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The Virus that is Photoshop...
OK. A little tirade. I use photoshop and love it. To pull a decent exposure out of a fuck up. Add a little pop here or there. Pull a scratch etc... BUT this site, and all fashion sites are so driven by bad airbrushing...it is really sad. You end up with girls who think that their skin, no matter how clean is disgusting...they want the pores to disappear. Ughh people are flawed... and that is awesome. Otherwise we would all be wierd-o barbie and ken dolls. Anyway that is my tirade. May 12 05 01:52 am Link I see it pushed more from bad photographers. I would never cast someone with such an image. I have to run and cannot write more now. May 12 05 02:02 am Link It is not Photoshop that is the virus but people who don't know how to use it... Since digital photography is getting really big almost every photographer start from point zero. Today Photoshop is the essential tool that every photographer needed to use in a good and professional way... May 12 05 02:11 am Link The other thing to think aboout is the intended use of the image that you're viewing as "over-shopped." Chances are more than likely that the intended purpose is to sell a fantasy...Offer an illusion of a differnt reality... The entire basis of glamour, for example, is rooted in selling a fantasy. Find the Photoshop.  May 12 05 03:05 am Link eh, just shoot chrome. it's brutally honest. May 12 05 03:53 am Link i can see exactly whats been done to that image although maybe thats cause i know what i'd do. I'm not great at photoshop yet but i'm soooo much better than i was. I look at my first stuff now and think 'what the hell was i thinking, thinking that was good'. Photoshop is something you continually improve at, the people you think suck at it have to start out somewhere. May 12 05 03:58 am Link Posted by Visualclash: And of course I talking here about the digital photographer... May 12 05 04:34 am Link Posted by Visualclash: Absolutely. May 12 05 08:51 am Link Posted by Visualclash: Indeed. While amateur photographers for years, with film, had no tools to modify their image... Publishers for many, many years have been retouching images, knocking out backgrounds, adding and combining, layering, etc. It's nothing new, it's just now in the hands of people who can't use it (excluding those who are very good, of course!). The worst, IMHO, are those who over-retouch skin so that you end up with a model who looks like a plastic doll, and those who lasso out a model and paste them on a background, complete with jagged edges and uneven and non-feathered and blended outlines, etc. Corel Knockout only costs a hundred bucks and plugs right into PSCS. A little training would go a long way. May 12 05 09:10 am Link Posted by Ouch My Eye: I could only wish that I were to look like a brunette Malibu Barbie... Instead I resemble something more like a nubby legged rice picker... Especially when I wear that chinese rice pickin' hat... May 12 05 09:10 am Link So what you folks are telling me is that there is a program out there that I can use instead of having to do emulsion stripping? I can throw away my one brissel horse hair brush along with my Stabillo pencils and my Pasche? I think photoshop is a wonderfull tool and should be learned to be used properly by every photographer. I am old school and welcomed it open arms when it came out. BUT if you don't know how to use it properly then don't try to sell crappy product until you have practiced and practiced until you know how to use it. New retouchers always seem to go to far because they get rapped up in trying to see how far they can go. A little can go alot farther and look better if you do it correctly. All I can say is practice alot and read before you try to push off a butcherd print. Have someone look at your work before you show it to the client and listen with open ears. When you clean your house and bust your but, you sit back and don't notice all that you have done. But the person who saw your house before you started to clean comes back in and says "My gosh! Look at all that you have done!" That can be good and bad. Sit back and think about it. But we ALL have to start somewhere. Get rid of the virus and learn to use PS as a medicine instead. May 12 05 10:02 am Link  Is that so bad? I fixed this for a friend, its not great, but we both thought better than the dark one and the glow seemed more glam. PS is awesome. May 12 05 10:09 am Link Posted by Visualclash: You got that right! May 12 05 01:14 pm Link May 12 05 03:26 pm Link don't do anymore diffused glow please...just