Who does and who doesn't (post process that is! )

[peterm1]

Sometimes when I tell people that I always post process my photos in Photoshop or equivalent, I get a curious response along the lines.... "Oh......you are cheating." This is always said with a smile but it is always said in a manner that tells me that the people are seriously of this view and at least a little curious about why anyone would want to - as they see it "cheat".

Not only do I do this with my digital shots (where I naturally shoot RAW so processing is something of a no brainer) but also with most film shots that are any good. They are scanned and processed as a matter of course.

Every shot that is worth keeping at least gets the following basic treatment:
- Denoising
- Saturation adjustment
- Contrast adjustment
- Sharpening

In many cases I will also do some extra processing too. In Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (which I have largely switched to from Photoshop for processing as its faster to use and easier to learn) I will adjust the micro contrast using their "clarify" filter. Other top end image processors have similar filters. This increases the clarity of the shot and is especially beneficial for landscapes, especially urban landscapes. And of course things like white balance may need fixing.

Once this foundation work is done, I will then more radically adjust images - converting to black and white or using a cross processing filter or a bleach bypass simulation or some such to change the image.

For what its worth, here are some of my photos on Flickr. Not a single shot has NOT had the above treatment. I am certainly not claiming this to be high art....but hell, it is never the less, my art and I get a buzz out of doing , learning and getting better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8070238...7610362797162/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8070238...7606843567046/

But this set me thinking.

What do others think about my question that I opened with?

Is processing in this manner "cheating"?

Should photos just be in their "native" form. Or are the people who say this just technology "luddites"? I certainly used to more or less agree with them when I shot film exclusively. Now I am convinced otherwise.

I would like to know if I am in the minority. Especially on this forum where there is a more than average number of film shooters.

[Phantomas]

Relying on a type of film, type of chemical to process, type of scanner, scanning software, type of monitor viewing, it's all cheating. So why not cheat all the way and do the basic level and sharpness adjustment? We're already going to hell anyway.
That is unless you do wetprinting only and do not get anywhere near digital workflow, in which case you'd cheat with dodging, burning, chenicals, etc.

[Al Kaplan]

I burn in and dodge, use split filtering, on rare occasions a bit of potassium ferracyanide perhaps. I guess that's post processing.

[sojournerphoto]

Presumably choosing the paper grade/contrast filter and doing anyting sellective, or even adjusting sexposure/dev times also constitute post processing, but of course a neg isn't much more to look at than a raw file.

I do some post on pretty much everything, but then again i have a really strong aversion to cloning in a new sky or any such approach. I've been surprised at how useful Lightroom 2 is for dealing with Kodachromes - the masked sharpening works really nicely to clean up the scana dn the colour noise reduction tidies up colour noise nicely. I tend not to use the luminance as I don' mind the bit of residual texture.

This 1995 Kodachrome shot (from a moving car...) has had a bit of a tidy, but I aimed to keep the character of the chrome in the print (which I think is much nicer than the flckr image)

[Keith]

One thing I've learned to do with my post processing is to do it to a separate duplicate set of files. Quite often I'll get to the end of processing scanned files from a roll of film and realise I've made them worse in many instances ... then frustrated I'll delete the entire mess and start again. I think if I had a wet darkroom I'd cost myself a lot of money in paper and chemicals!

The other thing I've had to learn is to know when to give up on an image and just accept the fact that I shot it badly in the first place and no amount of staring at it on the monitor and trying every trick I know is going to salvage it and turn it into something that will make me happy.

This is really soul destroying when you know you've captured something special ... you got the composition just right ... but technically blew the rest!

[Tuolumne]

People who call post-processing "cheating" are too ignorant of photography to be even accorded an answer.

/T

[John Bragg]

I am in the non postprocessing group. I only wet print and the hard work has been done already with choice of film and developer and establishing my personal exposure index to give a negative that prints easily. I use a multigrade head on my enlarger but 99% of my work is printed straight onto grade 2 1/2 with only the occasional print needing a little more contrast. My prints have a look that I am happy with and the only adjustment needed is when occasionally I change one of the variables such as trying a different film stock. That is a rare occurance since Neopan 400 or Tri-X give me exactly what I need and want.

John.

[bmattock]

There is no such thing as an accurate reproduction of a scene recorded photographically. It is not, no matter what is done to it or how it is recorded, what it was when seen by the eye of the photographer. That moment, that image, is gone for good.

While there are perfectly good reasons not to intentionally introduce more alterations to a photograph, most of them revolve around retaining some semblance of the veracity of the scene. For example, forensic photos. Or news photos. In some cases, even the smallest alterations have resulted in loss of employment of the photographer responsible, and loss of credibility for the news bureau involved.

