Is one considered a photographer if he relies alot on photo-enhancing software?

Use of photo-enhancing software (e.g. lightroom) = good photographer?


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I have seen what CS5 can do to a digital photo, so, my conclusion is that all digital camera users do not qualify to be called "photographer". And any Digital camera user who says that he does not PP is a liar, so he does not qualify to be a photographer also, myself included, unless I shoot film and print directly from film.

what process u gonna use ar?:bsmilie: that itself is already pp in its own form:sweat:
 

My take:

Post processing is such an added advantage in the digital age and anyone denying this and not able to edit effectively and creatively are deluding themselves and not keeping up with the times. Digital photography has given us a new paradigm from capture to process to output. It's no longer about capturing the "perfect" image. That's rare and you waste a whole lot of time aiming for that elusive goal.
 

its something a friend brought out to me, that if you need to use photo-enhancing software (e.g. lightroom, cs4, etcetc) to enhance your pictures, or to bring a certain mood to it, would you be considered a good photographer?

Can consider as a PhotoArtist :)
 

So we know you DON'T consider yourself to be a photographer. Then what do you call yourself?

Photoshopper. I spent 5 days on CS5 and came to this conclusion. My wife showed me her family photo taken 63 years ago together with the untouched negative, both exactly the same size, 4.5" x 6.5", and the guy who took that photo was a true photographer.
 

Photoshopper. I spent 5 days on CS5 and came to this conclusion. My wife showed me her family photo taken 63 years ago together with the untouched negative, both exactly the same size, 4.5" x 6.5", and the guy who took that photo was a true photographer.

wa, but when the photo was transposed from negative to print, there weas processing done.

he is a true darkroomer.
 

wa, but when the photo was transposed from negative to print, there weas processing done.

he is a true darkroomer.

Common, with CS5 I can do a few thousand things that no darkroom can do. Have you ever seen a 63 year old negative and print exactly alike, one to one?
 

Common, with CS5 I can do a few thousand things that no darkroom can do. Have you ever seen a 63 year old negative and print exactly alike, one to one?

name 1 or 2 of the few thousand things.

fyi, photoshop is based on the traditional darkroom - what you can do in there. even cloning was doable in the darkroom.
 

Common, with CS5 I can do a few thousand things that no darkroom can do. Have you ever seen a 63 year old negative and print exactly alike, one to one?
Blending, dodging, burning, distorting, cropping etc can all be done in a film darkroom. Curious to know what are the "thousands" of things that PS can do that can't be done in the darkroom.

Anyway the entire process starts with the capturing of an image. That, to me, is still photography. I admit that most hobbyists manipulate the images a lot more in the process from capture to final output, but one shouldn't "live in the past".

Is Sebastien Vettel considered a "driver", since his F1 car does a lot of things for him automatically (traction control, pit lane speed limiter etc)....?
 

did you know these things could be done in the darkroom?

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Bas-relief--advanced-darkroom-technique-4701
http://www.guidetofilmphotography.com/photography-techniques-darkroom.html

Combination printing utilizes two or more photography film negatives to make one print. This technique may be most commonly used for adding clouds to a cloudless sky. To start, you must find a cloud image that matches the same shadows and highlights as the other image or it will clearly look fake. Then determine the exposure for each negative at the aperture and size that you plan to print the single image. Expose the foreground area of the print and dodge the cloud area using the dodging technique as described above. Then replace your negative with the clouds negative and expose the other half of your image while dodging the already exposed foreground. If done correctly, the result will be one fluid image with a cloudy sky. This technique is extremely demanding and difficult to master, but it may be the most rewarding skill.

don't for a second think that photoshop was very much different from the darkroom and this makes the darkroom people much more superior. usually the people who say this don't know much about the darkroom. take a look at all the international salon photography competitions, film categories sometimes have very cool effects that you did not think possible in the darkroom.

what is described in the second link can essentially be seen as hdr of some form, or exposure blending. do you think modern people are so creative to think of something new?
 

take a look at tan lip seng's photos:

http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=87

http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=94
The colour and lines are quite obvious in this image which is further enhanced visually by the touch of human interest. I wish Photoshop was available in those days to lessen the time-consuming darkroom and retouching work put into it. This slide was awarded Honourable Mention of the 22nd Santa Clara International Salon, USA, held in 1977.

http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=81

http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=58
This is an image created by montaging three pieces of film together. Two of silhouettes (the flock of birds and the group of people) were created from transparencies of my collections with lith film. The original colour transparency here is actually the image of setting sun against the silhouettes of the willow trees. This image won the Best Creative Award of the 8th Spectrum International Salon of Guernsey, UK in 1980.

http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=39
I won my first Photographic Society of America Gold Medal for the best slide of the show in Mexico International Salon in 1968. I started to do derivative works in 1967. Due to my knowledge in black white processing, I started to use lith film to create picture with dramatic visual impact. One of my favourite technique was to retain the colour of a subject (in this example, the yellow umbrella) while changing the rest of the image for dramatic effect. By montaging the lith film (obtained by contact printing in the dark room), I was able to create a bias relief effect when I mounted the two pieces of film slightly out of registration. I wish that I had Photoshop at that time. Now is much easier to achieve such an effect at a click of a mouse. You still need a well composed image first to execute the techniques though!

please read the descriptions for these photos... i think you will find it hard to sit around and argue that the darkroom is very much more limited than photoshop. time consuming, less accessible, harder - yes. but people like ansel adams spent a load of time in the darkroom - did you think they did it because they hated light?
 

