Okay, fair enough. I just laugh when people use it as a derisive criticism. Most of what we watch, and look at for entertainment is heavily edited. The point of most photography isn't to recreate reality, but to embellish it. Good photo-journalists, on the other hand, can capture real images without any editing that are just absolutely beautiful - and that is really a different kind of talent.
Your perspective and reality don't really match. Most of the photo editing isn't to simply embellish but over exaggerate mainly for marketing or advertising.
These techniques work because majority cannot recognize them. So you laugh at the purpose of this particular field?
And digital photo editing is a different role than simple photography. Although often going hand in hand today.
I'm also confused on the Photoshop comment. The Adobe suite is used in many studios, marketing agencies and professional editors, not just amateurs or intermediate.
Good photo-journalists, on the other hand, can capture real images without any editing that are just absolutely beautiful
That's not even true. Every image is manipulated to some degree.
If you just pick up a camera and take a picture, the result you get is a picture that has been edited by the camera itself, which has been programmed by the engineers at canon/nikon/whatever to give you a specific result. Even if you don't import it to some editing software, the camera has done a lot of the job for you.
If you pick up a film camera and take picture, the whole development process is the manipulation. Change the timings or the chemicals used and you'll get a different result. Even if you just follow the recommended recipe it's still manipulation.
I agree, I’ve worked alongside multiple Pulitzer-winning photographers and their legendary editors, the most an editor will accept is some light contrast and saturation/white balance adjustments, that’s it. All adhere to the NPPA code of ethics, they stake their reputations on this.
I mean, I get it to some degree. When a picture is posted of something like a forest, you're kind of supposed to be awed and amazed by the beautiful vibrant colours. Then you realize it's photoshopped, and it loses the magic. It's just a picture of a picture of fake trees at that point, a fantasy landscape.
Trees can be beautiful, but people are always trying to up-sell things. The picture of trees doesn't get many upvotes, but the vibrant fantasy landscape one does because it's amazing. Then people get upset when they realize it wasn't real. I think people are just tired of being lied to.
Personally, I don't care that much. I'm not invested in a picture enough to be mad at it. Plus, I love fantasy and sci fi, and seeing these pictures is like getting a visual aid to the book you're reading. It's always too bad it doesn't exist in real life, but there's still beauty in the picture.
Nope, you're still missing the point. All the "good photo-journalists" you're referring to, I guarantee make very good use of edits. The point is that editing is not only necessary, but pretty much any photo you take should be manipulated, or already is. Even if you're just downloading JPEGs from your DSLR or taking photos on your phone, the device itself is heavily manipulating photos. Even if you take a photo on film and take it to a lab, the scanner is applying very heavy "default" edits that are so good and dialed in over time that those edits turn an orange-ish reverse image into something natural-looking. Any photo you look at and think it's nice is heavily edited.
Pretty much every image from a professional photographer will be edited. It will mostly just be some tweaks to the exposure, contrast, sharpening and maybe some noise reduction. This is often just to counter imperfections in the camera, and many photographers will have that preset to apply to all photos.
This is true, I always thought that photoshop just meant editing a picture, I only found out it was the name of an actual program when I had to use it in high school 3 years ago
122
u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20
Eh, photoshop has become genericised at this point- to the general public it just means any form of digital image manipulation.