he moved a couple of dead bodies and arranged them to get the feel he wanted to tell the story he wanted to tell.
After that, a little photoshop doesn't even seem worth mentioning.
I feel the magic happens looking through your lens, the alteration is another creative process but wouldn't be achievable if it were not for the capture. I'm new to this form of creativity but already have a liking for the filtered shots I see on here. Is it not just a movement forwards in photography to edit… touch ups or total reconstruction, if you are inclined to think one is okay, then the other must also be okay. I'd say it's just a progression. Some of my favourites don't look real at all.
Film didn't just come out of the camera and instantly become a photo, someone developed it. I think the word "develop" suggest something more active than passive. I loved working in the darkroom! To me it's the second step of the process--first shoot, then develop. We had a lot of discussions in my photography classes about the difference between shooting for a specific result and developing for a specific result. It's merely a matter of personal style. Digital processing is just the modern way of developing your photos. Why is it any less authentic?
@jsw0109 Is it cheating if I only lead it on? I didn't tell the branch that it was my main subject. ;-)
@nomadslens I guess I was thinking of developing as getting exactly what was on the negative. Like if you were having it developed at a one hour photo where it was just run through a machine (Like K-Mart did with my Black and White film when they processed it as if it was C42 color!!!! and I lost all my good Mexico prints! But I digress.... I was just thinking of it as a recipe that you didn't vary from.
Ansel Adams spent hours in the dark room, dodging and burning to print a negative the way he wanted. One of his photos he printed several times, changing how dark certain parts were. There were lots of other processes - sandwiching slides for multiple exposures, etc.
I know that I once had a roll of film printed by a decent lab and really liked one shot. I took the negative to a 1-hour place to have extra copies made - their processing made it look horrible. I figure Photoshop is the current dark-room. And with the exception of photo journalism and things legal, anything goes.
If you stand in one spot and take a picture of the same subject using lenses of different focal lengths, you'll get very different pictures. Walk forwards and take it again and it will again be different. Change the aperture and focus point and you've changed it all again.
I do think that getting the framing and exposure right out of the camera is the best thing - it means that you don't have to spend as much time and effort processing it. But there's no difference to spending hours in the dark room or spending hours in photoshop - just different mediums.
I think it depends on the goal of the photo. Is it just for esthetic purposes or is the image meant to be published in a newspaper? A photo speaks louder than words, but it can also be a big lying bastard ;)
drawing, sketching, painting are additive arts. photography is subtractive. if you have done all you can, but still can not hide something such as power lines, or other man made things, i don't see it as cheating. UNLESS (yeah, gotta throw in an exception in) if someone asks and you tell them it was shot that way, well... that is the only way i can see it cheating. using editing programs can be simply a tool, as long as it is not a crutch if that makes sense.
I think PhotoShop is fine as long as you don't use it as an excuse to be lazy in actually taking the photos. Are you really learning anything if you take a too-dark picture of a tree and say "its ok, I will brighten it up in PhotoShop later"? This can certainly be a problem with amateur photographers, myself included, where I don't bother to learn how to improve the image when taking the shot. There has to be a bit of give and take in it.
@jtrudell What is honest in this way? I recently read an article about a Dutch book on press photography that compares photos like the one Nick Ut took in Vietnam. Everyone knows the image of a girl in flames running towards the camera (find it here ), but Nick Ut *did* edit out another photographer who was in the frame changing his camera film (original photo here:
I see that my post has been cut... Anyway, I was just trying to point out that even in press photography editing is used a lot. You can find the original picture on the Internet, I'm sure. But this editing took place long before Photoshop was around, like @msk1p2 said: even Ansel Adams did it. ;)
I always feel a bit weird doing it... There is such a stigma when everyone discovers something has been photoshopped (but that's normally when someone is showing you their photo of Bigfoot, or whatever) I'm also still very bad at using photo editing software, so I always think it looks obvious and terrible when I try. But, I don't think it's "cheating"
I take photos as a passion, personally I don't like to to do too much editing to my pictures. A bit of colour pop, black and white, adjust the contrast slightly.
When I first started on 365 I thought it really was cheating... then I noticed photos with words like 'SOOC except for a little cropping and darkening' and things like SOOC challenges 'sounding' as if they were a novel idea...I also realised that a lot of photos were altered by the cameras having different lenses/adjustments, or simply the photo being photoshopped into something totally new and exciting!
