To Photoshop or Not to Photoshop...

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everprentice

Senior Member
TFS. Despite advancements in tools, photography that depicts nature, environment and reality should never welcome composites. Photographs are meant to communicate an idea, message or a story. Imagine going through NatGeo mag and seeing the most awesome shot of a lion chasing down and antelope with the caption "The original image was a lion running through the field and the photographer added the antelope for more visual impact". :p
 
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Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
Photographs are meant to exhibit what the image taker intended, why would I try to interpret anything different. Art or impression is up to the beholder ends up being a mutual agreement of intent. If you like it, it's good.
 
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DraganDL

Senior Member
To photoshop, that is the answer, now. Before, you had to add/deduct a little light by keeping your hands or cardboard masks between the lens of your Paterson Universal Enlarger and a photo paper in a darkroom, to apply some vignetting, to correct the overexposure/underexposure...and/or to place two sheets of developed negative film one onto another in order to produce "sandwich" photograph (focus/HDR/ etc. stacking). Nowadays this is done with pshop... As for the lion "chasing" antelope, the good result should not require any captions (it's like the motto of the literature fiction : believe it - it COULD have happened).
 
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Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
Photoshop like any tool can be overused (the cardboard could be overused), newcomers tend to always overuse, but shoot a wedding and have a bride with a zit, you won't sell many pictures. There are many such circumstances or situations and your job as a photographer is to make folks look good, otherwise you are a photojournalist, not a wedding photographer or portrait photographer. I used a Bogen enlarger, wiff of chemicals now! Clients today have a expectation, the past they didn't know what to expect.
 
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