Hi all question about photo shop

[jay6776]

Hi all I been here reading post and looking at photos on here and on other sites. I see alot of people using photo shop for fixing alot of stuff in the photos. Now I don't want to start any kind argument about photo shop I think there is a time for it. But don't you want to try to make the photo as good as you can with the camera?
why i ask this is cuz I'm try to learn how to take really good photos in the camera that by it self is alot learn. Than add in allllll there is to learn with photo shop. i just figure to leave out the hole photo shop stuff. Or is the way its going making photos look kinda not real?
Thanks jay

[Jim Bryant]

Speaking for myself and other professionals in my field of choice, which is photojournalism, we mainly use photoshop applications for burning, dodging and toning of images. But, you're right there are those that go overboard do too much to an image and therefore their photos have a to look surreal.

[dcclark]

Yes.

When I take a photo, it's because I've seen something and want to show that to others. My eyes and brain are very different from my camera -- my camera can't photograph what I saw, it can only capture some of that. The art of editing is to make that image show what I saw.

Your brain is amazing. It can emphasize something important (a face, a shape, a mountain) and totally ignore the rest of the scene. It can show you something that's not there. It can emphasize tiny details and make them huge.

The camera cannot do that. The camera shows you a flat representation of the light in a scene. Making it into what I saw is the art of editing.

Not to mention -- digital cameras suffer quite a bit from softness and greyness which are best fixed with sharpening and curves.

[SusanH1970]

As a portrait photographer, I do all I can to get the images technically correct in-camera, but then use Photoshop to enhance them. Though sometimes it's fun to go a little crazy for fun - but that's not something I'd do to a client's photos.

[CiiVii]

Of course you want to get it as "correct" as you can with the camera- there are things Photoshop can't fix. Once you start thinking of Photoshop as a way of further developing your photos, you will stop thinking of is as just a tool for covering up mistakes. Think of the end product you want, then discover the means of getting there. I think the final result is much more important than what you did to get there, and doing a poor job with a camera or with post processing is always obvious in that final product!

[jay6776]

Thanks for all your guys thoughts on it. I like to play around with photo shop but don't know how to work alot of the the features on it. I think I will learn more about it later.
jay

[bayberry]

It just depends on the photographer's taste and goals. Some want as much truth in their image as possible, some are looking for something different. Neither is wrong, it's up to the artist what it is they are looking to portray. I personally capture the truth and do my best to get it right in camera. I use photoshop for basic adjustments only. I have seen (I think we all have) some pretty amazing things done in PS however and I don't see anything wrong with it as long as the photographer isn't trying to pass it off as truth, but for it's artistic enhancement.

[jay6776]

Originally Posted by bayberry

It just depends on the photographer's taste and goals. Some want as much truth in their image as possible, some are looking for something different. Neither is wrong, it's up to the artist what it is they are looking to portray. I personally capture the truth and do my best to get it right in camera. I use photoshop for basic adjustments only. I have seen (I think we all have) some pretty amazing things done in PS however and I don't see anything wrong with it as long as the photographer isn't trying to pass it off as truth, but for it's artistic enhancement.

Feel the same way. Just could not type it out as good as you LOL.
thanks jay

[Torria]

I love Photoshop and I think if there is a way to enhance a photo and make it even better then before, it should be done.
At the end of the day IMO beautiful photograph consists of: Photographer's Vision and Creativity, Equipment and Editing Tools.

[dcclark]

I'd like to give two examples from my own work:

Red Doorway and Blue Windows.

Each of those accurately represents the scene the way my eyes saw it. Each one is also heavily edited. Can you tell?

The red doorway was taken in a dark building with bright light pouring in. To get the proper moody balance of light which I saw, I had to tweak the inside and outside light quite a bit, on several layers, and also mess with saturation.

The blue windows looked like that, except for one problem -- they were on a hillside, and I couldn't get a straight-on photo of them easily. Instead, Gimp's perspective correction tool worked its magic, and now you can see what I saw.

Even relatively simple photos may have a lot of editing behind them, to make things look like the photographer saw them. I do pass those photos off as truth, because it's exactly what I saw -- I'm not adding in unicorns or anything here. I just had to do some serious editing to get them to that point.

Edit: (Hah, I'm even editing my own post!) All of this assumes that you've gotten the photo as "good as possible" in the camera first. You can't fix a blurred photo, or something with all the hilights blown out. Those who prefer to shoot SOOC and leave it are fine by me. I'm trying to point out that you may be surprised at what can be done in post-processing without going all crazy and making an image look utterly fake.