My view changed completely and I realised I had a way of making my basic photo from my basic camera into something far lovelier / more colourful / brighter / a different view by cropping it. Seeing as I'm doing it for me I decided if I would like to improve it - I would. Only do it if I feel I need to. If you don't like editing ... no worries, don't do it. It's your project!
Your project - your rules. Editing is not cheating, its all creativity and art. We all present things differently, see things differently and interpret things differently. I am still to learn Photoshop but have been using Picnik.
In looking at all the responses, I've become convinced that I didn't really articulate my question that well. In fact, I didn't really know my questions until I read many of your replies. Here goes my real Question....
My questions is based on an assumption that photography is a means to capture something that we can see with our eyes so that other people can see what you saw. A secondary assumption is that this is possible with a camera if you carefully select your aperture and shutter speed.
My questions really boils down to is it cheating to use photo editing software to make the picture look more like what you saw cheating and additionally, is it making us worse photographers?
In reply to your "real" question. I dont think it is cheating to try and convey something you wanted to capture if you feel that you havnt quite got what you wanted. Its all about choice and the level that you shoot at or try to achieve, it doesnt make you a worse photographer. I just take fairly simple photos and if I dont feel that I did the first shot right I just click a couple more. The most I do is some cropping and simple editing in picnik.
Well my first answer still stands but to be more specific-----no.
No camera can capture a scene as you exactly see it, their sensor or film cannot account for changes that our eyes automatically make. Therefore I would say that SOOC is cheating (or at least a form of sloth), you are letting the camera approximate what the scene will look like, not showing others how you saw it. Don't believe me? Put a roll of Fujifilm 400 up against a roll of Kodak 400 in the same camera, same scene etc......develop them according to the manufacturers directions and you will get different colors of the scene from each roll (not neccesarily the same vibrance you saw), not to mention grain (I know, low ASA so reduced grain but still, its' there) variations. If you have the knowledge/tools you can use different types of chemicals and procedures to make each roll look close to or the same as each other and/or also represent what you saw with your eyes......so which is cheating?
I don't think the software is making us worse photographers, I think it is making some photographers worse artists, they rely on the algorithims to do things instead of understanding their craft, they use it as a crutch to prop themselves up in a highly competive world instead of strengthing their base and standing for themselves, maybe even above the crowd.....
@jwlynn64 I think it's like the dishwasher. It makes our lives easier. Everything at this point is continually worked on to make it easier and easier. Eventually we won't need to do anything. We can have chimps do it for us. I don't think it's cheating to use photo shop. I use it for simple things because I don't know the program very well.
I'm not fond of people getting stuck on certain processes. I'm not the biggest fan of HDR (forgive me) and it's okay if I see it now and then. But I don't like to see a dependency on it. I don't think it looks natural. And I prefer natural. Balancing color and contrast, cropping, those basic things I think are part of the creative process.
@brumbe Yep that's what I meant. but you (meaning me) accidentally skip one word and people jump down your throat rather than use their heads and say now why would she bring that instance up to say it exactly opposite? Guess I will make a point to call her out on it and embarrass her. Maybe I will say I saw the opposite of what she said oh five times on the Internets too, to make my point . 5 is a nice number after all. Yeah @beautifulthing
I began this hobby in the darkroom some time ago. I learned to take the best image I could (SOOC), knowing that different manufacturers and different emulsions, developing chemicals and techniques, and cameras gave different results. Then, making the print, dodging, burning and cropping were the essential techniques always used to produce the best print possible. Ansel Adams wrote the bible, using the Zone System to produce what are still the best B&W images to date.
With this in mind, using photoshop and doing the above manipulations, in my mind, is just fine as it is merely a substitute for the darkroom. However when we add elements, totally remove elements, and so on we should be honest and state so. When art comes into play it is usually obvious and the photographer should feel good extending himself.
Frankly it is just good technique to get the best image possible onto the sensor--that is the photographer's "art".
For my opinion, which is an uneducated one as I do not know what photoshop is. A photograph is taken by a photographer but if it is altered in a post-editor to the extent that it becomes an image, well then a graphic designer was responsible in the mix. The photographer has long been removed from the process.
