True to the age of ‘my results NOW!’, the current trend towards digital manipulations of photos is a good case in point. Free image manipulation software now seem to bring out results that sometimes rival established image manipulation software like Photoshop in the aspects of touching up and sharpening digital photographs. Photographs of bananas on our kitchen counter top and a solitary ship in the New York harbor (that were then digitally manipulated using something as low tech as PAINT.NET) are shown below as an example…
Of course, there is a certain school which believes that the instant you alter your photographic images with software tools, you pollute the concept and the resulting image is not worth its salt. This may be true for images produced in scientific journals, but does not seem to hold true for a lot of amateur photographers (and some professional – especially folks who cover the news) who have clearly started to use these tools. Tell-tale signs are visible to a practiced eye and even if I do not claim too much practice myself, I did notice a couple of photography shows down in Chelsea where the images were clearly manipulated to suit the subject or the theme. Personally, I do not think there is anything sinful about manipulating an image. It is just that the chemical laced manipulations laboriously done inside that makeshift and cramped darkroom can now be done fairly easily in front of a computer. Of course, historically, ‘more effort’ is sometimes perceived as being ‘more original’ and the darkroom based morphs of yore were definitely heavy lifting.
What are your views as regards digital manipulation – especially considering that there are some very good photographers here on this forum…?
‘Cold ship’, Altered digital photograph
‘Bananas’, Altered digital photograph
Outside of science and journalism, I think no one seriously objects to digital processing. The only question is the fitness of the processing to the artistic goal. Obvious manipulation tends to grab attention by deviating from expectations, but that can backfire if the resulting effect is not judged to be worthwhile. My impressions: your ship has a “Twilight Zone” feeling, and the bananas have become quite repulsive, though with an interesting pattern. Is that consistent with any ideas you may have had in mind creating them?
A friend of mine, a retired botanist, photographs flowers and uses them for greeting cards. She subjects the photos to filter-artistic-watercolor. The products looks darkish, not to my liking.
What are your views as regards digital manipulation…?
Sunil, though I use a camera all the time I’m not a photographer. I approach everything as a painter, and to me all the digital tools look like brushes.
She subjects the photos to filter-artistic-watercolor.
Birgit, in the world of digital artists where I spend much of my time, one often hears the way something looks described as default. It’s never a compliment. It means that the artist just mindlessly used some filter or effect at its default setting without making any real artistic decisions. That’s not digital manipulation – it’s autopilot.
David,
Thank you for the new insight!
The photo advice that you gave me for my very first post on A&P – luminous wave – changed the way I process images.
Birgit, I couldn’t remember what I’d told you so I just went back and looked. Curves and adjustment layers. Yeah, once you get used to using them it’s hard to imagine how you’d managed without them. Glad it was helpful.
I’m going to go back and look at Curves and Adjustment layers too — I play with Photoshop manipulations all the time, but not with Adjustment layers.
In entering exhibits, my aim is to render the photo as close to the real thing as possible. This is impossible in the long run, since monitors are so different, but at least I give it an honest try.
But when I print on fabric, all is fair game — saturation is perhaps the most important element for me to get right for the particular fabric, but sharpness also is an issue and I often exaggerate it for textiles.
And then there are the times I just play around to see what happens. And sometimes use my play in my art.
Photo manipulation is just a tool, but clearly it makes some artists uneasy. Laypeople, too. Some people, seeing my photos printed on silk, think lesser of the work because of the use of photos. This is nonsense, particularly as I almost always use my own photographs (sometimes I borrow Jer’s). But people will persist in their mind set. Maybe the next generation?
I think the critique and rationalization of “standards” (for lack of a better term) for digital manipulation are still in early stages. So it will be interesting to see how it evolves. D.’s “default” term is a case in point — a standard is starting to appear.
And Sunil, it looks like you are having a good time. Good! Now I would like to see what happens to your painting eye, having “ruined” it with this electronic stuff (add snort)
Oops, that was David, not D. Apologies….
In entering exhibits, my aim is to render the photo as close to the real thing as possible. This is impossible in the long run, since monitors are so different
June, you can get a good monitor calibration package for about $250. I use the EyeOne Display 2 made by X-rite/GretagMacbeth, and have had good results with it on my Apple Cinema Display. I’m assuming you’re printing the photos, in which case a decent printer w/ profiles is a must, as is a neutral viewing light for looking at your prints or originals (6500K is often used as a standard for daylight).
If you’re submitting the photos digitally, then the best you can do is probably to make them look right on your calibrated monitor (when compared to your original viewed under a neutral light), and just accept that other people’s monitors will vary.
Steve probably knows a whole lot more about all this stuff than I do.
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Also, for getting good reproductions of artwork, I always shoot a Macbeth color chart with each batch of photos under the same lighting as the artwork. I’ve been shooting in Raw format, and Photoshop has a good tool for sampling a neutral gray swatch on the Macbeth chart and using it to neutralize any color cast from your camera or lighting. It generates a profile that you can use to get the white balance right on your whole batch of photos when you convert them to tiffs or psd files (as long as the lighting was the same when you shot them), and that makes the rest of your color correction a lot easier.
The three Adjustment layers I use the most are Curves, Color Balance, and Hue Saturation, and often stack one right above the other. I generally work with the Curves layer first to get the tonal range right, and then use the other two to fine-tune the color. Often there’s some back-and-forth between the layers, but the great thing is that you can double-click on any of them and get the dialog box back with your settings, check and uncheck the preview box to compare before and after, and even after you make a change you can just Undo if you don’t like it.
I often group all 3 Adjustment layers into a layer group, and I can turn the whole group on and off to compare the corrected and uncorrected image.
