What's more Important: Taking Pictures or Photoshop?

[Patrick FR]

Peter Stewart shared an interesting Before/After Photoshop Gallery.

 

I wonder if today mastering Photoshop has become more important than taking pictures. How important is Photoshop in your work?

 

http://www.peterstewartphotography.com/Before-and-After-Gallery/i-5pxQgNt

[milandro]

they sell these pencils now

 

fuck-photoshop-20110202-121614.jpg

[milandro]

beautiful images but they are all the same, really.

[Aswald]

It's important for me.

 

It brings me closer to what I saw and felt before taking the photograph.

 

I would never replace whole skies like he did. That's more fabrication than photography...

Edited April 13, 2016 by Aswald

[milandro]

I like the ability shown off here, but perfection can be extremely boring.

[mdm]

Something I like more, something less, one looks quite natural, another fully artificial... If you've got plenty of time you can afford it, but it is not that important...

[deva]

I'm fed up with all the hyper real stuff... it is stylized art more than a photographic representation of the real world. I like simple photography that says something about life. Lots of what I see today is more about itself... trumpeting its own enhancements rather than being a transparent window to the world.

[Fredkelder]

A camera is a tool, and a software is a tool too.

 

You can use PP moderatly, or profusely. In most of the medias, 99% of the readers are only attracted by spectacular photographs, flashy renderings and perfect skins. Maybe people think the real life is boring and they want to dream. Or someone could call it "Aesthetics for the masses".
 

So, in the digital era, if the photographer wants to meet this expectation, a shot is only the first step of the digital production chain.

 

In my case, I use RAW+Lightroom. Sometimes I play with effects, sometimes I deal with simplicity. Depends on my feeling.

 

Edited April 13, 2016 by Fredkelder

[David Thompson]

The images are good, like a movie shot on green screen, it has its place, but not in my photography, and if I was buying an image for the wall, yes, my pictures are memories, framed for my wall, RAW to JPEG to Print or SOOC

[Tikcus]

Lightroom more important to me than Photoshop

 

However I still shoot raw+jpeg, if i need the photo instantly having a jpeg is useful

 

I develop the photo in Lightroom (exposure/clarity/sharpness etc etc etc)

If I need to manipulate a photograph (such as creating a multiplicity image, or using the liquify tool) I'd use photoshop.

 

Adobe Lightroom/photoshop, can not make up for bad composure; however, it can improve other photographs (if shot in raw), where white balance is off, exposure/clarity/sharpness etc etc etc needs tweaking.

the tools available can be used to improve a photograph.  

 

If I can ask a the same question but back in the days of film.

 

Was the darkroom more important than taking the photograph?

 

A lot of Photographers spent more time in the darkroom, enlarging, & developing, their photographs than they ever did taking the images.

I recently spent time in the darkroom for a still life project, creating a test sheet, enlarging the photograph (cropping the bits i didn't want), developing the image, stopping the image, fixing the image, washing the image, drying the image, then unhappy with the result, so add magenta, another test sheet, another enlargement, developed, stopped, fixed, washed.

Keep repeating until happy.

 

Personally it is much easier and quicker to use lightroom/photoshop but it is basically just using a digital darkroom

[CRAusmus]

It's a fact that the human eye has way more dynamic range then your camera does.  Sometimes you want to show the view what you are seeing and you can't do it with one exposure in camera.  Photoshop is just a tool.  I just saw an image today from a Red Bull Photographer of Tommy Caldwell climbing the Dawn Wall with the sky and the valley lit up.  The photographer described being on that wall shooting this climb and seeing the sky full of stars and the valley lit below, but because Tommy was climbing in the dead of night to get the coldest temps possible, the camera could not capture the scene as he saw it, so he took multiple exposures and combined them in PS...

 

To answer your question, as graphic designer I use Photoshop, sometimes all day long.  I tend to use Illustrator and InDesign more than photoshop though.  Just really depends on the time of year and what the objective of the moment is...

 

There is also no debate...Ansel Adams was a master behind the lens, and in the darkroom.  Many of the early photographers spent more time in the darkroom then they did behind the lens capturing the image.

Edited April 14, 2016 by CRAusmus

[Aswald]

Photoshop has given us control of "processing" our "negatives", in this case our raw files. To be a fully accomplished digital photographer, good knowledge of digital darkroom is important.

 

If two photographers with the same gear shooting the same location at the same time with the same settings, how do you tell their work apart?

[erwiurewurwehu]

The page makes me feel a little better about my own pictures. I always find my pictures a little dull compared to what you see on sites like 500px but it seems mostly in the post processing.

[darknj]

It heavily depends on the usage you have of your pictures.

 

Some want to show you what they saw, other what they have seen inside their head and others, just need a "canvas" to start brushing to create something completely different.

Is any of them wrong ?

 

As far as I am concerned, it's a case of both of them are important and none of them are important.

 

Both the picture taking part and the post processing are just tool to allow us to express something in a better way. To convey emotions or ideas. 

