Does anyone here refuse to post process?

Soldato
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Auto focus must by inference be cheating as well, also light metering, auto white balance, the flash in all it's guises, reflectors, any filters, pretty much anything that effects in the slghtest way the "true" world you see before you.

Are you saying you cant be a good photographer without those "aids"?
Are you saying you cant take great pictures without those "aids"?

Turn all that off and do it yourself rather than letting the camera do it for you. What good is a photographer if 75% of the work is already done?


With today's modern uber equipped cameras, photographers have got lazy.
 
Soldato
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Are you saying you cant be a good photographer without those "aids"?
Are you saying you cant take great pictures without those "aids"?

No, you are. All those items are merely tools for a photograhper as is PP in the digital age. The dark room is an art form in itself, and if you think nothing ever happened in there with past "traditional" methods, you're mad.
 
Soldato
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I post process but to an absolute minimum. On the rare occasion that I get a shot how I want it I won't do anything. That's happened once so far in about 4 years. Okay I suck, but still :D

I've always hated the over processing of a shot needlessly, like HDR on a poor shot to try and make is something special. The last time this was mentioned on these boards it turned into a 5 page argument of "what is over processing".

Basically take the photo, correct it to how I saw the shot at the time and that's me done. Unless I'm deliberately looking for a weird effect to suit a theme (Lomo, etc).
 
Soldato
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No, you are. All those items are merely tools for a photograhper as is PP in the digital age. The dark room is an art form in itself, and if you think nothing ever happened in there with past "traditional" methods, you're mad.

Exactly, they are tools (I prefer to call them aids) and if your a great photographer then you shouldn't need them (just like you shouldn't need PP). You should be able to pick up any camera and produce great photographs.

You cant exactly call yourself a great driver if you drive an automatic can you...

The dark room is old school and I don't consider that to be cheating. Time and effort goes into a dark room and skill is required. Its part of the history of taking photographs.
 
Soldato
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I don't know any but there must have been great photographers before the dawn of Adobe Photoshop. Just look at the great pics from the World Wars...

With all due respect your argument will fly further with some contextual study on the subject. Photographers have been manipulating their great pictures before far the 'dawn of Adobe photoshop'. Image manipulation didn't suddenly just pop up with the turn of the digital age.

Exactly, they are tools (I prefer to call them aids) and if your a great photographer then you shouldn't need them (just like you shouldn't need PP). You should be able to pick up any camera and produce great photographs.

You cant exactly call yourself a great driver if you drive an automatic can you...

The dark room is old school and I don't consider that to be cheating. Time and effort goes into a dark room and skill is required. Its part of the history of taking photographs.

Where are you going to draw the line with what's considered an 'aid'? Manual focus ring? Different length lenses? Higher quality optics? Taller photographer giving them a better vantage point? I think your lack of knowledge in this area is showing drastically, and I suggest you perhaps research what you think makes a good photograph before cementing yourself in your current ill-informed 'purist' stance.
 
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Soldato
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The dark room is old school and I don't consider that to be cheating. Time and effort goes into a dark room and skill is required. Its part of the history of taking photographs.

There were technical advances in the darkroom too! Is using a digital timer of current enlargers cheating compared to timing it by the printer merely counting? What about contrast filters? Is using a diffusion enlarger cheating compared to a condenser enlarger? Or just shining a lightbulb through a negative?

Honestly with this train of thought the 'purist' thing to do would be to just not bother! We'll tell stories about it instead! :p
 
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Soldato
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With all due respect your argument will fly further with some contextual study on the subject. Photographers have been manipulating their great pictures before far the dawn of Adobe photoshop. Image manipulation didn't suddenly just pop up with the turn of the digital age.

Agreed. Dodging, burning, cropping, vignetting, split toning etc, all that has been around for years in the dark room. I don't see where his war photographers point comes in.

Exactly, they are tools (I prefer to call them aids) and if your a great photographer then you shouldn't need them (just like you shouldn't need PP). You should be able to pick up any camera and produce great photographs.

The dark room is old school and I don't consider that to be cheating. Time and effort goes into a dark room and skill is required. Its part of the history of taking photographs.

What?! They're both an art in their own right. How is processing in a dark room a skill, but digital processing isn't? Time and a hell of a lot of effort goes into both forms of processing, and personally I find the digital processing harder (to an extent) than dark room processing.
 
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Caporegime
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You should be able to pick up any camera and produce great photographs.

Wrong, wrong, so damn wrong. When I changed from my 350D to 40D initially my shots on the 40D sucked balls, took a while to get used to it, get used to how the camera worked etc.

You cant exactly call yourself a great driver if you drive an automatic can you...

