If you're not a journalist, there is no limit. You use as much Photoshop as it takes to complete your vision. To put limits on PS use is like forcing an artist to use only the red, green, and blue crayons from the box of 256 It's a silly restriction that does nothing but limit the artist.
Unless you're a beginner, then using only 3 crayons becomes a good lesson
If you're a journalist, however, the following is enough (although I don't know how they define "subtle", "careful", and "excessive")...
Cropping
Adjustment of Levels to histogram limits
Minor colour correction
Sharpening at 300%, 0.3, 0
Careful use of lasso tool
Subtle use of burn tool
Adjustment of highlights and shadows
Eye dropper to check/set gray
NOT ALLOWED:
Additions or deletions to image
Cloning & Healing tool (except dust)
Airbrush, brush, paint
Selective area sharpening
Excessive lightening/darkening
Excessive colour tone change
Auto levels
Blurring
Eraser tool
Quick Mask
In-camera sharpening
In-camera saturation styles
AJ Nadershahi wrote:
How much Photoshop is enough?
Peano wrote:
It always depends on the context.
AJ Nadershahi wrote:
Of course everything can be answered with "it depends". My inquiry is more specific.
Peano wrote:
And more simplistic. You offer only two extremes as alternatives: "no limits" on the one hand, only "minor fixes" on the other. That's just mindless.
So you'd prefer a "maybe sometime yes, maybe sometime no" selection? Or maybe "I don't like reality and prefer photographs that look like oil paintings", or "Don't touch it, you're messing with reality." which I don't think you'd agree to considering your own work.
So you'd prefer a "maybe sometime yes, maybe sometime no" selection? Or maybe "I don't like reality and prefer photographs that look like oil paintings", or "Don't touch it, you're messing with reality." which I don't think you'd agree to considering your own work.
I'd prefer not to try to reduce the alternatives in retouching to a simplistic multiple choice question, nor to a poll that is meaningless.
AJ Nadershahi wrote:
Of course everything can be answered with "it depends". My inquiry is more specific.
It is not specific without the context. For example - the cover is an image of a known person - hence the amount of changes may be criticised for be being a mis-representation of that individual to the world.
On the other hand such changes on an unknown model would be completely different - then it would be presenting an image of someone who might actually look like that and is not in practice mis-representation.
So the answer is - it always depends on the context.
Cropping
Adjustment of Levels to histogram limits
Minor colour correction
Sharpening at 300%, 0.3, 0
Careful use of lasso tool
Subtle use of burn tool
Adjustment of highlights and shadows
Eye dropper to check/set gray
NOT ALLOWED:
Additions or deletions to image
Cloning & Healing tool (except dust)
Airbrush, brush, paint
Selective area sharpening
Excessive lightening/darkening
Excessive colour tone change
Auto levels
Blurring
Eraser tool
Quick Mask
In-camera sharpening
In-camera saturation styles
Although by definition anything excessive is too much I am amazed by some of the "not allowed" list like auto levels. and in camera sharpening and saturation.
And some of the "Allowed" list (including cropping) could be used to radically change the impression of a scene. And what the heck does careful use of the lasso tool mean - it's not the tool it is what you do with the selection that counts
Photoshop is a tool and I think in the skilled hands there is no limit as to how far you go with producing a fine art photograph. The problem to me is with not having the skill people take it to far and this is when it is to far.
That Reuters guideline is to me not quite based on the realities of digital photography. Some of the non-allowed tools are IMO required to "develop" the "negative" from the camera. And why disallow auto levels when the same effect can be done with allowed tools? Similarily, there are allowed tools that do the same as in-camera sharpening, contrast and saturation.
Some of the "Allowed" and "Not Allowed" guidelines, may have to do with reproduction issues and not ethical issues. Auto Levels can clip quite a bit of original data from an image. The thought may be to allow the end user the decision for what is clipped for their particular output process.
I think the idea of retouching is that it doesn't look retouched, thats when you know you have achived a higher level of retouching, yet altered the scene.
This is not a before and after...most people never see the before! So what is too much... I know of someone who spend the better part of a year retouching a landscape, removing all evidence of modern day! The photographer became landscape photographer of the year...go figur
I know of others that have turned day to night...we have a saying here, if it sucks, turn it into B&W and call it art!
Each to their own...
I have done images for other photographers, where the judges wept in tears... go figur! still didn't win!
Retouch the hell out of it, just don't let it show that you have done so and you have mastered it
i remember when digital was just becoming a for-the-masses format, and there were all of these heated debates on fledgling forums as to whether photoshopped images were "real images" or not.
photography is, at its most realistic edge, an inaccurate and incomplete depiction of a moment in time, the (sometimes accidental, almost always manipulated) vision of an imperfect being observing a scene with their human sensory apparatus and their ulterior motives.
the attempt to superimpose rules upon a subjective art form (PJ aside) is somewhat odd to me. imagine if someone had told egon schiele that he couldn't "do that" to his human subjects.
It's a silly restriction that does nothing but limit the artist.
