What do you think is legitimate? How far can we go in manipulating photos?

[bobt]

But what Ansel Adams did in the darkroom was his own work. When one ( or more ) of the many plug-ins available is used, is it your own work/photo ?

My point exactly. Manipulating your own work is one thing, but introducing substantial content which is totally manufactured seems to me a little over the top. Mind you, if that's what's acceptable these days, then i guess one needs to consider it as an option just to stay in the game! It is indeed moving along the path from pure photography to graphic art.

[ricktas]

I think we should all keep in mind the current fuss about fake news. Well, fake photos are part of that.

It would seem fake is becoming the new normal. Sadly. Fake news, fake photos, fake boobs, fake watches, fake 'designer dog breeds' hell, even most people's beauty is fake these days and can be removed with a kleenex.

[ameerat42]

Soon, Planet Earth will be known throughout the cosmos as the Planet of the Fakes
Why, all sorts of species will flock here from light years around, eager to lay their
hands/limbs/tentacles/other appendages on Genuine Terran Artifakes. We will be
responsible for exporting the idea of greed and hoarding throughout the universe
After that, a new theory of the universe will be needed - suitably a fake one

(Scientists of the future will be heard discussing the Theory of EveryFake, and will have discovered
the prolific Fakeron particle Just imagine! - Students will vye for their Doctorate of Fakery: PhF )

[bobt]

Soon, Planet Earth will be known throughout the cosmos as the Planet of the Fakes

Women around the world will rejoice as faking it becomes legitimate and main stream ! [Did i just put a bullseye on my head?]

[thegrump]

I have brought this up before. I was not in favor of too much PP. If it is for you own viewing or for sale then I guess anything goes. Entering a photo that has no resemblance to the original, into a photographic competition or challenge, I believe is now artwork on not a photograph. With the example above, I would have said, WOW!!! what a fantastic photo, what a skillful photographer, but now I know it is just a piece of artwork. Nothing to do with the skill of the photographer.

[Steve Axford]

I agree TG. I think that some digital art is stunning, but there is usually no subterfuge about what it is. It is quite clear that it is created art, often using photographs as the base, but not always. Where it gets to be fake, is where it is purported to be a photograph, but it isn't. I think many competitions have encouraged this because it is so difficult to separate the true from the fake. Hence, people who do it are encouraged because they often win. Of course, winning these comps essentially means little and may actually be detrimental if it encourages the participants to think that faking their photos is the way to go. It isn't. It may win you some small comps, but unless you want a career in photoshop it won't get you very far. It may get you lots of Facebook likes (I know that people here hate those), but it will not get you any respect as a photographer, because you really aren't one. It will also probably mean that you have to lie about what you doing. That's not a lot of fun unless you actually enjoy lying.

[Mark L]

In my honest opinion minor adjustments such as exposure, contrast, sharpness etc... are acceptable as i guess is the removal of small unwanted elements. However once the alterations exceed 25% of the original composition it becomes more of a graphic art image.

You need to push the setting you have in camera and start taking them photos in JPEG. Gives you another 25% to PP with later.

[dacar]

I don't think there is, or ever was, a "line" between "pure" photography (whatever that is) and graphic art (or what ever you want to call it). Maybe there is a spectrum from minimal intervention to total invention. No camera or photographer can reproduce reality, only a subjective representation of it. Every time we choose a camera or a lens or a filter or a time of day or a physical viewpoint or a Photoshop plugin we are selecting what aspect of reality we want to represent in a two-dimensional image. How can anyone justify or rationalise a figure such as no more than 25% of the image may be modified for it to be "really" called a photograph? Indeed how can you measure it - if I alter the exposure or saturation of the whole surface area my just a tiny amount or even radically, is that allowed? What if I paste in some tiny figures of people who were not in the scene when i took the exposure, is that allowed if it is less than 1% of the surface area. To try and draw arbitrary lines in the sand is extreme ratbaggery and ultimately pointless because we will never get consensus.
The world has changed; technology has changed. I wonder if a similar argument was carried on in monasteries in the late 1400s: "It's not a REAL book unless at least 75% of it has been hand lettered on vellum. This printing on paper business is a threat to our self perception (and our business) as book producers!"
Surely the ultimate criterion is "Is this an image that speaks to me?" regardless of how it was produced - film, digital, photoshop, watercolours or oils?

(My personal view. I am not criticising anyone on AP personally. Apologies if you feel offended.)

[bobt]

I don't think there is, or ever was, a "line" between "pure" photography (whatever that is) and graphic art (or what ever you want to call it).

Surely the ultimate criterion is "Is this an image that speaks to me?" regardless of how it was produced - film, digital, photoshop, watercolours or oils?

Certainly that is true of an image produced for sale, enjoyment or creative expression, BUT ....... my question relates specifically to competitions within a photographic framework such as Ausphotography.

Taking my original images as a starting point, would you feel comfortable entering an image in a competition here if a third of it was generated by software and had no photographic content at all?

[thegrump]

would you feel comfortable entering an image in a competition here if a third of it was generated by software and had no photographic content at all?

For a start. I would not be capable of producing such an image. But I certainly would not be voting for an image I knew was manipulated to that extent. ( If I knew )

[ricktas]

So.. how do we spot these fakes.. say in a photographic competition? There seems to be a bit of a consensus that to much processing should be marked down if we were to judge a competition (not necessarily on AP), just a photographic competition. Let's say it is a photographic competition on print, where one of the rules is basic whole of image editing allowed only (sharpening, levels adjustments, saturation adjustments etc) but no changing of individual elements of the image. (elements does not = pixels in this definition).