It is a lot easier to convey sadness if your colors are colder than warm, slightly over exposing a shot can create "dream like" pictures where things aren't perfectly sharp.

 

But let's push it one step further for the sake of argument. Is your camera important to take the picture ? Let me me explain, if you never show your pictures to anyone but yourself, do you need a camera ? Aren't your eyes and your own memory enough ?

[mdm]

 

 Let me me explain, if you never show your pictures to anyone but yourself, do you need a camera ? Aren't your eyes and your own memory enough ?

 

 

If you are a fisherman who spend a good day on the river, enjoyed wonderful weather, silence and had a great catch, but you released all fishes you've got afterwards and returned home having nothig to show... Do you need a fishing rod?

Well, I defenetly need a camera as my memory is not that good... 

[Lumens]

Photography is composed of two areas of knowledge.  That is "Image Capture" and "Image Processing".  This has been true since the beginning whether Image processing was performed with chemicals of software.

 

Which is more important depends on the success of the image capture.  There are times when image capture is most challenging and image processing completes the process.  I consider both to be equally important, although processing to be unreal really turns me off.  I believe image processing should bring out the truth of what was being captured.

[milandro]

When I was 18 I used to think that one doesn’t need a camera to “ take" his pictures, but now that I am older and perhaps wiser I no longer think that.

 

A Dutch photographer, Paul Huf, told this story once.

 

An artist had asked him to take a picture for a project that If I remember well was called “ the great nothing” , it was a picture of a white wall, then printed on paper. He said that he could have just as well used a piece of white paper the result would have been the same.

 

The artist insisted that it was done like this, the proper way.

 

There is a sacrality, an importance in taking the picture and there is another one in processing.

 

But the process should be a gimmick. I suggest otherwise to look up the term mannerism  

[Tikcus]

Using Jpeg (not even using raw and converting in to jpeg in camera) , to me this is the same as taking your photos and sending your film away to be developed back in the film days

 

All be it with a big differences, with digital you can instantly review and retake if it is not to your liking instantly.

 

How you process the photograph all depends on what you want to use them for?

 

If you are producing a piece of art, you will almost certainly process the photograph yourself.

If it is a snapshot, chances are the jpeg will be good enough (most people take photos on a mobile phone, and they are happy with the results).

 

Along with my previous post, I agree with what others have said, the taking of the photograph and the developing are 2 parts of the job.

[Kaisui]

I'm not a big fan of photoshop, i only use Lightroom for my photography, i've never been fan of making multiple exposures or HDR at all but i admit that i've tried it sometimes, i guess everybody has their style or way of doing things, what is very fascinating to me is that some of the pictures in the gallery are well done and look really good, the only thing that is a very big NO to me is changing the sky or adding elements that weren't present at the moment, but that's just me and my opinion, apart from that the results are excellent.

[mckinleyma]

I was taught to get it as right as you can in the camera and it will save you darkroom time. Oh, the days of film and paper. Today I still try to follow that idea because I would rather be shooting than editing. What Peter seems to do is completely new images, it's more digital art. He is creating images that may never naturally present themselves. They are beautiful but misleading, but this isn't saying I might not give it a go myself.

[Tikcus]

I'm not a big fan of photoshop, i only use Lightroom for my photography, i've never been fan of making multiple exposures or HDR at all but i admit that i've tried it sometimes, i guess everybody has their style or way of doing things, what is very fascinating to me is that some of the pictures in the gallery are well done and look really good, the only thing that is a very big NO to me is changing the sky or adding elements that weren't present at the moment, but that's just me and my opinion, apart from that the results are excellent.

 

Changing subject, slightly

 

I like your Painting with light "2016" picture on flickr

 

an example of a photoshopped image that is impossible without, that i created earlier this year

 

https://flic.kr/p/D5jNHp

Edited April 14, 2016 by Tikcus

[darknj]

Ohh it's the same concept as Daisuke TAKAKURA, right ?

[Tikcus]

Ohh it's the same concept as Daisuke TAKAKURA, right ?

 

yeah, although i took inspiration from the work of Paul M Smith, and Kelli Connell

[jorjitop]

I think that this is a big question in photography.  I am not a professional.  Photography for me means seeing a "photo" and recording it.  I count on the camera do make an accurate recording.  It irritates me if what I see in the camera is not what I saw with my eyes.  To be honest, since moving to a Fuji X-T1 from a Nikon SLR, I more often question the colour fidelity of the Fuji.

 

The manipulation of the images is an art form.  Whatever you use, let's say Photoshop to generalise, it is the creation of a new image.  Since you are away from the original scene, your creation may not be exactly what you saw.  I do not begrudge those who create "art" out of photographic images.  It often generates magnificent images, but it does not do what I want.

 

I want to spend my time seeing a "photo" and capturing it.  I have no interest in spending my time manipulating it later.  That, to me, is not photography, it is another art.  Not less, but different.

[gordonrussell76]

A lot of these photo's are the visual equivalent of T-Pain