Photoshopped?
It’s funny how the name of an image editing program has been mangled into a verb. You’ll hear people use the word ‘photoshopped’ all the time. Even non artists have a basic understand of what photoshop is and what it does. I suppose this demonstrates the mythic status and the mighty power that the program is accepted to possess. But comments like “Is it real?” “No, you can tell that’s been photoshopped…” highlight a misconception that a lot of people have, which is that Photoshop has all the power and the photoshop artist needs none.
Saying you can spot something that’s been ‘photoshopped’ seems to imply some sort of failure with the program, when in fact the outcome of an image is actually wholly dependent upon the person using the program.
Adobe Photoshop is after all, just a program. An amazingly versatile, professional, industry standard program, no doubt. But a program just the same. It doesn’t actually do anything by itself. There’s no magic involved. Just a lot of hard work, passion and talent. Photoshop is just a tool. Much the same way that a paintbrush is just a tool. It can make a huge difference who’s wielding it. A bad painting doesn’t imply a bad paintbrush does it?
Of course the most successful work produced using photoshop will usually go unnoticed, but I guess that’s the true indication of success. That’s when you know you must be doing something right. My goal is to use photoshop to the extent of it’s abilities, or at least the extent of mine and create a little magic along the way.
Colour Variance
Let’s say you’ve spent hours creating something wonderful in photoshop only to discover that on somebody else’s monitor it looks nothing like you expected it would. It can be a truly horrifying experience, especially if it reveals things that desperately need to be fixed that you were just completely unaware of due to different colour, contrast and brightness settings.
So, how can you control how everyone else sees your images?
Well the short answer is….
You can’t.
Everybody has their brightness, colour and contrast set differently. Not only that but there’s a whole range of different monitors, LCD, CRT, PLASMA all made by different companies with different colour profiles. Even different browsers will display images with subtle variations to the colour and brightness. It’s completely out of your hands.
It’s frustrating that you can’t guarantee that everyone sees the same thing as you on their own computer screens but it’s comparable to music in a way. The Artists/Musicians can produce something… But they can’t control how people hear it. Whether they listen to it on a top notch expensive Audio Note system or a cheap old knackered tape deck. How the listener experiences it is completely out of their control.
So you have to let it go a little bit.
I used to worry about this issue a lot. I was really concerned that the (FF0000) red that I see on my screen is probably a whole lot different to the exact same value red that you see. Now this may not seem like a such a big deal, but when you think in terms of web design and corporate identity how do you guarantee that people see the correct colour?
Think of the RED and WHITE of VODAFONE, the PINK and BLACK of HMV, the GREEN and YELLOW of BP and the ORANGE of ORANGE! These are not colours that can be compromised.
But go to Google Image Search and type in vodafone logo and look at all the various shades of red!!!??!!
Shocking…
How about the Orange logo?
These variations are a result of people uploading images that they think are the correct colour, they possibly even look the correct colour on their monitor. I really think there should be some kind of image police to stop people from uploading such awful images.
I’m lucky enough these days to not have to be stuck using a cheap and nasty LCD like I have in the past. Now I have a mac with a 23” Cinema Display. It’s professional industry standard stuff and at least now I know that on my screen it looks how it should.
Only now, there’s another issue entirely…
Printing something so that it looks exactly the same as it does on the screen is a complicated process and there’s a pretty steep learning curve if you’re gonna attempt to understand it. I know the things that I need to know but to be honest, CYMK, RGB, colour profiles, resolution, Gamut, I have a very basic understanding of this side of things.
Luckily, for the most part a very basic understanding is all you really need because there’s a whole profession dedicated to this called pre-press.
Reuters admitting photo alteration
Reuters Group plc is a news service that provides reports from around the world to newspapers and broadcasters. In August 2006 they were accused of bias against Israel in its coverage of the Israel-Lebanon conflict because they used doctored photos taken by a Lebanese freelance photographer.
One of the photographs in question showed two very heavy plumes of black smoke billowing from buildings in Beirut after an Air Force attack on the Lebanese capital. American blogs immediately saw evidence of what can only be described as a really ugly photoshop job.
Why Reuters failed to notice any tampering I’m not sure but they eventually withdrew the photograph from their website, along a message admitting that the image was distorted, and an apology to editors. They also severed all ties with Adnan Hajj, the photographer responsible for the alterations.
I’m pretty sure that there wasn’t any intention of propaganda on Reuters part and perhaps the photographer was just trying to provide the best image he could in the fast paced, hyper-competitive world of freelance news photography.
There was obviously uproar over this whole situation with people demanding that we must be able to trust the images that we see in our news coverage otherwise the credibility of that coverage will suffer. But I think the way that the news is written can be open to just as much creative editing in my opinion. I guess what really suprised me the most about this image is just how bad a job the photographer made of it. What’s even more shocking is the potential that there could be a million more images out there that have gone undetected.
Image Fiddling
This blog will focus primarily on my experiences of digital photographic retouching as a profession. Over time I intend to explore the various different styles of retouching and the many different techniques used to produce professional results. But before I get started on all that stuff I want to share a little history with you.
If you’re at all interested in image editing I think it’s important to know a little about where it all started.
HISTORY
Image editing has been around for a very long time. Many years ago traditional photo editing was known as photo retouching and was performed by extremely skilled individuals. They used various darkroom techniques to allow them to alter images such as double-exposure, piecing photos or negatives together, dodging and burning and scratching polaroids. But there’s only so much that these techniques could accomplish. Significantly modifying an image involved actually painting onto the photographs or negatives with ink or paint using an airbrush. Even though tools such as the airbrush are no longer used for photo retouching you’ll still hear a lot of people use the term ‘airbrushing’ to describe digital retouching.
The 1980s saw the advent of digital retouching and consequently a lot of the old techniques became obsolete. The late 1980s saw the first appearance of Adobe Photoshop running on the Apple Macintosh and traditional photo retouching largely became a thing of the past. Photoshop is seen by many as a digital dark room and many of the traditional techniques such as dodging and burning remain.
The way that images are edited now has changed somewhat from a few years back, but the reasons for editing an image remain pretty much the same.
WHY EDIT?
The main reason for editing or altering existing imagery is to improve the image beyond what was capable when the shot was taken with a camera. This can include a number of adjustments such as simple colour or perspective correction, changing brightness and contrast, hue and saturation as well as the removal of scratches, dust or blemishes to more drastic changes such as the removal of distracting elements to draw focus to the subject, improving overall composition or merging one or more individual images into a single file.
The are many reasons why an image is edited. The changes made will usually result in an improvement. Practically every image you see in todays popular media culture has had some work done to it. Movie stars, musicians, fashion models and the world of advertising are all heavily focused on image and the better that image can be made to look means the more power it has in delivering a message.
But now also consider how it would be possible for a Holiday company to alter imagery of your possible holiday destination. Imagery is used to sell either a product, a service or an idea, but when those images are altered to a point where they are no longer representative and are no longer a truthful depiction there can be repercussions.
There’s been a lot of controversy over the years about what is acceptable and how far you should go with image editing. The moral repercussions of deceiving the general public into believing what they see is a troublesome topic and I’ll tell you about some of the more well known cases over the next few weeks.