get rid of their zits. May 12 05 03:34 pm Link Didn't see a difference between the 2 pics... but then I'm not super talented with PS to know what to look for and that. I don't care for the Barbie doll PSing, Personally I like them to look real, not plastic. I've PSed blemishes out, altered backgrounds(removing stray people/objects, Lightened dark pics, but thats about it for my photography. OH yea Changed one girls eye's from blue to red, but that was at her request...and I didn't shoot those pics. May 12 05 03:36 pm Link I usually shoot chrome. But I've been shooting a lot of digital lately... it can be good. Check my pics - I HATE retouching, so I don't. If anything, I usually bump things around to get MORE pores, more blotchy skin spots... more gross in general. I like gross. I like real and dirty. Photoshop is actually a pretty good way to bump gross up... but I'd never dream of helping someone look better. It's just my shtyle, yo. Rock on. May 12 05 03:47 pm Link in the worlds of fashion and glamour photography, do you think airbrushing and other techniques--all along--have been that much less evident than PS processing? the big difference is that processing the images to produce flawlessness is now, with the advent of digital, in the hands of most everyone. i, for one, don't want to go back to shooting chromes. and personally, since (IMO) so many people are so lame when it comes to post-processing, it just makes my stuff look a bit better. May 12 05 04:03 pm Link  This is a more professional retouch. Can't tell really and thats the point.  Either way its a gret shot. May 13 05 02:07 pm Link how do you people add pics in with ur post ??? i wanna know! Tell me Tell Me!!!  May 13 05 07:01 pm Link everyone needs touching up, but sometimes i feel like photoshop is an excuse to do a million bad shots like they used their depressed friend's webcam and then hit "HIGHEST CONTRAST EVER" to make them look cool. Sometimes PS is a shortcut to complete and total popularity. Hey, if a person is good at using PS like a photographer would touch up photos in the traditional way...then by all means, do this, but as a photographer myself, sometimes it seems like cheating after having to learn to do so much work for one image! it seems as though photography pieces are losing their meaning because people just see a nice image, but they dont know the work that was put into it. it wasnt just created through the hard work in an image program, but rather an experiment using lighting, environment, and a connection between the photographer and the model. i realized that its not just about the power of the camera either, because i did shoots with a photographer that had the best camera ever (im talking like 20 megapixels or something) and he not only was cold and distant, but he didn't take the time to retouch my iamges. AND i paid. Bottom line, PS editing is fine and dandy but I'd like for people to be skilled before they just edit to no return. I'd never want to look "PERFECT" like some sort of doll, but just naturally retouched. And the diffuse glow is good for some images like fantasy, but for normal shots, I don't care for looking like a "glamour shot" image. May 14 05 05:37 pm Link Ok not to be an ass about it - but how can anyone here say they know what the model that was shot looked like before photoshop..... I had this happen many times in the past where I get complaints that say stuff like: Her skin is too smooth - you over photoshopped... etc etc blah blah.. How about if the model just has perfect skin and the way you light it takes care in respecting the skin then no photoshop needed... Maybe it is becasue of the huge influs of crappy photogrpahers taking pictures of subjects that should not be taken photos of ... well let me restate that.... in my line of work - glamour - that happens alot - even the wierdest, uggliest and most horrific things can be taken photos of in proper context... In my opinion it seems to be the fashion (pure bloods) that are having to shoot exactally what is given with no editing that complain the most - and I guess that is ok as it is not what they shoot or how they do it... You still have to light it right - or you spend all night fixing it and it does not look good even then... May 14 05 07:13 pm Link You have to have the image on the web somewhere - at a real URL link.. then you add code to each end of the URL string [img ] URL GOES HERE [/img ] take out the spaces in the IMG tags If I remember my HTML code right today.. Lets try.  