Extreme Photoshopping

[Simon Brewer]

I've always used film and still do, but if I could afford a nice DSLR I would go that way.

I was able to play/take some shots on my friend's Cannon DSLR shooting RAW on April 16th, 2006 during a small tornado outbreak in Illinois: I saw no problems with the images taken. None of the images needed to go to P.S.
The images on my site from that particular day are vid stills, but I would like to post those DSLR images if I get the chance.

I believe there is a problem with P.S. if it is not used for artistic or personal purposes. I don't really enjoy looking at images near dark with 'glowing' green grass, 'glowing' blue skies, and yet a very bright light source coming from the horizon. Images like that portray a scene with multiple light sources that is completely unreal and unnatural.

Just my opinion...

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

I actually believe that now the majority of photojournalism is shifting into the route of high-end digital, particularly that which deals with foreign journalism. I think it's actually starting to become the preferred medium in many cases, because it allows journalists to send their work immediately around the world to publishers, even from the most remote corners of the world. Here's an example from National Geographic.[/b]

I can confirm this. Nearly all metropolitan newspapers have now shifted to digital cameras. New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, etc etc etc -- all digital now. The folks the AP hire to fly around and cover national news also use digital. I'm guessing that film still gets used from time to time in large publications, but even the film ends up digital in the end, as the prepress at almost all large newspapers and magazines now requires that everything be converted to digital files. No longer does some composer 'shoot' a negative of the news page for the press; all this is now done digitally by large machines known as "imagesetters" that use digital PDF or EPS files to burn a negative or a plate with a laser. Time, Newsweek, all the large news mags are the same way. Digital rules all in the prepress world and has for a few years now. Even holdouts like National Geographic are transitioning to digital (from what I've heard, the Canon 1D MKII was the first 35 SLR that they considered 'good enough' to use in their publication.) I'm not saying that mags and newspapers won't take negs or slides, only that since those things are all going to be scanned into digital before going to print it helps their workflow quite a bit if they get everything digital to begin with. For the most part, newspapers don't need anywhere near the resolution that comes out of a 1D MKII, let alone what comes out of a Provia slide -- there is no good reason to keep film around at such places.

Ryan - thanks for those great posts - I love that photo too.
[/b]

Thanks, Mike!

 

[Mike Peregrine]

For the most part, newspapers don't need anywhere near the resolution that comes out of a 1D MKII, let alone what comes out of a Provia slide -- [/b]

Believe it or not I actually had a vid cap published on the front page of large distribution local paper this year. During the Fillmore tornado, video was the only thing I could get (in the middle of the dark, with an F3 tornado screaming toward me at 60 mph ... go figure). Anyway, I submitted the video capture thinking that the paper wouldn't accept it, and the next day it was on the front page.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Photoshop would be cheating in the eyes of the purist; but in a storm environment, the photoshop option may be the only way to make the slight corrections that can turn a crappy or too dark shot into one that is more definitive or eyecatching. I am not a big fan of some of these cheesy"add a tornado" to stratocu shots, but if a tornado is captured in very low light, there is nothing wrong with trying to treat the image by way of a photo editor/photoshop. In my opinion this is a benefit and not a cheater's tool.

 

[Darren Addy]

Great discussion and great points all a around. I'd add just a couple of minor points:

I think part of what makes some shots look unreal/surreal to the eye is not the photoshopping at all, but the wide angle lens. The eye sees in wide angle, but the peripheral parts of the scene are not in focus. When we see a wide angle shot on screen (or on paper) our eye can take in the entirety of it in a way that does appear "unreal". When the wide angle adds distortion into the equation, you have another "unreal/surreal" element for the brain to deal with. Some people like it and some people don't. (I do, personally). In Ryan's farm scene, for example, the barn appears to be falling away from us. It wasn't (in real life) so that is a shift from our normal perspective. It has nothing to do with Photoshop (or digital vs film), however — it's lens selection and you could do the same thing with either sort of SLR.

The other point that I will make is that people who act like film is "pure" and digital is "dirty" are forgetting that there is no One True Film that defines reality. Some films give you more vibrant colors, are more "contrasty", etc. There also used to be films available with different "white balance". Kids today know little about buying a film balanced for tungsten lighting, as opposed to being balanced for "daylight". ("GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU WHIPPER-SNAPPERS") Some "daylight" films would be "warmer" than others (which people might like because caucasian skin tones would look less corpse-like than the "cooler" ones.)