My friend recently passed her manual driving test, doesn't mean shes a great driver though. Years of experience makes you a good driver. Exactly the same as picking up a camera.


The dark room is old school and I don't consider that to be cheating. Time and effort goes into a dark room and skill is required. Its part of the history of taking photographs.

So the several hours people slave over pp'ing isn't a skill in itself? They are both the same thing, ones digital, one isn't.


Photoshop can I ask do you shoot in RAW or JPEG?

Now let me ask you this, see this image

vista.jpg


Does any of that look fake to you? (I'm not picking an argument here or getting hirate over it, genuine question) - Does this look fake to you in any way shape or form?
 
Soldato
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Exactly, they are tools (I prefer to call them aids) and if your a great photographer then you shouldn't need them (just like you shouldn't need PP). You should be able to pick up any camera and produce great photographs.

You cant exactly call yourself a great driver if you drive an automatic can you...

The dark room is old school and I don't consider that to be cheating. Time and effort goes into a dark room and skill is required. Its part of the history of taking photographs.

Oh I can see where you're coming from, I just disagree :D

To use your analogy all current F1 drivers... Well you can see where I'm going with that :)

Just because digital PP is more accessible it doesn't suddenly make it cheating. If you're achieving the exact same result as what can done in a dark room, what's the difference?

Of course you can do a lot more digitally in this day and age, and I do think that there is a point that a photograph can become a digital image. However this does not devalue such an image, it is just another way of expressing your art in an intended manner.
 
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Soldato
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I'm not going to argue with you guys.
Obviously you guys know better than me which doesn't bother me as I was merely expressing my-side of the equation.

But i'll say it again - a good photographer does not need "aids" (tools as you call them here) or post processing. The skill is to get it right without using aids or post processing.

A photograph should be of the here and now as composed by the photographer capturing that moment as it is in its purist form without the need to make it "better" back in the studio.
 
Soldato
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I'm not going to argue with you guys.
Obviously you guys know better than me which doesn't bother me as I was merely expressing my-side of the equation.

But i'll say it again - a good photographer does not need "aids" (tools as you call them here) or post processing. The skill is to get it right without using aids or post processing.

A photograph should be of the here and now as composed by the photographer capturing that moment as it is in its purist form without the need to make it "better" back in the studio.

you havent provide a single example of a good photographer as you would call it. can you name one who doesnt use post processing? just one?

phate - that sea bed doesnt look natural at all :p
 
Caporegime
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phate - that sea bed doesnt look natural at all :p

Well, the original point I was going to make was that infact that NOTHING in that image is fake, nothing is photoshopped in.

However, when it was taken due to being so bloody bright and hot and literally no wind the reflections were huge causing the image to lack a serious amount of contrast, detail, and whatever else.

Using tools (in the exact same way it would have been done in a dark room, but in photoshop) I brought a lot of the detail back in, turning it into what a lot of people have stated to be a stunning image (I'm saying what others have said)

Point is without PP'ing this would not have been possible, and would've rendered the image useless and due to shooting in a RAW format the camera captured it and allowed ME to develop it. No different to how people would've done in a dark room. However, going by Mr Photoshops logic, this isn't the right way of doing it, therefore my image is a cheat.


I can appreciate if people like to minimize the amount of PP'ing they do to keep it looking natural, that is not what Photoshop is trying to say.
 
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I'm not going to argue with you guys.
Obviously you guys know better than me which doesn't bother me as I was merely expressing my-side of the equation.

But i'll say it again - a good photographer does not need "aids" (tools as you call them here) or post processing. The skill is to get it right without using aids or post processing.

A photograph should be of the here and now as composed by the photographer capturing that moment as it is in its purist form without the need to make it "better" back in the studio.

I get the point you are trying to make; but honestly, pretty much every professional photographer will process in one form or other even those shooting film. Does it make them any less a photographer? I often hear this opinion from those who don't know how to process, or cannot do it very well and just rule it out altogether with the 'purist' argument.

I completely disagree with your last point, but it is your opinion so also respect that. You could call filters 'tools'; as they are altering an image to a certain extent. ND filters can dramatically alter a scene; from capturing motion to darkening a sky, is this not purist either as your eyes are not really seeing those streaks or gradients in the sky?

I personally think that there is a level to where processing is acceptable. For me this line is crossed when the impact or the focal/talking point of the shot is as a result of processing, it is no longer a photograph but a piece of digital art. Nothing wrong with that as I like both.

I think a 'good' photographer will get as close to a perfectly exposure as possible with minimal processing where necessary. Shooting landscapes I have learnt a lot from just taking photographs. My photos today are far less processed than they were when I first starting with photography. There will always be a level of post processing as we all have to get with the times at some stage.

