There is a saying; learn how to take photographs and not make them. Although saying many love to take and edit photographs but using alternative software and photo shopping certain elements of the picture taken. there is nothing against the use of photo shops or imaging software that allows you to play around with the image to adjust contrast, brightness and stuff, nothing complicated, but when its used on a regular basis as it is it becomes one of thee top sins of photography.

You see so many people ruining already bad photos using Instagram and Facebook and they think it’s brilliant processing. In a society we live in we are more bombarded with over-photoshoped images, some are great, some are plain ugly but most of the shots you now see are beyond exceptional. You have this dilemma of what is art and what is not. Does that make a professional photographer using these methods less experienced. No it does not, but to a working photographer and someone who has studied masters in the art of photography it can be quite insulting to them, being biased and resentful because of the methods they use. But does using tools mean that the originality of the photographers craftsmanship is dying.

We can all be creative and I do not judge people because some of these works create spectacular images, many great wallpapers – fantasy, nature, Zen are all made by photo manipulation and It is okay to bow in front of these talented people who are highly skilled & creative in doing so. There is no doubt that photo shop and several other post processing software(s) are unavoidable and a necessary part of today’s post processing cycle or can it be avoidable, because to a certain extent it belatedly ruins the whole raw picture, you constantly see these laser eyes; people with white-washed faces which doesn’t match the real aesthetic for beauty.

Whatever happened to photography for the sake of art?

What happened to the simplicity of nicely contrasted black and white images?

What happened to vivid full-colour shots?

We can also say that with the high use of technology available the so called professional photographers these days are really unskilled, inexperienced and who are fashioning themselves to be photographic purists in an attempt to ameliorate their own insecurities for not disciplining themselves in all aspects of the trade, especially editing or am I just demonising photographers. The industry is changing at a fast pace no doubt, and after all photographers have to adapt to changes in technology or they’ll get phased out. But I wittingly hate it when photographers use Photoshop because it destroys the original photo, the raw contents simply dissolve into something new. But you could say it has its good uses, it’s a another form of portraying art. Some people only refer it to a slight difference in philosophically or morally between using Photoshop to manipulate photographs and using older darkroom techniques that were an established part of what would today be called ‘post-capture’ photography. But if you look in the eyes of a photographer it comes from a another perspective, they use the camera but they cannot capture what the eye sees, no matter how good the photographer is. You need to Photoshop the image to recreate what you saw.  For those that use Photoshop and other software’s to recreate images normally say that these methods breathe the very life into their images using all the tools. You don’t judge a carpenter by his hammer, you judge him by the work he does so I guess photography is no different. It also has major downsides, which coincides with the media of course. A lovely flawless skinned model on the front of a glossy magazine is nice to look at, but it tends to give a false impression of how we should look. Pressurising both women and men to look the same way. Which most the time is impossible.

 

 

You can easily crop anything onto another background so every controversy can be on a single image.

It might look like the best big thing, but it uses can be far more the opposite, you can not really know if the image is real. Its all fakery. As seen in the pictures, they are both the same women but with Photoshop, her complexion was smoothed and given a doll-like sheen. Her eyes were made wider, her nose slimmer and her lips fuller.

Photoshop is more very versatile but picture sells itself, the method is therefore irrelevant is it not. For artists it is the greatest thing to happen, raw enables hack photographers to be as good as the best if they shot a hundred pictures of something. But editing photos can make anything seem like anything. below is another example where the image has been manipulated in such a way that you tell just by looking at it. This is when PS goes wrong.  It portrays the wrong image, tucking someone’s tummy in, giving a lean waistline or increasing their breast size doesn’t make them look perfect, or doll like.

Unfortunately this  is what we are portraying in today’s world. Even governments use it for propaganda. Editing photos can cause global disputes and even wars if Photoshop images are not labelled, sometimes adding images can cause an entire nation or continent to panic and adding a blurred image into a focused background can cause a country to search for that image. You can say that would be a little too extreme, okay maybe so, but it has its uses. Photography is capturing art. Photo manipulation is creating new art using photographs as raw materials. Its whether we believe that methods used such as abode PS or any other software’s to use final touches completely destroys the very essence and soul of the original picture or is the world is seeing a creativity as a tool.

 

Published article By Maria’m AS (editor Truth revoloution)