Is it weak to tweak?

26/07/11

Often as a photographer, one of the first questions to pop up when I have shown an image is:

That's great - did you photoshop it?

Many photographers are starting to treat the phrase 'photoshop' like it's a dirty word, so much so - they have begun to omit this small detail from the bio of the image at the time it becomes public...

It's like asking the hugely developed body builder - wow - so like, do you do steroids? - only to be told NO!!

Puhlease......C'mon, if you do tweak - admit it, it's nothing to be ashamed about.........

Firstly, the term photoshop is fast replacing the term 'edit', so popular and widely used the suite has become in recent years.

Secondly, the skill required to edit 'properly' an image in Photoshop in my opinion far out classes the skill required to compose and shoot an image in most DSLR's (Ok easy Stu - maybe not far!!) - but given a large majority of cameras nowadays have ample 'automatic' functions - now there's a dirty word!!

It has been mentioned that it does not take a great amount of skill to capture / reproduce what we see presented in front of us, mother nature lays on an amazing show and presto we snap it!!! beautiful!!

What some of us like to do is take that image home, place it on our computer, and then set about manipulating it to reflect an idea or an image we have in our mind.... If you manage to achieve this in such a way that you maintain some original integrity from the original image, but manage to enhance the 'wow factor' to a point where people look twice and need to ask is that real?... then you have succeeded in producing a pleasing image, for all involved.

Many an artist has added a tweak here and there to optimise the end result, it would be naive to think this was not the case.

BUT:
There are the handful of purist photographers on this planet that demonstrate the purist form of photographic skill to achieve a result that requires no editing, they are a rare and skilled beast - and we salute you.
My point is only to emphasize that adding a little tweak is not weak!! purely a stretch of our imagination a demonstration for understanding the labyrinth that is the photoshop workspace and certainly nothing worth lying about....stand proud, say it loud, I LIKE TO TWEAK.

I recently observed a sequence of HDR images so well done it really was very difficult to tell that they were in fact HDR, but the cheeky snapper was passing them off as 'very well exposed' images, we know how difficult it is for modern digital camera sensors to distinguish the infinite ranges of light available and to capture them accurately, we know to get the dark we sacrifice the light and vice versa, then with a little layer masking and layer merge in photoshop - we then get that amazing result.

So be real people, you don't need to be shy about what you do, accept it for what is is, a fine tuned result (edited) and remember it's definitely not weak to tweak!!