How much processing is too much (example)

[moz]

The "Monument Valley Cloud" photo in this article really struck me, as he provides before and after version of the image early in the article.
http://luminous-landscape.com/columns/eye-camera.shtml

I'm stunned by how much he's changed but still calls the resulting artwork a "photograph". Two days work by a professional has produced a dramatic change in the image.

Is this accepted these days? I'm wondering whether the reason that I can't get the dramatic colours and so on that I see here and elsewhere is because I'm just not putting the time into repainting my photos to make them look like that?

[Aussie Dave]

I don't think you need to go to quite the extent shown in your example, however photography is an art...and digital photography has made it somewhat easier for the average person to enhance their images to sometimes, unrealistic proportions.

The human eye is quite a bit different to a camera (with lens) and to add to this, your memory of what the scene actually looked like is likely to be different from reality as well. The brain deciphers what the eyes see and transform that into the memory of what we are looking at. That memory may not be "factually correct". How many times have you looked at a white car drive past and think "there goes a white car"....when in fact the car was more likely to be made up of differing shades of grey's (amongst other colours). Our eyes saw this but our brain converted it to white. The camera cannot do that, so already we need to make sure things like WB and colour casts are accounted for.

Taking your raw image and changing it to how you remember the scene can be a task in itself. Keeping in mind the dynamic range available to you at the time, you choose what camera settings you feel appropriate and take the shot. However, when you view it back on your PC monitor, you wish you could enhance those darker areas, hold back some of the clipped highlights and boost contrast & saturation to give the image more "pop" - just as you remember.

By the time you get to what you feel looks about right, I'm betting you've already changed the raw image a fair bit to what it was....as in your example (though 2 days of PP is a bit steep)

It probably also comes down to what camera, lens, settings etc. you're using to take the initial photo. I'd think a D2X would give a more vivid photo (straight out of the camera) than say something like a D70.

[lukeo]

If you do this as a professional job, earn your living by it then no I dont think there are any limits. The limits we set ourselves are usually time based as we fit our photography around our work.

His work looks good to me, 2 days for something you are going to sell to someone, great, I wonder how much return he gets on his time? A few hundred dollars a print?

[drifter]

I don't mind landscapes being worked over to enhance the final shot/product as long as its not being used in a news/journalistic way, but I hate the current state of people photography photoshopping where they are shaving a few kilos off peoples thighs,necks,arms and cellulite etc. and way over working faces to the point where they are so blatantly PS that it's laughable .Not from any moralistic standpoint,some are just plain woeful. Seems there's no such thing as subtle editing in that area .

[Grev]

I have read all of Alain Briot's stuff on luminous landscape (and many other articles...) and I really don't think it is wrong.

I think photography isn't suppose to resemble real life, no matter how much we think our photographs are representations of real life. It is a visual art which its meaning gets blurred frequently as most people use photography for documenting.

So when professionals who use photography as an art form, they can make their photos as vivid or as wild as possible, but I don't think to the point that it's not believeable or not faithful to how they saw or felt.

Clustered post, sorry it's late!

[fishafotos]

This is what i consider too much for anyone doing non-pro wok:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4wI_o8gyxA

I found this interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knEIM16N ... ed&search=

Harry

EDIT: Fixed links

[beetleboy]

Harry, your links DO work now!! (Edited!!)

I don't have a problem with the amount of work that's gone into the image in question. I think the "2 days" the publisher mentions probably included a lot of work on other images as well but who's to know!

Regarding the retouching for fashion etc - I often find myself defending it to a certain point with friends etc. Some examples are extremely excessive and unneccesary but I feel that a fair amount of retouching is warranted, and I'll explain why with a real-life example.

A while ago I was shooting a hair and make-up workshop with some young, attractive but not professional models. The style that my client wanted involved some rather harsh lighting ratios which exaggerated certain features and wasn't entirely flattering. Now when I was shooting these girls I was seeing visions of beauty; these girls looked fantastic! But that's only because I was looking at them with my brain and not my eyes. The camera is an eye. It is incredibly unforgiving and in all honesty, these girls looked decidely average and not at all what I remembered. It was then up to me to impart my brain's vision on the raw images and restore the girls to the subjective beauty I had seen at the shoot.

