If ‘Photoshopping’ is Cheating

I recently read (another) article suggesting that work done in the post-processing phase using digital tools lessens the value of the photograph and suggests that the photographer is less than competent or perhaps “cheating” – and that real photographers get it right “straight out of the camera.”

There is much more to say about this bizarre notion, but for now here is a little “thought experiment.”

In order to believe that image modification in digital post-processing is cheating or otherwise lessens the value of a photographer’s work as art, it seems to me that you would have to accept that a whole list of analogous traditional film photography techniques  must be equally wrong, including:

  • use of filters
  • use of swing, tilt, shift
  • choosing a film based on its “personality” (One word: “Velvia”)
  • dodging and burning
  • selecting and/or altering film development methods in order to alter the image
  • selecting different grades of paper for different prints
  • using any focal length other than “normal” – whatever that means
  • cropping
  • spotting prints
  • any use of artificial lighting or reflectors
  • pre-exposing negatives
  • the original USM technique done with negatives
  • any corrections to the color balance of the original capture
  • all black and white photography – as the world is never black and white

Of course, every one of these and more are standard stock in trade for photographers working with film and traditional darkroom techniques.

13 thoughts on “If ‘Photoshopping’ is Cheating”

  1. Dan

    Thank you for posting my reply, to answer you comments I will reply based on the order numbered above.

    1. Yes this is one way of resolving the issues but there are other ways too. My way was to answer people directly (which is easily available via flickrmail via the link you provided on your blog without my permission). I think the comment field should be used to make comments. If someone has several comments and questions I prefer to answer via email.
    You seem to have taken a lot of time to go through my comments on this image but you seem to have missed the point that I rarely answer ANY comments (“good” or “bad”) on ANY image. This is mainly because I feel that if someone is curious enough to ask for the workflow they should take the time to email the artist directly. I never tried “hiding” the fact the image is a composition of two images and in fact some of my popular images do state it explicitly: see an example here http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyalgolshani/2581431087/. Instead I have put a general comment on post processing on my profile which applies to all my images (which basically ask people to assume that none of my photos are a precise reproduction of reality). I usually post a quick description of my workflow whenever I succeed with using a new post processing technique.
    2. I find it ironic that you did not think it was appropriate to post my email yet you thought it would be OK to post a link to my photo on your blog and on FM Review without asking for permission. Furthermore the comment on your image you exemplify in Point 2 above states “This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell” clearly demonstrates your understanding that other peoples images should not be used on external blogs or forums without their permission.
    3. I did not ban you because of your comment made on the image but rather as a result of some of the comments you made in the email correspondence between us. Comments such as “I do NOT think there is any shame in presenting an artistic collage as what it is.” Tries to belittle me as an artist and I did not appreciate it. I also banned you after finding out that you linked my image to your blog without my permission.
    4. I agree that if people ask an honest question they should receive an honest answer. This is exactly what I have done via email correspondence. The fact that you have a different way of doing this does not mean everyone else has to do the same. In your email correspondence and by posting a link to my image (and on FM reivew) you were acting forcefully by implying that the only way to be “honest” is to put a caption under the photo explaining the workflow. If you didn’t act in such an antagonizing way I may have considered some of your perspectives about captioning, however your patronizing (whether intended or not) approach has not assisted me in accepting your point of view.

    Regards

    Eyal

    1. Eyal, I don’t think I want to go too far along this back and forth path, but I must respond to a few points.

      1. Linking to Flickr photographs is perfectly appropriate. It is done all the time. I’ve never before heard anyone suggest that a person should ask for permission before linking to photographs on a public web site. I expect that people will link to my Flickr photographs – in fact I encourage it.

      2. Posting someone’s actual photographs without permission or otherwise using copyrighted photographs without permission is an entirely different matter. A photograph, unlike a link, is subject to copyright law. I would never appropriate your photograph and display it on my web site or use it in any other way without your permission.

      3. I did not post your email because it didn’t seem necessary to post it to make my point. As I wrote above, you are welcome to post the full email if you would like. I’d be happy to post if for you if I can find it.

      4. For the record, you banned me before I posted anything about your photograph anywhere other than in your comment thread at Flickr. I would have had no reason to post anywhere else if you had not deleted my comment in the place most make it. If you had simply replied in the forum and even set me straight where you thought I was wrong that probably would have been the end of it.

      5. You are welcome to offer commentary on any of my Flickr photographs that you think may step over an ethical line or if you would like any more information about the techniques I used. I’ll do my best to respond respectfully and fully to your comments as I do to all comments left on my photographs.

