Blackwood
Contributor
I've never really bought that "a picture should be what you saw" . Maybe if you're a documentary photojournalist, but most of us aren't. On photo forums, that adage is common, and often uttered by people who then post their desaturated images of things with millimeter wide depths of field. Maybe I'm weird, but I neither see in grayscale, nor have I ever been able to focus my eyes with as shallow a DOF as a f/1.2 or 1.4 lens with a subject a foot and a half away.
A picture should be what you want it to be, period.
Now, maybe if you're loading up photoshop and masking out the background so you can place your friend at the top of the Eiffel tower, that's "cheating." Per pixel manipulation is often a no-no in contests and assignments (the only areas in which rules apply). But color balance, tone curve, sharpness, contrast, etc. are all fair game. Even if you only keep JPEG images straight out of camera, those things have been applied. Hell, even most RAW software packages apply a tone curve by default on a per-camera basis, and it's not linear.
The question is: do you want to be involved in the application of all those things, or do you want to let the software engineers back in japan (or wherever) decide for you?
If you shoot film and make your own prints, you make decisions affecting the look of the print when developing the film, when exposing the paper, and when developing the paper. If you send your film in or drop it off somewhere, it likely ones through an automated process, yet still decisions have been made in post which affect the look of the final print.
To me, post processing is part of the enjoyment. I love printing in a darkroom, and similar love to a certain extent working in Lightroom. I'd say that, short of per-pixel manipulation (adding or subtracting objects), post processing is as much fair play as is pre processing (setting up lights, cameras, lenses, etc).
A picture should be what you want it to be, period.
Now, maybe if you're loading up photoshop and masking out the background so you can place your friend at the top of the Eiffel tower, that's "cheating." Per pixel manipulation is often a no-no in contests and assignments (the only areas in which rules apply). But color balance, tone curve, sharpness, contrast, etc. are all fair game. Even if you only keep JPEG images straight out of camera, those things have been applied. Hell, even most RAW software packages apply a tone curve by default on a per-camera basis, and it's not linear.
The question is: do you want to be involved in the application of all those things, or do you want to let the software engineers back in japan (or wherever) decide for you?
If you shoot film and make your own prints, you make decisions affecting the look of the print when developing the film, when exposing the paper, and when developing the paper. If you send your film in or drop it off somewhere, it likely ones through an automated process, yet still decisions have been made in post which affect the look of the final print.
To me, post processing is part of the enjoyment. I love printing in a darkroom, and similar love to a certain extent working in Lightroom. I'd say that, short of per-pixel manipulation (adding or subtracting objects), post processing is as much fair play as is pre processing (setting up lights, cameras, lenses, etc).
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