There is, however, a historical reason why some look askance at manipulated images. I think we have to look back to the misguided 'Group f/64', who felt strongly in favor of 'straight photography'. Images were no longer to be of the pictorialist style previously endorsed by those who wanted photography to be accepted as 'art', but instead were to be as pin-point sharp as possible, exhibit maximum depth-of-field at all times, and not be manipulated in any way other than that necessary to 'restore' the image to the way it originally looked to the photographer (a doomed effort from the start, it seems).

Once people rejected 'pictorialism' and embraced 'straight photography', the stage was set for a later rejection of techniques used electronically.

Another, more recent basis for people rejecting 'photoshopped' images, is that so many of them are done so badly. While there are a lot of experts out there, there are also a lot of people who do horrible things to photographs, which causes hatred and revulsion among all who see their crimes.

There are also those who reject 'photoshopped' images because they are digital tools. To accept them would be to accept digital photography, and that, some people will never do. So this is simply another plank in their anti-digital stance.

I suspect that among the anti-digital people are those who simply don't have the chops - or those who think photoshopping is 'easy' and therefore 'cheating' because they believe that 'good art' should hurt a lot to make, that the pain they go through to create a traditional print is what imbues the work with value, not what the image itself looks like.

Ultimately, I don't care what anyone thinks about photoshopping. I've seen some amazing things, and I've seen some images that were no doubt photoshopped within an inch of their lives and I didn't even know it. I've seen some garbage and I've seen some really good stuff. I am one of those who feel that the ultimate image is what matters, not the road taken to get there.

I'm not good with photoshop (equivalents, I don't have photoshop itself). I do some basics in The GIMP, which works for me. I set levels, crop, and sometimes do some B&W desaturation using channels. I have played with curves, I suck at it, so I don't use that tool. I use unsharp mask, but I tend to think a little goes a long way with that. I sometimes have to straighten a 1 degree tilt to port that I seem to have pretty consistantly. That's about it.

In the end, all I care about is how the finished photo looks.

[OldNick]

While the professional versions of PhotoShop are above my budget, I have used Photoshop Elements for several years, both with scanned images and digital files. When I scanned 50 years of 35mm images, the software helped me clean up deteriorated slides and negatives that I could not have used as they were. My digital images are shot RAW and processed as required. And I am not adverse to cropping, since there are times when an image must be rescued from its surroundings. I agree with others who feel that you do what must be done to present the image that you imagined when you made the exposure.

Jim N.

[Shok]

Lightroom. To edit brightness, contrast, color etc etc.
I find my scans from 35mm are constantly dull and lifeless, yet the prints (if I get them) from the lab are crystal clear.
I can't use photoshop. I just don't have the time to learn a whole bunch of whooha I'd never use.

[mabelsound]

Photography is cheating. If you were real artists, you'd be doing hyperralistic oil paintings, like me.

[ferider]

I do pretty much only what could be done in the dark room, i.e. dodging/burning & contrast/saturation enhancement.

Plus:

- B+W conversion
- perspective correction for wide angles
- sometimes Pano stitching

That's about it.

Roland.

[Andrew Sowerby]

There seems to be a pretty strong consensus here ...

[Nikon Bob]

I am guilty of the sin of post processing and would be too if I was solely analog. I think that people who look down on it have not thought that part through. I am sure Ansel Adams would have loved to do it. There are many examples of his prints of the same scene that look so different from each other because the were printed differently/post processed by him.

Bob

[Bill Harrison]

With all do respect, I think it depends on if you wish to be considered a craftsman/artisan by the analogs or digital tech/artisan by the geeks.... We all stand on the shoulders of others, you digi guys wouldn't exist without the work and experiences gained by us analogs. You're you, I'm me. No foul, no blame. It's all art when it's good. Bill

[whickus]

i make editing decisions while printing, choosing to do so in digital format is no different. the people who consider themselves "purists" because they trust their scanner's auto settings are fooling themselves.

if you want to see the positive of a negative image you must print or scan it, no way around it. through either of those process, there are decisions that need to made regarding the final output. even if you go with no contrast filter, you still have to choose a paper and developer.

the people who consider themselves "purists" only do so because they leave those decisions up to someone/something else and are unaware that those decisions are being made. there is no pure photo.

[Gabriel M.A.]

Originally Posted by peterm1

Sometimes when I tell people that I always post process my photos in Photoshop or equivalent, I get a curious response along the lines.... "Oh......you are cheating."
Is processing in this manner "cheating"?