Top professional photogs (in all specialty areas) can switch their brains off and see what the camera is seeing and maximise an images impact from the "get-go". Those guys know the camera is easily fooled and quite often use it to their advantage. This ability can be learned to a certain extent and I think the most fundamental thing one can learn is to "see the light".

So that's what I think anyway

[shakey]

It's really no different to what Ansel did, albeit with different tools.

[fishafotos]

sorry, new links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4wI_o8gyxA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knEIM16N ... ed&search=

Try that.

[blacknstormy]

I don't think that the ps in the landscape images went too far - all digital images (and yes, many film images) are manipulated in some way in order to bring out the detail of what we saw when we took the image - and yes, Ansel Adams took fantastic photos, but was also a master of the darkroom - our equivalent of ps ..... I don't think enhancing your photos is a bad thing - adding something could be - like adding a monkey to a landscape shot you took at Barcaldine .. that would be going too far

And for those of you who remember the utube dove evolution film, here's the anti-answer to that film ... slob evolution

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0u0wWOMIsE

[beetleboy]

Ha haaaa!! Love the slob evolution!

That one's gonna do the rounds of my Address Book for the next couple of days! Cheers =]

[Grev]

adding something could be - like adding a monkey to a landscape shot you took at Barcaldine

Wait. I think it depends on what type of monkey.

[bwhinnen]

I don't think that the ps in the landscape images went too far - all digital images (and yes, many film images) are manipulated in some way in order to bring out the detail of what we saw when we took the image - and yes, Ansel Adams took fantastic photos, but was also a master of the darkroom - our equivalent of ps ..... I don't think enhancing your photos is a bad thing - adding something could be - like adding a monkey to a landscape shot you took at Barcaldine .. that would be going too far

And for those of you who remember the utube dove evolution film, here's the anti-answer to that film ... slob evolution

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0u0wWOMIsE

It's amusing to read this, I've had this discussion with a few people. I think the whole photo lab has really tainted peoples perceptions on what is enhancement and what is essentially developing / processing.

A photographer in film has a darkroom, in which they do their manipulation to bring out the aspects in the photos they remember most, or were looking for when making the composition. An everyday person doesn't see or understand this. They give an unprocessed film to a lab technician, they do all the processing work (with help from image processors and so forth) and the resultant photos are generally great. To joe / jane average this means that they take great pictures and their $100 instamatic is just as good as any other camera out there.

Move into the digital age, the same applies to the P&S world. The amount of processing done in camera to give the resultant JPEG image is quite extensive when compared to out of the box DSLR. People don't understand this and say that any photo that is altered in any way shape or form is not a true representation of what was originally taken.

I know we do digress from the original subject somewhat, but in my eyes as long as the resultant photograph represents what the photographer was composing in their mind I don't think there is any such thing as over processing. Yes I do agree that an unrealistic representation of a scene is not everyone's cup-o-tea, (it is not mine either for the record), but photography is an art form, and as such great PP work must be admired.

To the original link, I don't find them overdone, I find they represent what the scene would have looked like in the right light. Yes I find the colours extremely vivid and more than I would expect, but not in detrimental way.

I think it an interesting discussion, and the views above are definitely my own and I am open to others opinions

[Reschsmooth]

Without wishing to revert to an EnergyPolice dialogue (do a search for member EnergyPolice), but there are too elements:

1. Is there "too much processing"?
2. If yes, is "too much processing" bad (as in, the result is not a photograph).

My personal view is that, apart from scientific/forensic/etc photography, all we are doing is capturing an image. How you want the final image to look like is up to you (and your client, blah blah).

Y'see, as soon as you change your composition, lens, aperture, shutter speed, use of flash, filter or otherwise, you are changing the captured perception of what was "out there" in real life. I have absolutely no problem with this at all. This is all "pre-processing".

Let's say you take a photo of a tree against a sunset, but want the tree to be more exposed. You could do that in PS, or you could do that with use of lighting such as a flash or an appropriate filter. Both may achieve a similar result and are potentially completely different to how a spectator would have seen the landscape.

As I said, I personally have no problem with pretty much any manipulation of any image as long as I don't have to rely on it in a court of law

Just my 1c

P