do u agree ps(photoshop) yr photo is very important?

[espion]

is PS very important?

well lets put it another way: in film photography, do you agree the darkroom is very important?

also in film photography you can take the pics and send it to a lab and take whatever the lab does for you - for good or bad. correspondingly for digital you snap and leave the processing to the camera processor (onboard or off board) - again for good or bad.

its really up to you to have full control or not. Again it can be a good or a bad thing - it depends in part what you do when you have control, and whether you know how to control, etc. But it is also certain in film it was prohibitively expensive to have full control.

You can still think as in film days, and instead of arguing over Fuji or Kodak film, you argue, swear and fight over which camera has a better algorithms (or more likely just camera brands as algorithms are mysterious unfathomable black boxes for most, just as film chemistry was and is).

Or you can put on a new thinking paradigm - namely the freedom and total control that digital gives you - and instead of arguing over algorithms - or camera brands - learn to use, harness, exploit, develop new ways of making pcitures, even those impossible in traditional photography, and redefining photography in the process, and unleash your creativity in ways novel, provocative and exciting, and never ever posssible. And then you shoot - and process - in a manner most appropriate for your style, experiments, aptitudes, etc.

So really its your choice.

 

[cjl]

Personally, I believe PS-ing your photos is important

Not all of us owns a camera that can really capture the same duplicates of wat your eyes see. Even with the most advanced cam one can lay their hands on, it may not satisfy the user's main objective image in the user's mind. Digicams are not perfect after all. The contrast, brightness, colours, WB etc. U name it, it can go wrong.

Secondly, humans are not perfect. At times, we aint fast enough too. Therefore we dun get our desired image. Thats why PS comes in

On the other hand, using PS to manipulated photos to get finanical returns is really a no-no.

 

[night86mare]

Yes, but composition and technique are equally important.

Let's just put it this way; a good chicken dish still needs garnishings and all sorts of seasoning, additions to make it superb.

In a way, a non-processed photo is like a boiled top-end kampung chicken. It may taste nice, but it will never taste as nice as if you did something more.

On the other hand? A rotten chicken will never taste nice no matter how much soya sauce or what-not you add to it.

 

[xziredmp]

can quality be given a percentage ? can the amount of ps be given a percentage ?

can art be graded ?






if thats that case.. i am shooting 100% quality, and 100% photoshop. so how ? my boss have to fire me like that because i need to photoshop my images.

 

[cjl]

Yes, but composition and technique are equally important.

Let's just put it this way; a good chicken dish still needs garnishings and all sorts of seasoning, additions to make it superb.

In a way, a non-processed photo is like a boiled top-end kampung chicken. It may taste nice, but it will never taste as nice as if you did something more.

On the other hand? A rotten chicken will never taste nice no matter how much soya sauce or what-not you add to it.

I agree composition and technique still play a big part in photo taking.

What I am trying to portray is that, most of the time we know wat our cams cant do - e.g. for my Panasonic FZ50, the DOF is kinda sucky. So I either avoid taking photos requiring DOF or have the final image in mind, take the photo as it is and do the editing in PS.

 

[night86mare]

I agree composition and technique still play a big part in photo taking.

What I am trying to portray is that, most of the time we know wat our cams cant do - e.g. for my Panasonic FZ50, the DOF is kinda sucky. So I either avoid taking photos requiring DOF or have the final image in mind, take the photo as it is and do the editing in PS.

? Didn't really read the previous messages, just responding to thread topic.

But yes, every camera has its flaws and strengths, in the end it's still the user. Darkroom is almost always a must, whether it's digital or chemicals. The only exception that I can think of is photojournalism, perhaps, where there is a very thin line of tolerance for editing of photos , but that's a job and there are possibly duties to the public with regards to realism.

If we insist that PS is totally out of bounds for anyone else, then hrm, we can extend it to not using flash. It's after all, artificial lighting, and you should stick to your noisy ISO 3200 settings. :heart:

 

[Patryk]

yes, it is important. improving aesthetics and even altering compositions through digital post-processing can a make a great image into a wow! image.

 

[nigel84]

If many of us could say this pic is overly PP, then i guess this statment itself had made itself clear... I always believed that PP is very very important in regards to after viewing the pic to urself and u wan to show others what u had taken... N tts when PP actually does come in. A simple crop is already considered PP, a little tilt here and there oso considered PP. A little tweak of the pic colours saturation oso PP. it seems like even converting from RAW image to jpg oso PP... I do say that PP is indispensible, but we should always hold the image of what our final frame should end up in our mind, and when we take the pic, make it resemble as close to what we wan it to be. And when we PP, and subtle tweaks to it.

 

[espion]

I think we must not think "post processing" to be an alien, non essential, "cheating" part of image capture. But rather it is an integral sine qua non part of the TWO PART process of image creation, namely data capture and data interpretation, and it applies equally and without exceptions be it film or digital.

In film how a photon of light is interpreted is a matter of chemistry and your choice of film. But in digital there are countless and myriad ways to interpret and reinterpret that photon even way way after capture, as long as your hard disk have not crashed. The photon is not dead but continually alive as a string of numbers.

Even if you don't want to do ANY interpretation - and I do not know what you are doing then - the camera have to step in and interpret it in the way its dumb unthinking unknowing black box tells it too. And you get a "picture" which i am not sure why you should be happy with, other than that you have known your black box very well.

I think really the only reason other than deliberate choice to leave the interpretation to the camera is the learning curve in doing the data processing. And that admittedly can be as daunting as learning darkroom chemistry too.

 

[espion]

On the other hand, using PS to manipulated photos to get finanical returns is really a no-no.

On contrary, PS is indispensable in commercial photography, from removing wrinkles, to cutting out an object and putting it elsewhere, etc.

What is no-no - as it is with all things - is deceit: saying something and meaning another. (And I am sure you can count at least 10 such occurrences in the work place over the past week.) And using photos to say something is only one way of saying a thing.

So for example, if the intent in a picture is to capture what my "eye" sees it, it doesn't mean no PS - for the eye "sees" different from a mechanical sensor, and also the "eye" sees not the light reaching it, but as the mind interprets it.

So my eye sees exploitation, but the picture dont convey that message well, cos something is distracting the message, and so I PP out that distracting thing - maybe its a red plastic bag. But another sees beauty in the same scene and leaves in the red plastic bag.

There is no cheating in either case: they are merely saying what they saw. (It will be cheating if say a newspaper organisation says I don't care what you saw, but only what the camera saw.)

And we are also all OK with visual advertisement stretching the truth or giving part truth.

And finally have you wondered how the Hubble space telescope gives all that colourful pictures of the stars and galaxies? The answer is somewhere on the web.