I agree with the majority here - no, not cheating unless you make drastic alterations and present it as untouched. I think that PS, rather than making me lazy about composition, has made me more thoughtful and careful. It is too much work and never really meets with my expectations when I have to clone or remove something distracting in a photo. I agree with reply @docjohn better to get as much right in the box and tweak as little technically as possible. FYI - and I can't speak from experience, but I've heard from a number of sources that publishers in many cases require submissions of untouched photos. I say - do as much as you can in the box first, then tweak as necessary or apply any actions/filters/etc. you need to make the particular statement you're after. I'm all for manipulation of an image for artistic purposes - some absolutely stunning work has come from this.
Well, I think it depends of what you want to prove with your pictures. If you take picture to share a very special moment or a very special point of view, then no, it's definitively not cheating. If you want to prove yourself you're good at postprocessing, it's not cheating either. But if you want to prove yourself you're a good photographer then you might reconsiderate your way of taking pictures.
I think every photographer should start without any postprocessing, just to learn composition & technical basics (shutter speed, aperture, iso, rule of thirds and so on), and then only after that extends his possibilities with postprocesses.
I often think that processing makes a photo worse, especially when It sharpens the focus all over the photo. Some landscapes then cause your eye to wander all over them and not settle - no focal point.
Many times I think 'I'd love to see his view unphotoshopped - I think it would be far better.'
It's only cheating if this is assessed at the end by a high school teacher called Mr Forbes, and we're all assigned our grade between A-E, oh and U for those who didn't finish the 365.
If you were a painter, you would not paint the whole scene. You would be selective, and you would leave out the 'rubbish'. With photography, you cannot always be so selective and therefore have to resort to post-processing edits. Even in the days of film and darkrooms, the photographer exercised judicious use of masking, dodging and burning!
Everyone has a different opinion this. I personally don't think its cheating. The camera doesn't always see what we see and processing will only enhance the photo or ruin it in some cases. This is the digital age so why not go with it...
If you want to be a purist photographer, you wouldn't even be using a digital camera to begin with, nor would you take your "film" anywhere to be developed, you would do it yourself. It all depends on what your idea of the medium is.
I'm really tired of a lot of people questioning whether "insert your photo editing software here" is real photography or not (btw it's not real photography, see above).
It's all just art, a camera is just a medium to capture an idea, photoshop is just another medium to express that idea.
@jwlynn64 Having a camera in your hands on only part of the "Art" of photography. It doesn't matter whether you manipulate the image by the means of lighting, filters, dark rooms or the electronic equivalent its the "Art" of portraying a story to the viewer.
As for the good photographers not doing post processing you wouldn't go a day without being bombarded with thousands of images that are Photoshopped to some degree.
There is no moral decision to be made about using Photoshop or not using it.
You do SOOC or you edit, its that simple.
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"Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (i.e., documentary photography, social documentary photography, street photography or celebrity photography) by complying with a rigid ethical framework which demands that the work is both honest and impartial whilst telling the story in strictly journalistic terms. Photojournalists create pictures that contribute to the news media."
I've seen this description in 5 different sources.
If you are trying to depict something in its true form, illustrate something in its true state, I think you wouldn't want to affect it. If you are photographing as an art form, process away.
After that, using photoshop isnt anything wrong I think. It just underlines the qualities of the picture, and it still depends on the artist how does he post process him picture. Photoshop seem quite similar to setting the exposure time, or f stop. It's just another phase of taking a picture.
Personally I dont use it, but I dont have anything against it. It really depends on the photographer himself :)
Good luck!
What do I mean by this... You composed the image, you set the camera to a setting to as to blur or not to blur the background, you may of used flash, you change the white balance and you may of adjusted the exposure.
These are all forms of changing what you see before you to suit what you as the photographer want to see. Photoshop is just an extension of that creative process. You can choose to use it or not, just as you can choose to compost the image or not.
Pretentious Rant Alert!/
I would argue the mere taking of a photo is an alteration of reality to some extent regardless of lack of manipulation. At times, one could say manipulation is necessary to accurately represent a particular situation. /end Pretentious Rant Alert!
A few forms of photography aside, do what you feel makes the image the best it can be. There are no rules beyond what you can get away with.