All of this also ignores the fact that taking the film into your processor was a leap of faith. Take the same negative to several different photofinishers and you could get radically different results. This is because your negative was exposed on paper with colored light (that color being determined by the intensities of Cyan, Magenta, and Blue filters). A color analyzer was normally used to try to make things look similar. When I did color darkroom for a portrait photographer (many moons ago) the analyzer was set up to analyze skin tones and make them all look the same. We'd run sample prints and adjust the "color pack" of the enlarger to get it warmer or cooler, as needed. Photographic paper had different color sensitivities (by batch) so if we were in the middle of printing a wedding and ran out of one batch, we'd have to calibrate all over again or the white dress might not be the same white when we switched to the new box of photographic paper.

If I take your picture in a room illuminated with fluorescent lights, you probably aren't going to think you look "real" unless I warm that picture up (with film I could either do that in-camera with a fluorescent filter, or in printing by compensating with the color filtration in the enlarger). With digital, you could probably use a filter too (but why limit the amount of light you are letting in?) so do it with post-processing.

My point is that there is a wide range of "reality" and always has been. There has always been "postprocessing" (unless you were shooting slides and not making prints or scans from them).

As Ryan said, that doesn't address the question of "how much is too much", but let's get off the idea that film was somehow unencumbered by many of the same issues. Even when it comes to lightning photography, film is used because it allows us to "cheat" with the "B" setting. How many lightning shots have you seen that were actually a composite of strikes that happened over the course of a several-second exposure? The single film exposure makes you think they all happened at the same instant. If that isn't distorting reality, nothing is.

Finally, I think that any tool can be misused and that comes down to the individual tool-wielder. Ryan, coming from his newspaper perspective, is pretty conservative in this regard (and seems to abide by Truth in Labeling Laws, as well) I can tell you, from being there, that his gust front pictures really capture what I was seeing with my eyes. If anything, his mammatus pictures are UNDERdone. (Part of that may be that the wide angle perspective make them look somehow smaller and more distant than they did in real life).

From comments that Ryan got on his blog (and on Fark) there seems to be an inability of people to grasp that stuff this cool actually happens in nature. They've grown up with the CGI worlds of video games and movies and so when they see this sort of thing they think it must be faked or artificially enhanced in some way. Experiencing it firsthand is a mindblowing and humbling experience that many will never get. Our photography should be an attempt at communicating that reality. If you see something in your Photoshop window that you didn't see in real life, then you've gone too far.

Darren Addy
Kearney, NE

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Maybe I'm crazy but what I see as more of a problem than "extreme photoshopping" is the complete lack of any post-processing in most cases(if there has to be some "problem" in the first place). But, what exactly even is extreme photoshopping anyway? Is it something that creates something fake or too strong? Is it something that creates something amazingly realistic? I imagine it is both equally in many minds out there.

Let's face it, most folks don't take the time, or just haven't yet learned how to really use photoshop to create something extremely life-like. So, you don't get to see much of it out there. People are used to seeing late evening skies with pure black foregrounds. Then someone sees something different and thinks, that is fake, when in fact maybe someone just put a LOT more effort into their photos than some "purists" choose to. The "purist" can stare at something like a completely black foreground and be happy and at the same time be complaining about someone photoshopping at all. To me I wonder if some are just not happy they don't have the ability of others in post-processing. Rather than take the time to learn or open their mind to it, or even just be happy with how theirs are without it, they start threads putting those that do it down in some fashion(maybe not here but in general). Meanwhile how often do you see a photoshop person bothering to start threads about those folks and their being happy with black foregrounds?

Creating reality in a photo is certainly no easy feat. It is fun when you realize you can now at least come a lot closer. I think some of the "extremely shopped" photos you see aren't done on purpose. I think a lot of it is just the fact it is really hard to do it all very well. It is very hard to learn to control all the aspects as you work on an image. When getting the contrast into the photo the whites and blacks love to go too white or black. This will obviously stand out as not reality. But, at the same time, those other areas like the grass infront of you or whatever will be much closer. Ryan's image below I think might be a good example, though I wasn't there! I'd love to see a purist with their purist ways get that close on that setting. His is very close to what I imagine it looked like(which isn't what you'd expect most images to show on that setting). The only thing I see that might be a smidge off is how dark the black is in the upper cloud. I wouldn't even think it is that far off. I think that little bit combined with a high dynamic shot you aren't used to seeing displayed right would make people jump all over the, "that is extremely photoshopped" bandwagon. And like has been mentioned you can also toss in the fact most folks aren't out there seeing storms as often or at as long of periods of their lives.