Anyway, enough techno talk for tonight. Hope some of it is helpful.
PS – D is also a David, and I’m sometimes a D. No apologies needed, for me at least. I can’t speak for D. :-)
Thanks bunches, David.
I realized on reading your info that I do the adjustment stuff, but without dealing with it as layers (I just move the sliders around until I like the way the preview looks). But now I think I will upgrade my skills a bit using your advice.
I have my art mostly photographed professionally, by a photographer who adjusts color etc on the spot. I trust him. He’s very thorough and over the last two years has come to do digital almost entirely. He does RAW as well as Tiffs and I get both versions (he also runs the tiffs as jpgs for me). We work together to get the art looking like itself.
However, on my home monitor, the art that looked just fine on his doesn’t translate well. I’m always in a quandary, whether to send his version off or to tweak the image on my own. I’m embarrassed to say that sometimes I can’t stand the way it looks on my monitor and in spite of myself, I tweak (but yes, I always save the original, so I don’t muck it up).
So I might have to buy a decent calibration program. I’m not into accuracy of printing as much — there I really go by instinct, trial and error, and experience. And I do that on an entirely different computer,different brand printer, etc. But for the professional exhibit images, I probably need to upgrade my monitor and skills. Sigh.
Again, thanks for the information. It’s quite valuable to me.
June, glad to help. If your photographer has a well-calibrated monitor (which I’ll assume he does), and you’re happy w/ how it looks on his screen, I’d go with that.
The great thing about Adjustment layers is that you’re not altering the underlying pixel information, so you can always fine tune what you do. If you do any color adjustments to the image without that, you could be losing information that can’t be retrieved without going back to the original.
When dealing with monitor calibration, it’s also good to know that there are variables there too. Macs and PCs have different “gamma” settings, which affects the way midtones are displayed. CRT, LCD and laptop displays are all different, and even within those you have various choices you can make. If the final destination of your image is print, you’ll often want a monitor color temperature of 5000k, whereas for things destined for film, video or just on-screen computer viewing you’d want to set it up at 6500k.
It can get a bit complicated, but it’s good to have a basic understanding of this stuff. I’m still learning about it too.
David,
I have a basic question. I often mess around with settings and then, not liking it, punch “undo.” I have been assuming that that reverts everything back to the original number of pixels, etc. Am I correct?
Or to put it another way, so long as I don’t “Save” I can always retreat to the original image which will be intact?
Thanks again,
June
…“undo.” I have been assuming that that reverts everything back to the original number of pixels, etc. Am I correct?
Yes. Undo will take away the last action you do (just one), whether it’s a filter, a crop, a brushstroke, etc. You can go back and forth between Undo and Redo to compare the states before you move on.
…so long as I don’t “Save” I can always retreat to the original image which will be intact?
Also correct. Until you hit Save, all the actions you took since you opened the image can be wiped out using Revert. This is not reversible like Undo though. If you do ten things and then hit Revert (or just close without saving), there’s no way to Redo those ten actions without doing them again.
But then there’s History. You can set the number of History states in Preferences under “General”. If for instance you have History States set to “20” (the higher the number, the more RAM memory is used) you can go backward up to 20 steps and then forward again to the most recent. Even after you Save! (But not if you close the image – that clears out the History.) There’s a History palette, which I’m not that familiar with, that can let you navigate states, or you can do what I do and use “Edit>Step Forward” and “Edit>Step Back” to move through the states. Again, until you Save, nothing is committed to. (If you Save, and then decide to Step Back a number of steps, you would have to Save again to lock that in if that’s the way you want it to look. Otherwise your steps back will be lost when you close the image).
Another thing I do a lot is work on new layers, or duplicate existing layers and work on them, leaving the original as a base layer. This obviously doesn’t work for things like cropping and image sizing, but it’s great for painting, adding elements, or even sharpening/blurring. You’ve always got you unaffected base layer to work with right there in the file.
I also tend to group layers together into Layer Groups, which lets me keep things organized, and hide and show multiple layers at once. You can also duplicate a whole Layer Group (including Adjustment layers) from one image to another, which can be very useful.
David,
My processing skill had been primitive. AP and Adobe illustrator were used to make montages and posters of microscopic or biochemical images.
Manipulating photographs is what it is all about. see http://auspat.blogspot.com/2007/12/i-live-on-globe-but-its-flat-outside-my.html
for my thoughts on the matter.
Henry,
I especially enjoyed your transformation technique with the “abstracts.” Viewing all the chips of pure color is like being at the paint store, unable to decide which hues I like best.
Sunil:
I just realized with some chagrin that I haven’t added my two cents here.
Photoshop offers a regular buffet of options, many of which speed up processes and facilitate experimentation. Quite frankly it’s a matter of which tongs to grab depending upon your diet. I definitely go back to the darkroom days with the red lights and the sharp tang of developer. There was always the element of risk as so much, from a pinhole leak in your camera to a screwed up chemical formulation, could ruin that rare smile on the bear’s snout. The whole thing was an adventure and I figure that it will always attract aficionados, much as steam railroading maintains a fan base.
But from a painter’s point of view, the whole thing is great as one can quickly and easily run through a host of possibilities in preparation for a final image.
Sunil:
Steve mentions your ship image in “Twilight Zone” terms, and I can see it. As your ship pushed through my mind it dislodged a “Philadelphia Experiment” association. In fairness I should add that the Philadelphia Experiment is an oft-told story about a Navy effort in WWII to teleport a ship using magnetic fields. Debunked – no such thing. But the outlined profile appears to have the quality of a field – an emanation – about it. What better use for this effect than such a boat out on the horizon. It says to me that, when well chosen, the artistic choices in filter can be poetic.