Tom Mann
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Even ignoring all the possibilities opened by techniques such as compositing, stitching, focus stacking, camera-controlled off camera flash systems, etc., and staying within traditional, darkroom-like manipulations, Photoshop and other editing programs allows one to easily impart a huge variety of "looks" to a conventional photographic image.
You can change the brightness, contrast and colors either globally or locally. You can impart a soft focus look or you can intentionally over-sharpen it. It's now almost trivial to crop to any aspect ratio, add a vignette or a fake mat or frame. You can reduce or, for that matter, intentionally introduce geometric distortions. The sky is the limit.
The ease of performing such manipulations has led to the popularity of "the" HDR look. For a few years, every bride wanted her photos to look like a Hallmark greeting card with the selective desaturation / spot-of-color look. Texture overlays have made it easy for anyone to get a fake grunge look. Instagram has given lots of popularity to some of their signature looks. Even without a client or a specific intended use, when a photoshopper discovers how easy it is to produce a certain effect, it's easy to become infatuated that look and try to apply it everywhere.
Just yesterday, I had a great (but short) discussion with another member about why he preferred an image to be very dark and high contrast, whereas I preferred to have it be much lower contrast.
Crotale: "...Oh yeah, I totally blew away midtones on purpose, so as to bring out the harshness of the shot...."
Me: "... I would prefer a much lower contrast version where one can easily see nuances of his expression. ..."
In contrast to many images you see on the Internet, where novelty often is the driving force, we each had a reason for our respective preferences -- INTENT. We each wanted to emphasize different aspects of the image.
This got me thinking about exactly how we arrive at our preferences in both "looks", and hence in our image editing decisions.
So, how about a general discussion of this topic:
If you feel like it, post images that you have manipulated that illustrate your point(s) .
Cheers,
Tom M
You can change the brightness, contrast and colors either globally or locally. You can impart a soft focus look or you can intentionally over-sharpen it. It's now almost trivial to crop to any aspect ratio, add a vignette or a fake mat or frame. You can reduce or, for that matter, intentionally introduce geometric distortions. The sky is the limit.
The ease of performing such manipulations has led to the popularity of "the" HDR look. For a few years, every bride wanted her photos to look like a Hallmark greeting card with the selective desaturation / spot-of-color look. Texture overlays have made it easy for anyone to get a fake grunge look. Instagram has given lots of popularity to some of their signature looks. Even without a client or a specific intended use, when a photoshopper discovers how easy it is to produce a certain effect, it's easy to become infatuated that look and try to apply it everywhere.
Just yesterday, I had a great (but short) discussion with another member about why he preferred an image to be very dark and high contrast, whereas I preferred to have it be much lower contrast.
Crotale: "...Oh yeah, I totally blew away midtones on purpose, so as to bring out the harshness of the shot...."
Me: "... I would prefer a much lower contrast version where one can easily see nuances of his expression. ..."
In contrast to many images you see on the Internet, where novelty often is the driving force, we each had a reason for our respective preferences -- INTENT. We each wanted to emphasize different aspects of the image.
This got me thinking about exactly how we arrive at our preferences in both "looks", and hence in our image editing decisions.
So, how about a general discussion of this topic:
- how often can a reason be clearly articulated,
- how often can't you articulate a reason - you just know "you like it",
- how often is it simply based on novelty,
- how often is it based on desired emotional impact,
- how often is it based on fundamental graphic design and compositional principles,
- how often is it based on knowing the limitations of certain media (eg, low rez, half-tone newsprint),
- how often is it based on knowing the eventual size of the image (eg, tiny senior portraits vs. poster sized landscapes)
- how often is it to stay within the conventions of a certain genre (eg, studio portraiture, street, etc.)
- how often is it based on erroneous assumptions / feedback from your system (eg, using an ultra bright Apple monitor putting out over 300 cd/m^2, without hardware calibration) ;-)
- etc. etc. - any other reasons that you can think of?
If you feel like it, post images that you have manipulated that illustrate your point(s) .
Cheers,
Tom M
