Comments on: Photoshop: Art or Artifice?

By: Cherry May Monoy

Cherry May Monoy — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:18:31 +0000

I too are so confused if I should really use PS. I don’t claim the title photographer because I had so much to learn in photography. I honestly can’t say that I’m good in PS.

But I have been judge by some people about my pictures because I photoshopped all of them.

I love taking pictures but I don’t really have money to buy DSLR before. My bf bought me canon digi cam to take pictures that I wanted because that is all we can afford at the time. Sometimes the camera washed out the real colors of the subject and I feel so bummed because I didn’t capture it. If you haven’t learn by now, I didn’t study photography as it is too expensive of a course. So I used some help from PS.

As touching up images in PS. I learned that you can be more creative in PS with your images. I didn’t understand the issue between untouch and touched one just because I found that PS is so cool and you can play around with it.

As far as portraits go, I tend to edit more around this one because the subject always have issues including break outs and horrible eye bags. Is that so wrong?

last month, my boyfriend who is actually my fiance now bought me some DSLR. After joking around that It’s so hard to do landscape with my digicam when we went to UK. There were tons of nice places but I wasnt happy with all my shots.

Still at this time I used PS/lightroom to enhance color, crop,clarity whatver I want to do with my image. But lately I have had comments that I just photoshop my photos. So, I dunno know what he mean, But I’m pretty sure it is negative.

I never called myself a photographer or whatnot. I love taking pictures and I also love playing around in PS. Is that so bad???

I’d probably have less knowledge with photography or PS than you. But is it really that bad, If I use them together to create the image that I want??

By: alex

alex — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:31:29 +0000

To me, Photoshop is nothing more than a film photographer’s darkroom.

By: Ramsey Kent

Ramsey Kent — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:06:05 +0000

I think you are crazy to believe that the landscape photos that you referenced in your article are not manipulated. And unless it’s a polaroid it has manipulation. In the darkroom many changes happened before Ansel Adams walked out with his masterpieces. Why should photoshop be any different. Generally the people that don’t like photoshop are the ones that can’t and don’t use it. Art is and will always be impossible to define. That my friends is the beauty of it.

By: BlueRose

BlueRose — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:05:10 +0000

The question I always want to ask (and have never really received an answer) is “where does PS cross the line and become digital art”

I see nothing wrong with subtle ‘enhancements’ or cleaning up an image, tweaking colour, sharpening etc.

Its when you dont see the photograph first (or at all) its when you see the photoshopping that I have a problem with it. I recently saw an exhibition of a national photographic competition, and I would have LOVED to see the original untouched RAW image next to the ones that were on display, cos I bet hardly any of them had any resemblance to the originals.

I have no problem with digital art, but I think there is a clearly defined line that gets crossed. Trouble is, everyone seems to have their own view as to where its drawn.

Me? I use PS like I apply makeup :) to enhance the overall image ‘hopefully’

By: lopaka holmberg

lopaka holmberg — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:48:00 +0000

I think that the beautiful part about art, is that were are all allowed to express our opinions in are own way, through are own mediums. I’m grateful for all contributions to sites just like this one, no matter what level or format they come in; whether HDR’d to all hell or a split toned film scans. I hope that we can hold everyone up on this site as a community of artists rather than a collection of differing opinions….I’m sorry about all of the rambling, I’ve just seen so many negative comments towards the P.S. jockies pictures that I felt they needed a level playing field; heck ,if someone verbally stomped on my work I might start getting a complex…and then add a quick mask layer to it.

By: Ritchie

Ritchie — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:18:51 +0000

I’m a newbie in photography and I love the original result of what I’ve captured in the scene, only for landscape.

I don’t like to edit the shot I got when it comes to landscape coz I think of it as a fiction if the landscape photo is edited in photoshop.

When capturing portrait; I love editing the photo to make it more lively and cool but there are times I don’t edit the photo if I really love the result of my capture.

By: diana

diana — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:29:33 +0000

Well that is where people will have to agree to disagree. I think using even the advancements in the camera is more purist in general if you look at the traditional definition of “photography”. It’s using the camera as a tool to do the work as opposed to using a software computer program after the fact. But I’m not a person who is elitist about it, it’s just my humble personal opinion in a sea of others. :)

I still use my old Minolta X-370 and very much enjoy film *and* I still use Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom etc to create digital art. On sites like Flickr I do make a point of differentiating which items were done via camera only and which were post-processed.

By: lopaka holmberg

lopaka holmberg — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:06:38 +0000

My point was that we have managed to distance our selves from the digital art community by undermining and belittle ling their concept and choice of art medium, all the while, toting that the digital features that we exploit in our cameras everyday to enhance are shots, are somehow more purist in form because we did it in the camera. There aren’t many photographers out there shooting with a leica argus or a twin reflex anymore. Our romanticized ansel adams back trekking adventure shoot are forever altered with the technology that most of us embrace. All I’m saying is that post processing can be an art form. Does that make the outcome art…that’s never for us to decide. Plus the fact that most of the digital concepts came from film postprocessing makes the entire subject a little mute. So, unless your still dodging and burning manually in your development cave (yup, that is P.P.) grab your canon g11, slap that digital neut. grad filter on, f22 club the crap out of it, and welcome to the elitist club.

By: diana

diana — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:04:13 +0000

Alissa pretty much said what I would say, only I’ll expand on my view. I have training in graphic design and am not anti Photoshop/editing programs whatsoever. However, I’m also trained in photography and I do see a difference between the two forms of art. Many cameras, both point and shoots and DSLRs, have advanced settings that can make an image pop straight off the camera provided you learn how to use the settings. Factor in composition (and the right lenses sometimes) and you have great *photography*.

Photo corrections/enhancements in a program such as Photoshop or Lightroom is fine in photography, my beef is with people who do just use their cameras to shoot anything and then rely heavily on post-processing to get a good photo instead of learning what the camera does. Or the photo looks very fake. Those people *are* creative and talented…but at digital art, not photography. I can’t call it true photography, but I don’t sneer at it, I’ve seen some great stuff.

I have a Canon DSLR and sometimes use their picture style options to control saturation, contrast and sharpness, tone. I went out one snowy day recently with a 50mm 1.8 lens and used the “wrong” white balance setting to create a bluish glow. The photos did not require any post processing and were picked up off of Flickr by some local websites to post, people loved them. Why post process when you can just use the camera to do what you want in many instances? Being creative with the camera is different than being creative with a program, the camera is a tool beyond just grabbing snapshots, learn it.

To me, photography is about using your eye and camera to make people see what it is you saw in that moment…the slant of light, a shadow, a juxtaposition of color, etc – making people see everyday objects as interesting subjects, the beauty in our everyday world. Much of that can be done with just the camera. :)

By: lopaka holmberg

lopaka holmberg — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:25:34 +0000

yeah, I can’t stand all of the time it took me to learn the craft of digital photography, and to compose shots in camera only to be outdone by a wacom jockey. They should respectfully decline the help of modern instruments like exposure metering, hyper realistic picture style saturation, contrast, and sharpness settings, auto white balance options, low noise iso to increase our exposure stops, “is” lens to reduce blurring and ghosting….no wait, that would mean that technology has helped all of us in our own pursuit of art in whatever medium we so choose to display it. The crime is not the use of PS in photography, it’s the hyper elitist stance that we’ve taken to classify what our peers and ourselves consider art. If everyone is purchasing an HDR, overprocessed, noisy, grainy, high contrast image over yours, what does that say about your “art”…..the day we start telling people that their creative medium is crap, is the day I stop doing this completely.