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n86m, as always your speed and resourcefulness never fail to amaze me!! :thumbsup:
 

Photoshopper. I spent 5 days on CS5 and came to this conclusion. My wife showed me her family photo taken 63 years ago together with the untouched negative, both exactly the same size, 4.5" x 6.5", and the guy who took that photo was a true photographer.
I personally believe 'photo-enhancing software' should be considered only as a tool for photographers. It really doesn't matter how much editing you do to your photos in my opinion. Even after days of editing, your photos will still suck if your composition isn't there.
 

I personally believe 'photo-enhancing software' should be considered only as a tool for photographers. It really doesn't matter how much editing you do to your photos in my opinion. Even after days of editing, your photos will still suck if your composition isn't there.
I guess many people have the misconception that Photoshop is used to rescue badly-taken photos, when in fact it should be thought of as a tool to help the photographer achieve the pre-conceived result.
 

take a look at tan lip seng's photos:

http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=87

http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=94


http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=81

http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=58


http://www.elcreations.org/lipsengtan/photoblog/?p=39


please read the descriptions for these photos... i think you will find it hard to sit around and argue that the darkroom is very much more limited than photoshop. time consuming, less accessible, harder - yes. but people like ansel adams spent a load of time in the darkroom - did you think they did it because they hated light?

What the pro-photographers did in the film days were only done by the very few who could afford such dark rooms. I ran a microfilm processing center for 20 years and I knew the ins and outs of national archives, therefore I don't need a lesson on this. With S$ 120 most can get a student's copy of CS5 and if one is savy in this area, I bet his photos are generally better. In the film days, most wedding photographers were extremely good. When my first son got married, I remembered viewing 10 rolls of film negative accompanied with thumbnail prints of these film strips. We were asked to choose what we wanted to print and enlarge. 100% no doctoring. The real test is to shoot in jpec, use all the in-camera processing you want and stop there. Why don't you do that and post a series of photos done this way. If you can maintain the quality of photos you have been posting here, then I will salute you.
 

What the pro-photographers did in the film days were only done by the very few who could afford such dark rooms. I ran a microfilm processing center for 20 years and I knew the ins and outs of national archives, therefore I don't need a lesson on this. With S$ 120 most can get a student's copy of CS5 and if one is savy in this area, I bet his photos are generally better. In the film days, most wedding photographers were extremely good. When my first son got married, I remembered viewing 10 rolls of film negative accompanied with thumbnail prints of these film strips. We were asked to choose what we wanted to print and enlarge. 100% no doctoring. The real test is to shoot in jpec, use all the in-camera processing you want and stop there. Why don't you do that and post a series of photos done this way. If you can maintain the quality of photos you have been posting here, then I will salute you.

so just because more people can do it now, you think they are not deemed to be photographers?

do you deem tan lip seng to be a photographer, in this case?

technology has allowed for greater accessibility to technique, so you are essentially practising double standards here - if you consider film photographers photographers, and digital photographers who use photoshop photoshoppers.

in the past, filmmakers didn't have such powerful tools for making films that they have today. or at least those who did, needed a lot of capital.

are you saying that today's movies are not really movies? today's filmmakers are not filmmakers? am i the only one seeing your loopholes in logic here?

btw, when i shoot a jpg, the camera processes it. when i shoot in raw and run it by photoshop, i process it.

who's the one who cares more about results here, the person who lets a dumb, inanimate machine think for him, or the person who wants some degree of control over what the output is?

you think the latter has less skill? then you have not understood what photography is about, why tan lip seng did all his bais relief, or montages.

so what is the difference between telling the camera to dial it up 3 notches in terms of contrast, or me doing it in photoshop - other than the fact that once again, i retain a greater degree of control? do you really think people spend loads of time photoshopping?
 

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. If you can maintain the quality of photos you have been posting here, then I will salute you.

you are digressing from the point. It's about whether it's still considered photography if post processing is involved, and I still firmly believe that it is.
 

maybe the next time we see a baker use modern technology to make his cakes, we will say that he is actually a machinist.

to be a good baker, you need to be able to grind out the flour by hand, you need to produce the cream from its raw product. when using the oven, you can't use stopwatch, you can't use modern oven, you must use charcoal and look at the cakes get baked without estimating the time with the aid of modern tools. :bsmilie: if you can do it without the cakes getting burnt and with the standard of your product maintained, anthony lee here will salute you. :bsmilie:

what do humans research technology for? for progress.

film and digital are very different media, the digital output of a dslr is tailored towards malleability , while film came in various different forms. essentially when you used a different film you were using a very marked picture style, with a set WB. now today, with digital you have the option of variance without having to finish 36 frames or swapping out the roll. why would you deliberately limit yourself to become a slave of something a canon/nikon/pentax technician decided was correct?

a lot of people here think that shoot jpg = wa, very skilful... actually you are just being dragged by the nose by what someone else thinks is "correct processing"... so much for skill.
 

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What the pro-photographers did in the film days were only done by the very few who could afford such dark rooms.
That doesn't change the fact that they still used the dark rooms. According to your logic, they are not photographers. Come on, Photoshop is a tool that is available to photographers now. Using it does not equate to not being a photographer. Being insistent on not using it is just being inflexible.

And anyway, are authors who publish their books by print not authors? Because years ago, there were no printers...they manually wrote their books. Should modern authors do that too?
 

name 1 or 2 of the few thousand things.

fyi, photoshop is based on the traditional darkroom - what you can do in there. even cloning was doable in the darkroom.

After 5 days, I know only about 5% of CS5. Give me sometime and I will list out the things I can do with it that a film shooter like me cannot.

Secondly, traditional darkroom facilities were not commonly available even for many pros not to say you and I. Also, doing all those traditional darkroom activities needed qualified people to do sufficiently good work. Try working in those environment like I did for 20 years and then tell me whether you like doing this at home every day. Today, after 15 years of retirement, I am still suffering from such poor environmental exposure and I still have daily lungs problem. And you compare this to CS5.
 

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