As far as lightning photography and night photography is concerned I would hope you don't need to do much of anything to the image. Those have to be the easiest settings there are, both shooting and processing.

What I would love to see are the examples of extreme photoshopping that started the thread. I'm sure I have some that qualify. Oh well.

 

[Greg Campbell]

Erica, how do you define "extreme PS?"

LOL!
Hide the children! Mike, that...that....(gasp!) Photoshoper is here!

Strongly agree with Darren. The notion that film somehow records the 'real' scene is absurd. Film's luminance vs density repsonse is extremely non-linear (this can be a good thing for lightning), with the toe and head being greatly compressed. On top of that, you've got 3 color layers, each with its own unique response to light, exposure time, and color; each going in a different direction. During long exposures, color and response curve shifts will occur, and there is little one can do to accurately correct the 'error,' even if you wanted to. Films vary - a lot. Shooting the same night time lightning scene with two different slide films will get you vastly differing colors. Add print film and the colors will be almost unrecognizable. You're going to tell me that one is "real" and the other(s) aren't?? Throw in exposure varience, film grain (or sensor noise), lens distortions, flare, water drops and squashed bugs on the lens, etc. etc. etc.

Agree with Mike. If I'm going to stand around in a thunderstorm, trying to get struck, I'm sure as heck not going to throw out a cool lightnng shot just because it is somewhat under or over exposed. Shooting film (without digital's 'insta-chimp' feedback), catching a good lightning discharge (properly exposed!) over a properly exposed scene is actually damned difficult! I have a cheapo digicam that I use to test a given exposure value, but that only gets me in the ballpark. If I get it close, within a stop, I feel I've done well. If a 'bad' image is thin, or dark, I reserve the right to tweak the curves to recover as much of the scene as possible. Why should I penalize myself for estimating the wrong exposure??? Likewise, city lights ("They didn't look all that bright...") can fog an an image's low end in minutes. Is it somehow a crime to set a new blackpoint? OTOH, I think excess curve/contrast tweaking can 'overcook' an image. In my humble (and completely irrelevent!) opinion, Mike's stuff is just a short throw over my current 'limit.' His pics seem just a bit unreal, although they are superb art, emphasizing the power and menace of severe weather. Likewise, Susan's material might, IMO, benefit from some small contrast and curve 'enhancements.' As in the chemical days, each photographer will eventually develop their own style, each with a unique approach to contrast and tonality adjustments. (Puppies are cute! Diversity is good!! Time for a group hug!!!)

Cloning is where the issue gets messy. I'm not pretending to be a journalist, I just want to make aesthetic images that reflect the essence of the scene before me. To date, I've never needed to clone anthing more than film dust, scratches, and scanner artifacts. If and when an uninvited airplane flys through my once-in-a-season 5 minute lightning shot, I'll have a short think about nuking it, and will most probably wind up doing so. Ditto for distant car lights, or other issues out of my immediate control. Zapping an ill-placed streetlight is still off limits for me, but as more and more of Az. is developed, it will become more difficult to find pristine landscapes to shoot. (The same is true for all those #$%@#% telephone poles in your Kansas tornado shots.) Given half a chance, I'd gladly move to another location, but what if that perfect spot no longer exists???

Needless to say, cutting and pasting (multiple) lightning bolts / tornadoes onto an image is flat out lying. It cheapens the grandeur of severe weather and is deeply insulting to me and, I assume, anyone who has taken the time and invested the effort into finding, catching, and photographing the real thing.

FWIW

-Greg

 

[Darren Addy]

I just want to say (gently) that we should probably be careful about appearing to jump all over Ericka for posting the question. Before we start imputing her motives for asking the question we should probably let her speak for herself. I think she raises a valid question and one that has made all of us do a little reflection on the subject, which is probably a Good Thing. Of course, if our responses have made Ericka do a little reflection on why she is asking the question, that may be a Good Thing too!

I too would love to see an example of what she perceives as a picture that is Extremely Photoshopped, but that becomes problematic if people are going to jump all over her, or somebody is going to get defensive or get their feelings hurt over the resulting dissection of the image or the process used to get it to that point. Much of this ground was covered in the HDR Imaging thread.

