G'day Strike!

On Fri, 8 Mar 2002 19:29:55 +1100, David Strike <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>Is it acceptable to use, for example, Adobe Photo Shop, to remove specks of
>particulate matter in the water so that it's possible to get a more
>realistic image of a fish, (or whatever)?  And having done that, to remove
>background images that detract from the main subject matter? :-)

Of course it is!  AFAIAC, photography is all about creating the final
image, not about the purity of how you get there...  Shooting slides is
slightly different, as the slide *is* the finished product, but digital
photography is much more like shooting prints.

Ansel Adams compared exposing a negative to a composer writing a musical
score.  It's only the starting point...  Creating a print (or a final
digital image) is then like a performance of the score.

You still need to write your score as well as possible - silk purses and
sow's ears, etc, and in general the more manipulation you *have* to do to
an image, the less satisfying it'll be.  But AA used to spend hours getting
his prints right, dodging, burning, despotting etc... and frankly if he
can, we can. :-)

Confession time, the pic of Machu Picchu at the bottom of:
http://huwporter.com/tgallery/galleryt_1.html
was originally two separate colour slides.  The weather was terrible, and I
sat around for bloomin ages hoping for some light to break through, and for
the clouds to part.  After two days, the slides ended up dull and flat, and
no one pic showed all of the background.  I scanned two, spliced the top
left corner from one onto the other, converted to monochrome and pumped up
the contrast.  Most of the others aren't such big cheats! :-)

OB scuba, if you'll forgive me continuing to teach my grandmother to suck
eggs for a little bit longer, ;-) your eyes are much more able to
automatically compensate for colour changes, and 'filter out' chunks in the
water than any camera.  In pursuit of capturing the very finest quality
sow's ears, you can get round this by getting a strobe rig like a lunar
lander, but I would bet that even so 'many' pictures in magazines are
touched up in one way or another.  At the very least, they'll all need to
be optomised for print.

I use Paint Shop Pro, which isn't as all powerful as Photoshop, but is a
fraction of the price and is more than enough for me.  If you want any
tips, just say. :-)

Cheers,
Huw
--
http://www.huwporter.com
"A wise diver will refrain from written descriptions of his experiences"
- William Beebe