      Take care,

      Dan

      BTW, understanding how upset you are about this I have toned down some of my language in a couple of the posts above on this page – though I still stand by what I have written.

  2. Dear Dan,

    I ask you to allow other readers to have the benefit of reading my perspective as outlined below on the issues you have raised, in order for them to form their own opinions based on both sides.

    I find it ironic that you talk about unethical behavior on my part yet you chose to put a link on your blog to my image without my knowledge or permission, including a long winded article full of incorrect assumptions.

    Here is my response to several of your statements

    1. I am always happy to share my workflow with other people. I rarely respond to comments on flickr but if someone does send me an email with a question about my workflow I always reply with an explanation (as encouraged on my profile). I never tried to hide the fact that the image was a combination of two images. In fact my flicker profile clearly states “Most of my photos are captured and then post processed using Photoshop. My aim is to create art that expresses my vision of the places I visit and not necessarily reproduce reality.”
    2. Your comment: “Many posters who commented on the photo seemed quite amazed at the skill, vision, and timing that they thought were required to make the photograph and wrote at length about this.” It seems that what bothers you most is that people like my image. You keep carrying on about the NG award nomination when any photographer who has been on flickr knows that this is just another flikr group with no relation to the actual publication. As I mentioned to you in my previous email I am not a professional photographer and nor have I ever sold my images. In your thread of comments you have deliberately omitted my full response to you that clearly states my intentions. Instead you chose to use a mere half paragraph out of my intended context to further your argument.
    3. I banned you from making further comments since I found your comments to have a very rude and offensive tone with a personal agenda to undermine my work and me personally. I also find it fascinating that in your comment on my flickr page you felt compelled to post a link to your website advertising your photographs. I find it ironic that someone who lives in a country where the freedom of expression is a constitutional right, you feel it is ok to decide what is “right” or “wrong” for other people in expressing their art.
    4. Finally in response to your last statement about my comments regarding my artistic vision I urge you to go back and read my response as it seems you hastily misread my comment to further your agenda yet again.

    Best Regards,

    Eyal

    1. Eyal:

      I welcome your point of view on this, and I have posted your message exactly as you submitted it. I am going to offer a bit of background and clarification though:

      1. One way to resolve the whole issue is to do what I do when people post questions about my photographs on Flickr – I post an honest and direct response. If they want to know what techniques I made use of, I’m happy to explain. I think you can find examples of that if you are so inclined. (Here is one I posted this week.)

      2. You write, “It seems that what bothers you most is that people like my image.” If I may speak for myself on this issue no, that is not what bothers me. I did not include your full email because it didn’t seem necessary to make my point, and because it just doesn’t seem appropriate to do so without asking. You are welcome to post it if you feel that it would be helpful to readers.

      3. Regarding my “offensive” comment, I have posted below the entire text of the message that you speak of. I’m happy to let others judge whether this is offensive or not. The link to my photography that you mention goes to a Flickr page that shows a photo that I made of the same location to demonstrate that I know the location from first-hand experience.

      4. If this regards the quote I used in an earlier post in this thread, I have now edited that post to link to the original page so that others may read it in context. I am going to edit some of what I wrote in my earlier post now after re-reading it, but I’ll keep the original text there so it won’t look like I’m trying to cover my tracks.

      Regardless of how you feel about my observations concerning your photograph – and I stand by what I have written – it is clear that we share an appreciation of the astounding location where you captured your images.

      Take care, and good luck to you.

      Dan

      Here is the text of my “offensive” post that Eyal deleted from the Flickr discussion thread on his photograph:

      EXIF says shot was Jan 16, 2008. Full moon was on Jan. 22 that year, nearly a full week later – seems like the moon is too close to “full” for this date. In addition, nearly a week before the full moon it should be at this elevation above the horizon either many hours before sunset (but in the east, which this is not) or a few hours before dawn (in the west)… but then how is the rock lit? The shadow on the rock is from afternoon sun.

      I recognized this rock from one of own photographs which I have now located here on Flickr. I think your location is aiming almost south, making the position of the moon even more improbable. To be in this low position in the sky, it would need to be far out of the frame to the right. (It would actually be roughly in the position of the bright "star trail" in my photograph, perhaps at least 60 degrees to the right of “your moon.”)

      It also appears that you used a lens with no longer than “normal” focal length for the landscape shot… but the moon is much larger having been shot with a longer focal length lens.

      I’m fairly certain that you added it in post.