Posted by Chanti: May 14 05 07:15 pm Link Posted by (LaMarco Photo): Her belly button is blurry. May 15 05 03:46 am Link Keeping in mind that I'm more of an artist than photographer, do you feel I did an injustice to these individuals or helped the image? I'd like to think I've helped the images... Please excuse the nudity but it was necessary. Rich   May 15 05 04:27 am Link Posted by Rich Mohr: You might want to sharpen the edges of the images a bit, to remove the obvious photoshopping. May 15 05 04:57 am Link I am so going to start using that...... that will give me the artistic freedom I need with my photos.... and then everyone will shut the heck up about blurring a photo.. Posted by Rich Mohr: May 15 05 12:13 pm Link This is an interesting quandry..... you sure helped the images.... but what is our responsibilty to the model when we basicialy edit all their flaws - does this effect the model?? mentally we are telling them they are far from perfect... I think I will start an entire thread about just his... Posted by Rich Mohr: May 15 05 12:15 pm Link I would love to for once see it flipped and the end results being wrinkles and scares..LOL May 15 05 12:19 pm Link Posted by Brent Burzycki: Posted by Rich Mohr: Maybe the answer has more to do with the intended use of the image. If it's a private portfolio, intended for the client's personal use or to share with her boyfriend or husband, do you photoshop out the stretch marks or leave them in? May 15 05 12:21 pm Link Posted by Visualclash: Posted by Visualclash: And of course I talking here about the digital photographer... May 15 05 12:22 pm Link I know a lot of medium format guys that use photoshop and have been for quite sometime....photoshop has been a staple for quite awhile now....all formats.. May 15 05 12:23 pm Link To, photoshop or not to photoshop...Hmmmmmmmm.. I love photoshop for many reasons.. I use it to build layered effects that I put into videos. I use it to create movie posters and business cards. I do cool images for bnds and I remove wrinkles and acne. I will even fix contrast and blemishes. When I shoot I think of the final image...As a photographer I have gotten o the point where I get pretty much what I want in camera. I do find the need to add a little bit of "flare" at times. Its a great tool. I've been guilty of over doing it, to mask my lack of skills as a photog. But as I have gotten better as a photog, I see photoshop as a tool to enhance, not hide anything. I've seen some awesome work, like that of Visual Mind Scapes. These guys rock! PS has it's place...and while it does mean an avaerage Joe with few photog skills can still pull off an awesome photo...so what? To me, it's the final image that I am going to react to. If I like it..I like it.. I dont really care how you got there...At that point I will judge the image as it stands before me. A bad photograph is a bad photograph ...a bad painting is a bad painting ...but art is in the eye of, .....well you know... Vance May 15 05 12:35 pm Link Posted by Vance: HERE HERE! May 15 05 12:39 pm Link May 15 05 03:50 pm Link No one naturally has plasticized glowing skin. That's how we can tell. Of course, I can tell when someone over-edits me because I know what I really look like. Posted by Brent Burzycki: May 15 05 07:02 pm Link Posted by Brent Burzycki: Posted by Rich Mohr: Ironically since working both sides of the camera i have learnt to accept myself a lot more. I've seen all the editing and i've seen most models are far from perfect. Infact it's often the imperfectness and deviations from normality that makes someone attractive. I.e angelina jolie, her lips are way bigger than normal but thats what makes her attractive to certain ppl. I am much more accepting of myself since i started in this industry than i was before, which I would never have thought would be the case beforehand. I know I'm far from perfect and it no longer bothers me, i don't really get offended anymore. Ironically i find different photographers pick out different parts to focus\not focus on anyway proving beauty really is subjective. May 15 05 07:14 pm Link Posted by theda: Just one among many. May 16 05 01:53 am Link Posted by Ouch My Eye: I can honestly say, that the pics that I have posted in my port are NOT airbrushed nor photoshoped and in some you can tell because I have very very light stretch marks on my hip and you know what....I am proud of that. I am showing potential clients my real self. They can do the touch ups for a magazine all they want, but when I get hired...it will be the real deal. Nothing fake. At least, this is for the people who really care about the "natural" looking side of someone's pictures. May 16 05 01:58 am Link |