Mike H.'s example of the black foreground sunset pictures is a very good one. The mistake that many people are going to make is to assume that just because a photo looks different than most that they have seen before that it is somehow "wrong". This is a flawed methodology of evaluation. The baseline should be, not how does it compare to other images that I have seen, but how does it compare to the REALITY of the scene that was being captured.

An argument could be made that you can even leave reality behind if you are making ART as opposed to recording a scene in a more photojournalistic way. But I think that most of us are hoping to inspire the "wow, it must have been something to be there and actually SEE/EXPERIENCE that" rather than the "No, it didn't REALLY look like that" feelings when people look at our storm photos.

Darren Addy
Kearney, NE

 

[Ericka B. Gray]

Hi everyone. Let me clarify a few things. First, I haven't been in photo or art school for a long time.(I absolutely refuse to admit how long it's been) I am in the real world and exhibit and sell storm and other photos. My motivation for the question is simply to try to get an understanding of the issue of how much is too much? I struggle with this issue myself. Purists, including my former instructors, would kill me for photoshopping out a power line or doing hue saturation to enhance something that the camera just can't capture the way I would like to see it shown. However, I'm not a purist and I do post-process everything because DSLR's can't capture the magic of storms in a way that satisfies my eye. That said, however, I'm amazed at some of the photos I see that go beyond what I see in reality (I'm heading back to Boston from my chase vacation today). In some photos, I see a foreground that is a color that never existed in nature or a sky that has so much contrast that, if I saw that, I would be running screaming. If it's meant as art, fine. If it's meant to be a representation of reality, that's where I begin to have my questions. My friends constantly send all the latest photos going around the internet and ask, "is this what you chase? I'd be so scared if I saw that!" I generally have to explain that the photos have been enhanced and, yes, the storms are amazingly awesome and beautiful but.... So, do I go for the WOW factor and enhance, enhance, enhance.....and, believe me, some of my exhibited photos are quite enhanced for that reason and I consider them art....or, do I capture them more as a photojournalist would. This is an interested and informative discussion and I have no ulterior motives here, just an observation that there are more photos being enhanced to a point of being on the edge of being representational and being impressionist art. Sorry it took me a while to rejoin the thread - my laptop started doing weird things and wifi hasn't been totally accessible. When I'm home and have my desktop to play with, I'll post some examples to get your opinions.



P.S. I do get some of Mike H's shots sent to me, as does everyone, but there are more and more other storm shots getting sent around. Interesting how the public is getting these and paying some attention. I've recently been getting some Katrina shots that were heavily photoshopped.

 

[Simon Brewer]

Basically, this thread is attempting to define reality. Judgment on visual reality depends on the person, so this thread is virtually pointless, but it's surprising to see how people can become so defensive. I don’t think people who have posted on this thread particularly like being told that they don’t like post processing due to their inability to use Photoshop just because another person has become defensive, because I imagine many of them do know how to post process images, but choose not to post process for personal reasons.

If I were to rely on post processing to produce spectacular images I would have to ask myself this question, “Am I a good photographer or a good post processor?â€￾ Post processing and not post processing is merely a preference not an argument.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Photographer ... processor. The process itself really hasn't changed that much, except that now many photographers are learning to process their own work. When I took courses, we actually had a unit on darkroom techniques. But the thrust was - learn this stuff only if you insist on doing this yourself so that you can learn to push your film, etc. Now Photoshop courses come standard. C'ya darkroom.

Both sides of the process have now been combined. In fact, most professional studios have trained PS personnel who do nothing but post-process these days. This is one of the big advantages of digital processing. The photographer no longer relies on the darkroom personnel to process their film or slides, who may or may not give them a finished product to their liking. It also makes room for a wide variance in technique. There is no longer standardized color that each lab sticks to, for example. That becomes left to the individual photographer. With individuality, we can expect variance (thank heaven). We can also expect differences of opinion (see the critiques on Photosig.com).

I'm really glad this subject was brought up, and I don't see anyone being particularly more defensive about either side of the issue. Ericka just wanted opinions, and of course, folks were more than happy to oblige. Things can become personal easily in a topic like this - because so many people devote so much time and effort into their work. They feel protective. Rightly so.

Threads like this don't really change the direction I would ultimately like to take things (ha, whenever THAT happens). It's just a matter of recognizing boundaries between what is acceptable from both a photojournalism standpoint (i.e., clone tool = bad ... post processing = good) and an art standpoint (i.e., you're an artist, so express your vision).

