Recently, I was a vendor at a local art show that I attend annually. It takes place in a small Northwest community and I always have people that come each year to say hello, see what’s new in my portfolio, and even talk shop. I also receive a lot of new visitors, which is no surprise, I suppose, unless the overall visitor count for the venue has taken a plunge. This year, the amount of foot traffic had decreased significantly. However, despite the drop off, there was one question I fielded more than I ever have before: “Is it Photoshopped?”.
Almost every customer asked me this question (specifically about the picture of the rose that I’ve included at the end of today’s post). I will be so assumptive as to state that, like myself, a lot of budding photographers, and perhaps even some veterans, struggle for the appropriate answer to this question.
Frankly, the term “Photoshopped” means something different to a photographer than it does to the general public. This year, I began to explain that idea to people, and I was met with an unexpected response. They accepted it. Most admitted that they really had no clue what Photoshop was really used for, or how it worked. More importantly, they often don’t know that many of the frequently used tools and actions in Photoshop and other editing programs were inspired by darkroom techniques used long before the digital era. I personally used to be ridiculously anti-Photoshop. Why? Because I was ignorant.
For some reason digital editing programs have been criminalized like they are out steal your pets, eat all your cornflakes, and somehow cause Rome to fall a second time. Think I’m being overdramatic? Start randomly asking people you don’t know what they think of digital editing and watch them explode with crazy accusations that all photographers are liars, feeding the false image machine. Certainly, there is basis for such accusation. We’ve all seen before and after covers of fashion magazines, models with missing hips, and terrible images that people have tried to “fix” with badly cut and pasted trees, cars, or whatever else may or may not belong. Really, though, the majority of photographers do not practice such evils (I’m not accusing magazine editors of being evil. However, I do feel that people should be left at their original weights, sizes, skin tones..you get the idea. I have my own issues with popular fashion. Really, we all do.). Most of us use digital editing programs the same way we would a dark room. Dark room? Yes, I feel your collective gasp. The basic editing steps we cover on our computers today were once carried out in camera or in that ancient lair of magic and mystery known as The Dark Room. Lets look at three editing steps that are used in digital editing that are based on camera or dark room techniques.
1. Bracketing
If you know digital editing at all you’ve probably seen options like “lighten” and “darken” on certain sorts of layers (I’m not going to name any specific program right this minute). By overlaying one of these on your original photo you can adjust the original exposure a bit. There are other ways to use these tools, but this is the most basic example I can conjure (not to mention we are only dealing with bracketing here).
You can achieve the same idea in camera with a method known as bracketing. Bracketing is simply taking your photo at a certain f-stop, then moving down by one stop to create the same photograph with more exposure. You move up from the original f-stop in the same way to create a darker exposure. In the end you end up with three exposures of the image when you bracket: The intended exposure, an exposure that is one stop darker than the original shot, and an exposure that is one stop brighter than the original shot. Both methods can achieve the same idea, though if you do it in camera, the results are usually for the better (bracketing has several uses, but this isn’t the post where we look into those). However, this is actually very useful digital ‘trick’ know in case you, like most of us, sometimes forget to bracket. There are other methods, like the exposure slider in Adobe’s Bridge, but I prefer the curves layer on “lighten” method. Really, just because I do.
2. Warming Filter
If you’re shooting portraits, its very easy for people to look washed out due to lighting, exposure adjustments, and the fact that the camera cannot see all the depth, color, shadow, and highlights that the human eye can. Its a hard fact to face that, as vibrant as that person in front of you may be, your camera will never catch all of what you see, only most of it. That should be good enough, right? Nope. It will always bother you somehow. We are people, we connect with people, we see people all the time. It will bother you when photographs of people don’t look exactly how you remember them in person. For example, cameras make under eye shadows darker because they don’t penetrate darker areas as deeply as your eye does. This happens because cameras cannot process light the way people can. There’s light in those shadows, but without the help of a fill light or reflector, your camera will never know it. Since color is reflected light, your camera will also struggle to capture all the color you are seeing and expecting to see in someone’s photographed face. As a result, your subject can look washed out (there are myriad other things that can impact the light and color your camera sees or doesn’t see, and there are myriad solutions. For now, lets stick with basics, shall we?). A simple solution is the warming filter that exists in most editing programs I’ve come across. Seems like cheating right? Not really. Before computers, the warming filter was a disc that screwed onto the end of a camera lens to warm up a scene or prevent that wash out ( like a smaller version of those big gels that go over theatre lights). I used the warming filter on that rose to return its original vibrance that the camera had washed out. I don’t consider it cheating so much as proper representation of the subject.
3. Layering/HDR
For some reason people have a huge beef with HDR. It is not my personal favorite, however, used well, it creates some amazing images (See the link at the bottom of the post if you want to seem well executed HDR and color work). Along with HDR, people get really upset when they find out that one image was created by layering multiple images on top of one another and exposing them as one. The reason these two things are connected is because HDR uses the idea of multiple images to attain greater contrast and more color that would otherwise be lost by the camera. When folks start in on this, I ask them to back up.
One of the first things I learned to do in the dark room, dungeon of mystery that it is, was to expose multiple photographs over one another to make a new, single image. While I can’t speak to the first time this was done by a photographer (mostly because I don’t currently have access to my History of Photography book, since I’m writing to you from a coffee shop), it is a very old artistic technique. Perhaps the reason that this idea receives such heat is because it is assumed that photographer’s are just cobbling images together and getting lucky with the results. There’s nothing terribly artistic or professional about that, I would agree. Let me assure you, this method is not so crass or chaotic. Personally, if I plan to produce an image in this manner. I plan each layer of the exposure so everything fits together. I would liken it to writing a novel with each exposure being a chapter. HDR would hold to the same argument, even though HDR as we know it is not possible in a dark room. If you see an image that is composed of several images exposed over each other, you can bet that image took many hours, if not days, or sometimes weeks to complete. No one is cheating or over manipulating with this bit of artistry. The masters taught us how to do this, and we’re carrying on that legacy.
Of course, there are so many other examples of digital editing methods that harken back to the good old days, so many I struggled to pick three and keep the samplings short. If you learned nothing else today, learn this: Be open about your process when people give you the stink eye about using digital editing. Don’t be afraid to point out where digital editing is similar to the dark room (or other pre-digital process if photography isn’t your thing) and where it diverges. Educate people that editing does not mean lying or creating falsehoods. Go a step further and earn their trust by editing responsibly and carefully. If your photograph isn’t broken, there’s absolutely no need to fix it. When people ask about my editing I tell them my rule: If the piece is artistic, I feel free to explore with new ideas. However, that piece is also purposeful and meant to be the way it came out because the end result was the vision I was working to achieve. If I’m working with someone’s face or body, they deserve to be respected and portrayed as who they are, and if I need a warming filter for the sake of that truth, I’ll use it.