:)
 
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When I 1st started photography, I didn't really like the idea that people manipulated their images heavily in photoshop.

To me, that doesn't say they're a great photographer, it means they're a great graphics artist. It used to bug me in competitions, as its didn't show great photography, just great skill in photoshop. And to me that kinda felt like cheating.

I've come to accept that PP is inevitable in getting the best from images, but I wont go so far as swapping skies completely, or cloning out significant parts of the image. I personally think thats too far.
 
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But i'll say it again - a good photographer does not need "aids" (tools as you call them here) or post processing. The skill is to get it right without using aids or post processing.

I know this is one person's opinion and everyone has their own, making this quite a debate - but I do question the view of not needing aids "to get it right".
I always shoot raw and always have to process as it has already been stated here as being a normal workflow for raw files. However I would like to extend this beyond processing/manipulation and question whether the purists would consider a tripod an aid and a sin of "a good photographer"?
Should a good photography always have to be rock steady and level, and how would a photographer be a subject of his/her own composition without the aid of a self timer/remote.
Would you consider these tools a part of "pre-processing"?
 
Soldato
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However I would like to extend this beyond processing/manipulation and question whether the purists would consider a tripod an aid and a sin of "a good photographer"?
Should a good photography always have to be rock steady and level, and how would a photographer be a subject of his/her own composition without the aid of a self timer/remote.
Would you consider these tools a part of "pre-processing"?


A tripod or a timer are not aids as they have no impact on the exposure and they do not alter the image in any way or form. Its no different to someone resting their camera on a wall or on the ground or indeed any other surface.

Your really taking the argument to the extreme. With your line of thining you might aswell call your hand an "aid" as its holding the camera....
 
Caporegime
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I'm sorry photoshop what you are saying really is wrong. I know we all have our opinions but the whole point of a RAW image is so the camera does no processing at all (like it does when it shoots in JPEG) so the user has as much flexibility as possible basically exactly the same as it would have been done back in the dark room years ago.
 
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Probably already been said but each to their own!

Personally I love post-processing, I think if you want to make it anywhere in the business then you need to stand out, and taking a technically good picture won't do that, adding your own style to the photo will.

Paparazzi is probably the only exception? They seem to want to depict the scene or celebrity how they are, and in some cases worse than they are.

Advertising and editorial, both selling something, a product or lifestyle. They're going to want to depict a perfect scene, something eye-catching. Even something as simple as cross-processing can add a needed warmth to a photo, or a slight heal tool to get rid of that fingerprint on a product being sold.

Either way I don't see anything wrong with it, if they were to use photos straight out of the camera they'd put themselves at a disadvantage against those who do.

I don't quite understand the elitist attitude of people who don't post-process. Photography is a way of expressing yourself, or recording a scene of how you remember it, but not necessarily how it actually was.

Funnily enough the only photos I used straight out of camera was a few films I shot on my Canon AE-1 a few months back, tasty film grain!
 
Caporegime
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While that's true I just don't feel it's a photo anymore, it may as well be a CGI render because it doesn't actually exist in reality. Not saying there isn't skill involved but things like cloning big things (small stuff I can live with) out of photos just seems like loosing the integrity of the photo without jumping the gap into the creativity of creating art. IMO obviously.

While I agree to an extent I think it really depends on whether you want to take a photo and have it look like the scene or take a photo and have it look like art.

I have two processing "styles" as such, the first is essentially just touching up (bit of contrast, sharp, colour adjust) which leaves the photo essentially as it came out of camera, good for those shots to put in your photo album as such. I then have a second "style" where anything goes, a bit of HDR (not the nasty extreme stuff, more understated), changes in contrast, colour, brightness, B&W, all sorts, aimed at making the photo turn from a nice snapshot to "art".

The former is good for documentary shots (such as garden birds) or holiday photos and TBH if you have good equipment, a rudimentary knowledge of how to use a camera and a reasonable "eye" then they are generally pretty easy to take (obviously there are exceptions but most garden bird shots come into this category). To be very good they obviously take some skill but there are so many non skillful ones out there.

The latter is good for anything and IMO turns you from someone who takes snapshots with your expensive camera to a true "artist".If you've spent 20 minutes trying to get the right angle, exposure length etc, after choosing the right time of day and location then it's a little silly to not then get the best image out of your "negative" (ie RAW shot). With these sort of shots merging exposures, cloning and deleting parts of the image, changing colour to B&W (B&W with digital is pretty heavy PP IMO), excessive colour and contrast changes are all fair game. I see it as just painting with a photograph.

Neither way is the right way as such (I do both regularly) but neither is wrong either and I think those that don't use post processing are essentially in the dark ages, it's like not using filters or AF or IS.:confused:
 
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