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Basically, this thread is attempting to define reality. Judgment on visual reality depends on the person, so this thread is virtually pointless, but it's surprising to see how people can become so defensive. I don’t think people who have posted on this thread particularly like being told that they don’t like post processing due to their inability to use Photoshop just because another person has become defensive, because I imagine many of them do know how to post process images, but choose not to post process for personal reasons.


[/b]

Speaking of defensive who said this anyway? I think I'm the only one that said something close to that. I said:

To me I wonder if some are just not happy they don't have the ability of others in post-processing. Rather than take the time to learn or open their mind to it, or even just be happy with how theirs are without it, they start threads putting those that do it down in some fashion(maybe not here but in general).
[/b]

Notice the SOME in there and the (maybe not here but IN GENERAL). I still stick to my thoughts on that and never said a word about any one person. Would it be that far fetched to imagine SOME not liking any photoshop work because they don't yet know how to do it that well and/or don't want to put forth that effort? I would hope I can say that in here without it exluding all other reasons to not liking photoshop and without it suddenly including all people(or any) posting in this thread.

 

[Darren Addy]

If I were to rely on post processing to produce spectacular images I would have to ask myself this question, “Am I a good photographer or a good post processor?â€￾ Post processing and not post processing is merely a preference not an argument.
[/b]

By this definition, Ansel Adams was a lousy photographer, so I have to reject Simon's definition of what constitutes a good photographer. Adams' Zone System was a process of taking a scene with a dynamic range that exceeded the capacities of his film and paper and getting the best negative he could (understanding the limitations of his film, as well as determining its practical ASA/ISO value) AND then getting the best print that he could from that negative (doing essentially the same thing with his paper). As has been mentioned, he also used dodging & burning to bring out things that a "straight print" could not.

Being a great photographer (in the past) did not stop at the pressing of the shutter button and handing the film to the photo-processor at the lab. It meant personally shepherding the image through the film development, enlarging, and print development steps. That which corresponds to this today is post-processing. If you aren't post-processing and you are shooting RAW, then you don't understand what RAW is for (do yourself a favor and switch to shooting JPEGs). If you aren't post-processing because you are shooting JPEGs, then you are letting your CAMERA decide which bits of image data to throw away. You are still "post"-processing - you are just letting the camera manufacturer do the job for you before it writes the image to your CF card (equivalent to taking your film to the corner drugstore for processing). If you are happy doing that, fine! Nobody is telling you that you have to do anything more. But don't tell those who, like the classic photographers of days-past, wish to be knowledgable about what they are doing (after they've simply pressed the shutter button) that they aren't being "good photographers". That attitude is not just insulting, but downright ignorant.

Darren Addy
Kearney, NE

 

[Brett Roberts]

Nice overall, but the ground is fairly dark and the sky at right is blown out. What to do? Well, use this as a base, and then use several other RAW samples and compost them as neccesary.

This simulates what the eye and brain sees; I sure as heck wasn't getting a blowout in my eyeball when I looked at this scene, and the ground wasn't black, and the sky wasn't washed out. By tapping into all the data the RAW file had, I was able to better render what I actually saw. The end product, again, was:


[/b]

Ryan,

I think this is a truly stunning photo... thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts and methodology. I have owned a DSLR for a little under a year now and still have a lot to learn about Photoshop. I was wondering if you'd mind explaining how you combine the differently-processed RAW files into an HDR image; I know that the built-in HDR tool in Photoshop CS2 will only accept files that were actually exposed differently in the field. Is it a plugin, a separate program, or just creative use of layers?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Susan Strom]

I don’t think people who have posted on this thread particularly like being told that they don’t like post processing due to their inability to use Photoshop just because another person has become defensive, because I imagine many of them do know how to post process images, but choose not to post process for personal reasons.
[/b]

Yes you are correct. Choosing not to do something does not imply a lack of knowledge. I guess I'm a case in point, I taught Photoshop professionally for 3 years. It is a powerful program, it can sing and dance, but I choose not to use it on my stuff.

PS has fantastic other uses. One of the students got really good at it, and took it upon himself to contact Hurricane Katrina victims to restore some of their flood damaged photos <sniff> He got some local news coverage about that. That was a really cool way to use Photoshop. Some students have even gone into FT good paying careers as photomanipulation artists for newpapers and pro labs.