      I do not object to post-processing manipulations of photographs to create interesting photograph-based graphical images – in fact I do it myself at times. However, I do think there is an ethical issue when an image is presented as if it represents reality and is the result of excellent timing and vision – and when it is clearly regarded by viewers as being such – but the image designer either doesn’t correct the incorrect notion or else (in certain other cases I’ve see) actually encourages a belief in the falsehood. See the post two above mine to see what I’m concerned about: “…and to capture the full moon as well!”

      The comments about putting the image on the cover of National Geographic are especially ironic given the well-known scandal regarding a photographer who “moved the pyramids” in post to get a more effective composition. See “Faked Photographs in Journalism” and many other references to this story.

      I think this is an important issue, especially when it arises in the context of such a visually compelling graphic image like this one, and doubly-especially since the inclusion of the moon is what sets this image apart from many similar shots from the playa and suggests special conditions and vision at the scene on your part.

      Nice handling of the BW interpretation on an aesthetic and technical level, BTW. :-)

      Take care,

      Dan

  3. (12/16/09: A person whose work I linked to in the post that originally appeared here wasn’t pleased with what I originally wrote, so I am offering a revised version of the post here in its place. Hey, it is the holiday season!)

    In a recent post I included a link to a Flickr photograph that was constructed in post. I posted a message in the photo’s discussion thread where there was a long string of comments by folks who did not understand this and seemed to think it was “real.” Ironically, there was some discussion of nominating the photo for a Flickr “National Geographic Magazine cover award”. (One of the most notorious faked photo scandals was a National Geographic magazine cover in which the pyramids had been moved in order to get a nicer composition.)

    The photographer created a literally impossible image by pasting a separate photograph of the moon (made with a longer lens) into a wide angle photo of a moving rock at the Racetrack Playa. I do not necessarily have ethical objections to doing this per se, but I have deep concerns any time viewers think an image is real and the photographer doesn’t set them straight. For me this goes to an issue of “honesty” in ones work. Many posters who commented on this very popular photo seemed amazed at the skill, vision, and timing that they believed went into capturing the image and wrote at length about this.

    A few posters left messages asking whether the scene was real or not, but the photographer declined to respond in the discussion thread, letting the confusion on the part of many viewers continue. As one who knows the Racetrack fairly well, I pointed out some questions I had about the image and how it didn’t seem possible to me. The photographer sent me a personal message admitting that the photograph was a composite of multiple images that he had created in post in much the way I thought, and he expressed a willingness to have this be known. In a personal reply message I suggested that his willingness to “disclose this information to anyone” might warrant a response in the discussion thread to those who nominated his photo for a N.G. cover in the thread.

    In response he deleted my post in his thread and banned me – both of which are certainly his privilege. (I once banned someone from posting a a series of comments on one of my photographs at Flickr.) However, this only reinforced my impression that he prefers to permit the misunderstanding about his methods to remain.

    I think it is a problem if a photographer allows the false impression that his/her astonishing conjunction of terrain and light and conditions is something created through incredible efforts to be there and through photographic vision in seeing and composing the shot if, in fact, the image was actually constructed in post.

    Dan

  4. (12/16/09: A person whose work I linked to in the post that originally appeared here wasn’t pleased with what I originally wrote, so I am offering a revised version of the post here in its place. Hey, it is the holiday season!)

    On the other hand… I think that there are lines that should not be crossed, at least not without some honesty about crossing them.

    For example adding a moon to a photograph in a place where the moon could not possibly be and then accepting accolades for the shot as if it were real raises issues of integrity for me. (This perhaps goes back to someone’s point about working with what you originally captured.) I once saw a similar example of a Death Valley Racetrack Playa (site of the famous “moving rocks”) photograph in which a lovely cloud-filled sunset sky appeared… directly to the north end of the playa… and it contained Pacific ocean shorebirds!

    I do not necessarily even have a problem with stuff like that if it isn’t done in a deceptive way. It is fine to invent landscapes – I’ve seen some brilliant photographic work that does just this. Using photographic techniques, the artist creates worlds from his/her imagination that do not claim to be real. In fact, they are intentionally “invented” and that is part of what makes them wonderful. (When I cross this line I sometimes label the images as “imaginary landscapes.”)

    What I do have a problem with is passing off impossible images constructed in post as being real.

  5. From 1998 through 2001 I had to take many photography classes along with a full load of college classes to obtain my Avid Video Degree. All of the photography classes were traditional Darkroom, 35 mm, medium and large format classes. I received my Advanced Avid Editing Degree in June of 2001. I had produced many photographs for my portfolio. I was and I’m still very proud of what I did as a photographer. Not once during those times did I ever think of myself as an artist! I considered myself as a Photographer with a Avid Degree and Photographers were not Artists, they were Photographers . . .

