Dear All,

I have reviewed many posted photos in the last several days and found that many of the photos cannot be realistic due to the heavy retouching but they please our eyes. There is no question about that photography needs to be aesthetic and innovative. Maybe the most successful photographer is the one who masters the art of pleasing the human eyes instead of recording the real life events. Our eyes can be easily fooled by manipulated photos. The following photo shows an example, which I took during a trip to a science museum with my kids. Please stare at the photo for a couple of seconds:

It appears to move because our eyes usually move slightly from up to down and across, in natural small movements. So...some images with repeated patterns will appear to move by themselves. This is a function of the way the muscles of the eyes work and is an illusion that can be seen in very natural patterns too.

For example, I have a photo of a bunch of flowers. It appears to sway in a breeze because of this same illusion/perception.

I have another piece of art, a painting I painted, of water. When the viewer looks at it, the water seems to move slightly like the gentle movement of a surface of water. This was done with paint on canvas yet it has a repeating pattern.

I enjoy seeing illusions so thanks for posting this pic.

I have not seen any discussion regarding retouching. Let me ask question in this way: in your daily photography, heavy retouch and minimal retouch, which do you prefer?

Steady Hand,

Do you want to share those photos which you mentioned with the forum?

No retouch or only minimal if there is a temporary blemish (e.g a pimple).

I prefer to see natural skin textures including freckles, spots, lines, and wrinkles.

I go for a "natural" appearance to the subject.

I hope this answers your question.

Fun!!

samacath wrote:
Steady Hand,

Do you want to share those photos which you mentioned with the forum?

No.

One is a painting and the illusion is not seen in a photo of the painting.

The other is not for public posting at this time. I have many images that were displayed in my art gallery that I don't show on my website yet. There are business reasons for this.

Steady Hand wrote:
No.

One is a painting and the illusion is not seen in a photo of the painting.

The other is not for public posting at this time. I have many images that were displayed in my art gallery that I don't show on my website yet. There are business reasons for this.

Understand.

That's amazing!

amazing

Cool! I have that on my computer some where. However this is a very cool thing called a lilac chaser, check it out... http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col_lilacChaser/index.html

-Todd

a new MTF chart

digitalbug30d,

What did you mean by a new MTF chart?

Todd,

Thank you for your post and the link. I did not mean to go after illusion, what I want to get most out of this post is the general opinion on what is the best strategy for a successfull photo: 80% retouch with 20% photo design, or 80% photo design with 20% retouch, ...

samacath wrote:
Todd,

Thank you for your post and the link. I did not mean to go after illusion, what I want to get most out of this post is the general opinion on what is the best strategy for a successfull photo: 80% retouch with 20% photo design, or 80% photo design with 20% retouch, ...



I don't think you can quantify it like that. Let's be honest - Ansel Adams and the other masters didn't make straight images from their negatives. They dodged and burned to create their final image, spending as much time in the darkroom as they did before the camera. So I see nothing wrong with using those tools in PhotoShop.
However, there's a point where people go overboard, creating a false illusion that doesn't realistically show how the person really looks. (The "airbrushed" cover photos of Katie Couric, Faith Hill, and many others, for example.)

But to give it a percentage isn't possible - it depends on the individual photo and what the intended result is.

ssteppe,

Thank you for your comment. The percentage figure is only meant to be an example. Your points are well taken and I did not go against using Photoshop. Using Photoshop to enhance a well designed photo is preferred by many of us. Yes, I do have a concern for people to go overboard.

I read some of Steady Hand's posts and realized that what I am really up to is to try to have a balance between the inward and outward, as in the quotation cited by Stead Hand: "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things but their inward significance."

If retouch brings more inward beauty of a photo, I do not think anyone will dislike it; however, a photo lack of inward richness cannot be simply rescued by a heavy retouch. The reason I came to this forum is because I felt that I am reaching a plateau in my own photography: I did not know if I should continue to record real life events in digital format or take more creative approach and think more.

I retouch nearly everything I shoot. I've spent upwards of 10 hours on a single image. This sometimes applies to people photography, everything from run of the mill touch-ups such as blemish removal to all the way through complicated alpha channel extractions, changing outfit colors to changing entire outfits.

Architectural photography sometimes demands very difficult and precise color balancing using intricate networks of masks, gradients, adjustment layers, and tonal corrections. Throw pillows on the sofa might be added or removed. Exterior scenery seen through the windows might be changed entirely... from downtown urban settings to a beach setting.

So, to answer your question, it all depends on the requests of the client. However, I'm approaching your question from a commercial photography standpoint. I would venture a guess that 70-80% of the photographers here are not professional photographers shooting commercial jobs, so their responses will obviously vary.

In closing... it's not the negative that matters, it's the print. However the print is achieved is fine by me. If I could use voodoo, you can be damn sure I would

Jonathan H,

Thank you for sharing your way of doing retouch. Now I had two answers: one from you and the other from Steady Hand. They were quite different. I guess that retouch can go either way: a commercial/professional photographer might need to do his job of generating superb photos and he will use whatever tools including retouch to achieve it; a commercial/professional photographer might also choose using minimal retouch simply because he has too many photos to deal with and he might try to get a good photo in the first place.

In several big events/award ceremonies at my company, I tried to chat with the photographers capturing the events. The minimal retouch was constantly mentioned by those I had talked to and they just did not have the time and the resources to retouch a huge number of photos.

For those of us as amateur photographers, we might have time to fine tune photos through heavy retouch. However, getting right exposure/composition/color balance to begin with might help us improve more than allowing us relying on retouch might do, isn't it?

There seems no consensus on this, one thing for sure is that retouch depends on lot of other factors in a case-by-case base.

it is juss an illusion

i'm just wondering why this is in the people forum...

check out the post-processing forum.

ferrytran wrote:
it is juss an illusion

Yes, it is an illusion. The post is not about illusion. The photo stimulated me to think about retouching ...

ksmahgrts wrote:
i'm just wondering why this is in the people forum...

check out the post-processing forum.


Thank you for pointing out the post-processing forum. I am interested in listening to the opinions on retouch from visitors of this forum rather than retouch techniques, since I am intersted in people photography.

i had that poster up on my ceiling back in college. try smoking a bowl and then looking up at it.