Comment: 'Photoshop' - Why has this become a negative word in photography?

Adobe Photoshop has become THE word for any image manipulation software product, much in the same way that Hoover has become the word for a vacuum cleaner of any brand.  

However in the past few years Photoshop has also become a negative word for any image that has been manipulated in post production.  The amount of times I have seen or heard the phrase 'Oh, that's obviously been photoshopped!' and I've even had this said about some of my images.  This shows a deep lack of understanding about the photographic process that hasn't really changed for 150 years, it has just become a lot easier with the advent of digital photography and the digital lightroom.  

Image manipulation software is an important part of photography, but it is up to the photographer how much or how little they use to get the end result that they are pleased with.  At the end of the day photography is an art form and whether the final image is pleasing to the viewer is subjective. 

Some photographers like to say 'this is the image straight out of the camera' like it is a badge of honour that they haven't used any post processing software.  Well my usual answer is the image has been manipulated but by the camera at the time the image was taken.  If you don't take images in RAW then the camera decides how to process the image using the on-board software and different user selections in the menu to produce a JPEG or TIFF file.  

This is no different from the days of film when the photographer would choose a film type to match what he or she wanted to achieve in the final image.  Fuji Velvia 50 gave a more saturated image, while Kodachrome 64 gave more neutral, real life, colours.  If you wanted a grainy/gritty black and white image you used a high speed (1000ASA) black and white film.  

Nothing is new in photography and I hate it when people pop on their rose tinted glasses and say how much better it was when we used film.

A RAW file is just that, raw, with all the data for the photographer to use in post processing to produce a final image.  It is a starting point, a digital negative if you like.  

Now one of the problems with modern image manipulation software is that it is easy to change something in an image, add an element, take something away or move something to a different position in the frame.  This has led to some viewers not believing what they are seeing and this has led to the negative 'oh  that's been photoshopped' view. 

Again this is nothing new, images have been faked for over 100 years. The 'Cottingley Fairies' taken in 1917 (CLICK HERE) is a famous example and a lots of UFO images appeared in the 1950s and 60s.  These were all produced in the darkroom or in camera long before the advent of Photoshop.  

For me anything that has been introduced into an image to deceive the viewer is inherently wrong. BUT if the photographer is honest and tells the viewer that an element has been changed to enhance the image or produce a final result that the photographer was looking for then that is not deceiving the viewer and has its place as a piece of art.

Now comes the question of improving / enhancing an image in post production.  Now some photographers frown on even a little work in post but this is crazy, especially if you shoot in RAW.  

A RAW file is flat and lifeless and needs to be tweaked to bring it to life (See 7th February Blog on this subject HERE) - how much is up to the individual.  Some people go too far and the results look very false but get the balance right and the image comes to life.  

An example of before and after are the images above and below.  The colour shot above is the original RAW file with no adjustments made when converting it to JPEG.  The shot below is with adjustments made to contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity and saturation.  It cropped slightly to improve the composition and then converted to mono using Nik Silver EFEX Pro2 software.

All the great photographers enhanced their images to a degree. I see the master landscape photographer Ansel Adams held up as a paragon of photographic excellence and used to demonstrate what can be achieved in camera. This is far from the truth, Adams was THE landscape photographer of his time and is one of my personal favourite artists, but he was also a master of his craft in the darkroom.  His well known master pieces were all the product of hours spent in post production and I'm pretty sure that Adams would be using Photoshop if he were alive today. 

So let's sum up.  To 'photoshop' an image is part of the photographic process and it shouldn't be a byword for something negative.  

What is acceptable is up to the individual and like all art, photography is subjective, with beauty being in the eye of the beholder.  I like certain types of images and I'm not keen on others, but I don't knock what others may like, it just isn't for me.  

What makes me mad is the purist dogma that any manipulation is wrong without actually understand what photographic manipulation means in reality.  The fact is a lot of these smug purists are holding up their images as 'pure' straight out of the camera pictures without realising the images have already been manipulated by the software inside the camera they are using.

Let's get real and stop dismissing other peoples work. There should be a better understanding that all photography is art and not all forms of art will appeal to everyone. I think the photographic motto for the 21st Century should be 'live and let live'!

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