I was shocked to hear that one of my favorite Civil War at Gettysburg photographs was manipulated. And this is an iconic photo. The photographer didn't have the light he wanted, so he moved a couple of dead bodies and arranged them to get the feel he wanted to tell the story he wanted to tell.
After that, a little photoshop doesn't even seem worth mentioning.
Thanks for all the input so far. Your beginning to lessen my guilt at my love of editing. ;-)
@nomadslens I guess I was thinking of developing as getting exactly what was on the negative. Like if you were having it developed at a one hour photo where it was just run through a machine (Like K-Mart did with my Black and White film when they processed it as if it was C42 color!!!! and I lost all my good Mexico prints! But I digress.... I was just thinking of it as a recipe that you didn't vary from.
I know that I once had a roll of film printed by a decent lab and really liked one shot. I took the negative to a 1-hour place to have extra copies made - their processing made it look horrible. I figure Photoshop is the current dark-room. And with the exception of photo journalism and things legal, anything goes.
If you stand in one spot and take a picture of the same subject using lenses of different focal lengths, you'll get very different pictures. Walk forwards and take it again and it will again be different. Change the aperture and focus point and you've changed it all again.
I do think that getting the framing and exposure right out of the camera is the best thing - it means that you don't have to spend as much time and effort processing it. But there's no difference to spending hours in the dark room or spending hours in photoshop - just different mediums.
Unless you mislead someone intentionally, like in real estate photography for example.
http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/
My view changed completely and I realised I had a way of making my basic photo from my basic camera into something far lovelier / more colourful / brighter / a different view by cropping it. Seeing as I'm doing it for me I decided if I would like to improve it - I would. Only do it if I feel I need to. If you don't like editing ... no worries, don't do it. It's your project!
My questions is based on an assumption that photography is a means to capture something that we can see with our eyes so that other people can see what you saw. A secondary assumption is that this is possible with a camera if you carefully select your aperture and shutter speed.
My questions really boils down to is it cheating to use photo editing software to make the picture look more like what you saw cheating and additionally, is it making us worse photographers?
No camera can capture a scene as you exactly see it, their sensor or film cannot account for changes that our eyes automatically make. Therefore I would say that SOOC is cheating (or at least a form of sloth), you are letting the camera approximate what the scene will look like, not showing others how you saw it. Don't believe me? Put a roll of Fujifilm 400 up against a roll of Kodak 400 in the same camera, same scene etc......develop them according to the manufacturers directions and you will get different colors of the scene from each roll (not neccesarily the same vibrance you saw), not to mention grain (I know, low ASA so reduced grain but still, its' there) variations. If you have the knowledge/tools you can use different types of chemicals and procedures to make each roll look close to or the same as each other and/or also represent what you saw with your eyes......so which is cheating?
I don't think the software is making us worse photographers, I think it is making some photographers worse artists, they rely on the algorithims to do things instead of understanding their craft, they use it as a crutch to prop themselves up in a highly competive world instead of strengthing their base and standing for themselves, maybe even above the crowd.....
I'm not fond of people getting stuck on certain processes. I'm not the biggest fan of HDR (forgive me) and it's okay if I see it now and then. But I don't like to see a dependency on it. I don't think it looks natural. And I prefer natural. Balancing color and contrast, cropping, those basic things I think are part of the creative process.
With this in mind, using photoshop and doing the above manipulations, in my mind, is just fine as it is merely a substitute for the darkroom. However when we add elements, totally remove elements, and so on we should be honest and state so. When art comes into play it is usually obvious and the photographer should feel good extending himself.
Frankly it is just good technique to get the best image possible onto the sensor--that is the photographer's "art".
I think every photographer should start without any postprocessing, just to learn composition & technical basics (shutter speed, aperture, iso, rule of thirds and so on), and then only after that extends his possibilities with postprocesses.
Many times I think 'I'd love to see his view unphotoshopped - I think it would be far better.'
If that is the case I'm off.
I'm really tired of a lot of people questioning whether "insert your photo editing software here" is real photography or not (btw it's not real photography, see above).
It's all just art, a camera is just a medium to capture an idea, photoshop is just another medium to express that idea.
As for the good photographers not doing post processing you wouldn't go a day without being bombarded with thousands of images that are Photoshopped to some degree.
There is no moral decision to be made about using Photoshop or not using it.
You do SOOC or you edit, its that simple.