Should photos just be in their "native" form. Or are the people who say this just technology "luddites"? I certainly used to more or less agree with them when I shot film exclusively. Now I am convinced otherwise.

I would like to know if I am in the minority. Especially on this forum where there is a more than average number of film shooters.

When people drop off their film to be processed at the 1-hour lab, that's "cheating" too.

I think they have come to understand that anything that you do to the photo is "cheating".

To me, "cheating" is manipulation of the image where the content and subject has been substantially changed. Appearance is a different matter.

People who think in convenient, little boxes could not understand the difference between "appearance" and "subject", just as much they couldn't tell the difference between "available light" and "ambient light", or "B&W" and "desaturation".

[shadowfox]

I do not post-process...

'cause my process *includes* tweaking the images to my liking in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Besides, people who cried "it's cheating" most likely have more beef with the artist him/herself than the photos themselves.

[DougFord]

Everyone ‘post-processes’ their images. Whether it’s in camera firmware or setting the black and white levels of scanned film, it’s all ‘post’.
The question is, to what extent do you manipulate the look of the image, after its been captured by your sensor of choice?
There's no wrong answer, though we can each point to an image and say either, not enough or way too much.
Some people are paid vast sums of money for their artistic abilities with regards to post processing, be it wet or digital dark room skills.
Personally, for my scanned B&W film files, I attempt to follow the basic – “if ya over cook it, it defeats its own purpose”

[mojobebop]

i think there ought to be a designation
defining whether a photo was 'printed', analogue,
or digital/photoshopped.
cheating to my mind only occurs when viewing work which
has been altered and is being passed off as a non-altered picture.

[chris000]

I use film and scan and print digitally and I also post process although for the most part this is restricted to dodging, burning, etc. and mild sharpening.

I set out to try to produce good images and, if I succeed, does it matter how I produced them? Do they suddenly become worse images because I tweaked them on a computer?

I don't think so.

[ampguy]

you should keep on doing what you're doing. I use Picasa for some photos, and prefer the look of photos taken without radical post processing.

Originally Posted by peterm1

Sometimes when I tell people that I always post process my photos in Photoshop or equivalent, I get a curious response along the lines.... "Oh......you are cheating." This is always said with a smile but it is always said in a manner that tells me that the people are seriously of this view and at least a little curious about why anyone would want to - as they see it "cheat".

Not only do I do this with my digital shots (where I naturally shoot RAW so processing is something of a no brainer) but also with most film shots that are any good. They are scanned and processed as a matter of course.

Every shot that is worth keeping at least gets the following basic treatment:
- Denoising
- Saturation adjustment
- Contrast adjustment
- Sharpening

In many cases I will also do some extra processing too. In Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (which I have largely switched to from Photoshop for processing as its faster to use and easier to learn) I will adjust the micro contrast using their "clarify" filter. Other top end image processors have similar filters. This increases the clarity of the shot and is especially beneficial for landscapes, especially urban landscapes. And of course things like white balance may need fixing.

Once this foundation work is done, I will then more radically adjust images - converting to black and white or using a cross processing filter or a bleach bypass simulation or some such to change the image.

For what its worth, here are some of my photos on Flickr. Not a single shot has NOT had the above treatment. I am certainly not claiming this to be high art....but hell, it is never the less, my art and I get a buzz out of doing , learning and getting better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8070238...7610362797162/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8070238...7606843567046/

But this set me thinking.

What do others think about my question that I opened with?

Is processing in this manner "cheating"?

Should photos just be in their "native" form. Or are the people who say this just technology "luddites"? I certainly used to more or less agree with them when I shot film exclusively. Now I am convinced otherwise.

I would like to know if I am in the minority. Especially on this forum where there is a more than average number of film shooters.

[morback]

I think this argument stems from the lack of unified consensus as to what photography is and does.

I believe most people think it records reality, or a fragment of it. In this case, photography can only fail, for it is only a grotesquely cropped, magnified and out of context instant recorded on film.

If on the other side you think photography is an expression of one's identity (the photographer's), reflected by the world around and coated on film, then there is no argument about cheating. Who has the right to tell you who you are?

[al1966]

Within certain measures work done in software is just development, its only when you start putting things that were never there in the first place that it becomes cheating. Theres always been "composites" digital has just made it a lot easier for people look at Oscar Reijlander's "Two Ways Of Life" (1857) severe manipulation has always been there.

[JeremyLangford]

Originally Posted by Tuolumne

People who call post-processing "cheating" are too ignorant of photography to be even accorded an answer.

/T

Exactly................