Friday, September 14, 2007

I spend about 20 hours a week in front of Photoshop. Really! I take 15,000 to 20,000 photos a year and I use it to “develop” them. I have a PC powerful enough to meet the needs of a small country and it puts out enough heat to heat the house in winter. 1,000 watts = about 1 1/3 horsepower … a one and a third horsepower PC? The mind boggles! But it makes Photoshop ... well, zippy ... especially when editing photos of horses!

Sorry for the digression. Anyway, I want them to look like what I “saw” when I tripped the shutter and I want to present them in their best light, to make the world beautiful, if I can.  Here’s an example using one of my own photos:

I remember very well taking this photo. I was in Italy. Nancy had returned home and I was alone and in a dark mood. But this sight made me feel better. I “saw” the second image because my eye is better than the sensor in my camera, and because my camera’s sensor has no emotion chip. I can make this similar to what I saw and felt!

I added nothing … but I did manipulate the image data captured by the camera. I think the original is “okay” but the edit is much much better.
So okay, if I use Photoshop to make a picture look like reality, I feel okay about that. How do you feel if an editor uses Photoshop to present an image that diverges from “reality?”

What is “reality” after all? Plato anyone?

This happens all-the-time. If you view a photo in a magazine, it’s been Photoshopped. Here are a few links showing before and after (Photoshop) images. This is fascinating to me. I think you will find it interesting. Click below:

And finally, another one of my photos. The original is of my son-in-law’s bike at Mt. St. Helens. In the edit I put it in a fictional Ducati Showroom.

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Technology
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