Is photoshop cheating?

[TeddTucker]

amongst pro photographers is photoshop conidered cheating? if someone said "that pciture has beautiful colors" would someone say "he edited those in photoshop" or is understood that photoshop is just a tool to enhance the art?

[blazes816]

im not a pro. I don't even own a camera. but I would think since the poing of photography is to create an image the people will love, how is doing anything cheating?

[EVPohovich]

Photoshop is to Digital Photography what the dark room is to Film Photography. It's just that simple, to me.

[Ask The Geezer]

Photographers have been using filters of all kinds for a hundred years. Special films, chemicals, and just about any other thing you can think of.

Is that cheating?

[robbmcaulay]

Is photoshop cheating?

Hell no! I'm with E on this one. If a photo is bad then no amount of photoshopping will save the day.

Even photoshop can't polish a turd.

[WannaBe_80z]

I think the only people who think photoshop is cheating is the people who can't get it to do what they want and have their image come out how they want it is simple. They are jealous.


I am not so sure Robb, I can think of a few people who could make a turd look polished with Photoshop

[lefteyewilly]

photoshop is considered an important step in post production of digital photography. So, unless you've taken a photo and completely altered it beyond recognition of the original , then it is just a photograph that has had it's best qualities brought out.

Honestly, i agree with geezer, photographers have been doing tricks to photographs for years...it's just now their able to undo thos photographs and reproduce the same effects in much less time.

[aversion]

amongst pro photographers is photoshop conidered cheating? if someone said "that pciture has beautiful colors" would someone say "he edited those in photoshop" or is understood that photoshop is just a tool to enhance the art?

There are many different fields of professional photography, from photo journalism to fine art to fashion. While most of those disciplines have different, or no, limits to what they consider too much manipulation, I doubt any of them are under the illusion that when they click the shutter what they capture, whether it's with digital or analogue, is a completely realistic record of the scene before them.

There are so many variations of film and processing methods that effect the way colours are represented in an image, or the amount of contrast, etc etc. You can take a photograph of the same scene with 12 different kinds of colour film and get 12 images with very different colour features in them. You can take 12 shots with the same film and process those images in 12 different ways to get very different results again.

Every step of photography, from composition to print is an exercise in choices and manipulation.

The advantage in digital photography is that the user needs to be less technically adept to manipulate an image, they don't have to create a physical space filled with equipment, chemicals and clothes pegs to manipulate an image. And what's more, digital users can make corrections, revert images to earlier states, create layers and try a multitude of different techniques that would take a daunting amount of time and expense to replicate in the darkroom. There's really very little that you can do to an image in photoshop that you couldn't do in the darkroom, given enough time and effort.

The same thing happened in the design industry. It used to be that to become a graphic designer you had to have extensive training and access to expensive equipment. These barriers to entry came crashing down with the popularisation of the home computer and applications like photoshop. Nowadays anyone can call themselves a designer, and, while most people who do are generally pretty awful, there are some that rise to the top and display real talent where before they might not have been able. I know from experience that this pissed off a lot of traditional designers, not because these inchoate new media interlopers were necesarily inept but because it all came so easy to them.

I think there's a strong element of this in the photography field now. From the perspective of long time traditional method photographers, schooled in the arcane arts of the darkroom by generations of Leica-touting chemists, it must seem ridiculously easy for digital users to enter the world of 'advanced' photography. How could they *not* feel like something is so very wrong when these digital dilettantes come gate-crashering into their world.

But, as with design, I think we're seeing more and more brilliant photographers of incredible talent emerging because of the ease of entry digital photography provides.

So perhaps you'll hear a particularly embittered analogue photographer complain about someone's digitally enhanced beautiful colours when prompted, but show them an image taken with a saturated film like Velvia, combined with graduated coloured ND filters on the camera and they'll complement the photographer's choices. In reality the extent of the manipulation of the images may be no different, the contrast comes when comparing the ease of applying that manipulation.

I remember watching the documentary War Photographer about the amazing photojournalist James Nachtwey, who was shooting exclusively on film. At one point Nachtwey is preparing some images for a retrospective of his work. Freed from the confines of journalistic image integrity he works with a darkroom expert to bring out the best in his images. They show the process with one particular image, of the top of a boy's head in front of a war torn street (link), and it's amazing how much trouble they go to to dodge and burn parts of the image to just the way he likes it. The darkroom guy must have printed tens of large gallery prints and worked on each one until Nachtwey was happy, starting over from scratch every time. Using photoshop manipulations like these are far far easier, and, depending on the digital source, not necessarily any worse in quality. So what's the fuss?

[WannaBe_80z]

Well said. End of discussion

[a_slosh]

Photoshop is to Digital Photography what the dark room is to Film Photography. It's just that simple, to me.

Saved me typing it EVP.

But I will add that there is a line that can be crossed that wasn't available in the darkroom at which point the work is more digital art - for me it's when there are any artificial elements added in.

[WannaBe_80z]

Take the healing and stamp tool out and it is as close to the dark room as you will get