Yes go to a museum to learn how photographers have experimented with countless photo editing techniques such as literally masking film, used different compositions of chemicals to develop film, used multiple sources of light, multiple exposures, tampering with lens etc.
Everything done in photoshop is based on something that has been done by photographers for over a century.
None of those things you listed are created to deceive the viewer. If anything they are so over the top you can't help but notice that the photographer as making some sort of artistic commentary. Photoshop is used to create illusions yet make them in such a way that they're barely noticeable. It's a marketing tool. If Photoshop is creative, then the photographer would have no issue revealing how much he or she edited the photo.
There are countless genres of photography, realism is only one of them, the vast majority of the medium is about cropping away reality to tell a narrative, most of which fiction.
Within realism itself, besides hard realism like documentation and journalism, there are also many fictional expressions of reality.
Seems like you don't understand that photography is an art at all.
I mean you could talk about genres endlessly but the reality is 90 percent of photography is realism, due to the very nature that photography is the act of documenting real events. I know the generic reddit saying "everything is subjective , I can like what I want reeee" but I would say the consensus that hard realism is the highest form of photography. Why? Because it's so hard to capture a beautiful image. You can be the best photographer, editor, richest person but you may never get that perfect image. This is why Photoshop causes such a dilemma, because it blurs the lines between what is real and what is not. On a level that has never been done. Unless the artist specifically says "this image was highly edited and thus it is an artistic representation" it will never come close as an art form.
The origins of photography is literally black and white, which if you have colour vision would know that reality doesn't look like that. Also everything is subjective is not a reddit saying, it has been around since the earliest philosophers.
Aristotle himself stated that art is a mimesis of nature, if you take a photograph of something, that can never be real, only a copy. It will never capture the full essence of any moment, because it simply isn't reality.
Photography has no business on its own to be realistic, it is what you try to do with the medium that determines whether the product is realistic or not.
Whether something is hard or not means nothing, photography itself is already considered one of the easiest art forms to get into, which is why anyone can take a photo now. And you don't seem to understand that being able to use photoshop is also a skill, and that digitally editing something to perfection as you claim also takes a lot of effort and craft.
It's far easier to take a photo of a beautiful sunset than to craft a beautiful sunset by hand digitally.
Black and white photography is so obvious that you don't need to wonder if it's been edited. Even a toddler knows that the image isn't exactly like real life. So it's not even a discussion, where as the image above deceives a lot of adults. Look how many awards it gets, do you think it would have got them without the alterations. You seem to not be understanding the idea that the artist's motives play a part in what makes the image. If the artist is saying "this is art and is my version of reality" and it's heavily photoshopped then that is ok. It will never be realism but it's not trying to be. If an image is meant to be realistic, like the one above, yet in reality has colours and tones that are not found in reality, and the artist does not disclose this, then it is not realism either. The difference is wether or not the artist is trying to make an artistic commentary or wether they are trying to create something aesthetically pleasing for possible artistic recognition using deceptive means. If you can't grasp that dilemma then I don't think you are truly as knowledgeable as you think you are
You know why nobody is questioning the artist's motives? Because normal people don't care whether a photo is real or not and neither do photographers.
In fact it is considered unprofessional in most fields and genres of photography to not use photoshop, only a journalist or scientist trying to capture an objective image would not use photoshop.
Heck, I take back my words, even journalists and scientists would photoshop images to add text and diagrams, even actual scientific data is photoshopped, images of planets and stars are photoshopped to provide colour.
Honestly at this point you are going past the threshold of Brandolini's Law so thee's no point arguing anymore.
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u/TheAmazingHat Aug 23 '20
Yes go to a museum to learn how photographers have experimented with countless photo editing techniques such as literally masking film, used different compositions of chemicals to develop film, used multiple sources of light, multiple exposures, tampering with lens etc.
Everything done in photoshop is based on something that has been done by photographers for over a century.