    That is what I believed in 2001. Flash forward to 2009, with the digital age that we live in here now, my thoughts on photography have come full-circle. Digital cameras are everywhere and Photoshop is just one of the programs to process images without all of the chemicals, papers, burning and dodging of the darkroom! Filters, cropping, layers, color balance and etc. All of these are the normal processes to create images these days.

    I took my Advanced Avid Editing Degree and did nothing with it and became a full-time 3-D hardwood movement sculpture artist! I know full-well both sides of this argument, you would think that I would have a very good definition of what an Artist is! Whether you are a photographer using nothing but a camera to capture images, or a photographer using Photoshop, or an Artist working in any medium of any kind, and if you believe in your heart that you are an Artist, then you are one! It simply doesn’t mean that you are cheating in any way . . .

    1. Well said. Art is not defined by what you use to create it – humans seem to be capable of finding ways to create art from almost any medium available to them. Art is about the reasons for creating something and the effect is has on those who perceive it. It is impossible for me to understand how creating a beautiful and/or expressive photographic image using digital media is any more or less art than creating a similar sort of image using film/chemical means.

  6. …if you aren’t careful you could start me down the very slippery but profoundly interesting slope of writing about how a so-called accurate photographic reproduction of a scene does not accurately evoke the true memory of that actual scene.

    Please do, Dan. That would be fascinating, if what you give in your comment is a representative sample.

    Slightly off topic, I frequently get questions of the “Is that what it really looks like?” variety from students and others as concerns images of astronomical objects. Here’s something I wrote about that a couple of years ago in my usual rambling, roundabout way — which actually does eventually get to its point.

  7. One of the things that fascinates me about the “Photoshop is cheating” crowd is how the seem to completely ignore the fact that many of the things they object to in photoshop can be done in-camera: saturation, contrast, multiple exposures, etc. For some reason if I oversaturate a landscape in camera that’s perfectly acceptable, but if I take a RAW file, open it in Photoshop and boost the saturation, then I’ve crossed some line.

  8. Sherwood, if you aren’t careful you could start me down the very slippery but profoundly interesting slope of writing about how a so-called accurate photographic reproduction of a scene does not accurately evoke the true memory of that actual scene. OK, I’ve started. So one example.

    If I make a landscape photograph that includes snow or deeply shaded rocks (like the walls of Yosemite Valley in the afternoon) or other similar subjects, the “unprocessed” image of the scene will look terribly blue to any observer. The typical response from someone who doesn’t know about this is along the lines of, “That can’t be right! It wasn’t that blue when I was there!”

    Well, actually it was that blue. However, your visual system made some adjustments so that your perception of the scene corresponded to your expectations. That snow that was terribly blue, largely but not completely because it was illuminated mostly by blue light from the sky, but your brain more or less says, “Hey, snow is white! So let’s just think of that blue snow as white!”

    Now, if I make a photograph with blue snow (or blue salt flats or blue granite cliffs or blue waterfalls or… you get the picture) any observer will be troubled. Or maybe laugh at my ineptitude. So I make the snow (or salt flat…) have the appearance that is consistent with what we recall of the scene.

    I could continue. A long time. But I’ll stop here. For now.

    Dan

  9. There’s a whole lot of post-processing that goes on between the retina and the consciousness, isn’t there? Perhaps we could start a purist school of photography, in which all images have to be color in the center (cones are concentrated around the eye’s lens’s optical axis), monochrome toward the edges (where the rods dominate), and upside-down. Anything else will be considered to be cheating.

  10. I think this is an important post Dan. And I think you got it exactly right. And I have to admit that I had a lot of “growing” to do from my early days in photography to get where I at now. Back then, I had the sort of attitude you wrote about here where I thought if you had to edit it in Photoshop, you were cheating. Looking back though, I realize I thought that out of ignorance.

    I do realize and accept that different people can have different goals with photography. Some people might see photography as simply a way to document a visual scene and they want the picture to look as real as possible. They may not want the color pumped, or any filters applied or whatever, and that is fine, good, and OK. Is their goal art? Maybe not. Could it still be art? I think so even if they don’t realize it.

    For myself though, my goal is art. I don’t want to just document a scene as such. I want to create an impression of it, and a mood, a feeling of being there. The picture might still look real, or maybe not. I may use various filters on the camera in taking the picture as well in Photoshop when processing it. And the result might not really look like the original scene. But if I can create a pleasing composition, and process it in a way that makes you want to look at the picture, to rest your eyes on the picture, and explore it, then maybe I achieved my goal, and I don’t see the filters and Photoshop plugins as cheating. I see it all as tools of the trade.

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