So considering that, what hints and tips do people have about how to spot a fake, for example where a new sky has been dropped in, or blemishes have been removed from a person's face, and some skin smoothing applied, or even more extensive digital art edits applied? How do we tell?

[Hamster]

This sums it up quite nicely for me, so I'll leave it for your consideration.

http://davidduchemin.com/2016/06/cam...e-photographs/

[Hamster]

.

So considering that, what hints and tips do people have about how to spot a fake, for example where a new sky has been dropped in, or blemishes have been removed from a person's face, and some skin smoothing applied, or even more extensive digital art edits applied? How do we tell?

If it's that important, make submission of the raw file on request a requirement.

[bobt]

Interesting. I had a look at Hamster's response (or more particularly, the article he referenced). That article is both right and wrong. One quote was that "there are no rules. There is no governing body" and that isn't entirely correct because there most certainly are rules in photographic competitions. However, the broader question lies in what we are practicing as individuals and what is the overall purpose underlying our images. I guess once you decide what your end objective is you automatically place yourself within a specific framework that determines how much latitude you have in how you create your images.

However, to address Rick's question, I think that prints are harder to assess than digital images. A digital image can be blown up to pixel level where manipulation is far easier to detect. Prints are viewed at the same resolution, and even a magnifying glass would be unlikely to reveal the same forensic detail. The main indicators might be shadows, which are difficult to "fudge", particularly if an image is a complex composite work. The relationship between components might be another tell-tale sign where proportions or angles on added components might not conform to the rest of the original scene.

I find this whole issue to be full of conflicting considerations. Photography has morphed so much and in so many directions. On the one hand we don't want to be so wholesome as to insist on zero manipulation, but on the other we find it hard to know where we stand on that spectrum of image creation which stretches out into a limitless future. The bottom line, to me, lies in how honest we are about our methods and how we use our images. I am increasingly looking for an end product that pleases me personally, especially given the subjectivity of judges. Nevertheless, I am still uncomfortable in using components which are not my original content and so I rarely would incorporate content which I did not create. That's why i find the manufactured content of plug-ins to be a problem. Using them is not using someone else's images, but it is using content that you haven't created.

[piczzilla]

Here to say unpopular opinion

Perhaps because I came from different artistic background before stumbling across photography (used to paint), I'm in the opinion that art shouldn't be restricted by the mediums. When it comes to art, I really think anything goes. I do however, think it wrong to falsely advertise the images as what they are not (hence, I'm against drastic manipulation for certain photography genres). But if we present the images as exactly what they are, I don't see a problem with it.

Whether the images should still be considered "photos" or whether they can be entered into competition - Now that gets messy, and honestly I don't have any opinion on that. However, since this particular discussion came up so often these days, I personally decided to keep my manipulated images to myself & my IG.

Should I be considered a photographer or a visual artist - I think a little bit of both.

[landyvlad]

An interesting discussion, but I'll address it only from my personal perspective as a voter in competitions on this site.

I judge the IMAGE - obviously this will be as presented, with whatever manipulations have been done.

As the link above demonstrates it's not always possible to judge what's photo and what's 'fake' but in the context of this forum, it often is apparent. I think there are more and better photographers here than photochop experts... just a hunch anyway.

And of course, it doesn't really matter. Simple is often better and I find that heavily photo-shopped images are very rarely simple ones.

I can see where "no manipulation" is excellent for some categories, and to me the only alternative is "any manipulation you like".
There is no, and I don't think there can ever be, any fixed definition of "minor" manipulation. Everyone will have a different idea what that means.

Well that's my $0.02 anyway.

[John King]

Some very thoughtful and wise replies already. Pretty much cover my thoughts.

I will add that I am in the minimalist school, if for no other reason than presenting whatever I managed to capture forces me to critically examine my composition of form and colour. This has always been the weakest part of my photography.

Apart from when correcting obvious perspective distortion, I almost never crop my images. 'Product photography' being one other exception to this discipline I impose on myself. With the latter, it is often difficult to frame the product precisely enough without cropping later.

Over the last ten years or so, forcing this discipline on myself has improved my photography considerably, according to others as well as my own assessment. It also helps prevent one becoming sloppy when shooting IMHO.

I have always preferred facts to interpretation in other parts of my life. I guess that spills over into my photography as far as this current topic is concerned.

[landyvlad]

I generally do very little PP to my photos - a resize and perhaps a crop, maybe 'auto adjustments' now and then.
I really don't know much about PP so don't do it much !

[Steve Axford]

I doubt that many people do a lot of manipulation in AP comps, partly because they don't have the skills but mainly because they are not interested. But, I do think there is a problem because people have the perception that it is legal do do it but, at the same time, it is not socially acceptable. So they do it without admitting it - or at least that is what many people think. The occasional incident, like the rubber frog photo, reinforces that perception. I think the rules should ban it, even if those rules are hard to enforce. Just because many murders are unsolved doesn't mean we should make them legal. Most people will stick to the rules even if they are hard to enforce, particularly if they agree with the rules - which apparently most people do. By all means, enter digital art, but always say that it is just that. Maybe have separate comps for it if the demand is there.

[Hamster]

Some years ago here a photo of a silhouetted frog on a wonderfully big backlit green leave did well in POTY.
It looked so good. The member was known to not be a fan of pushing the manipulating.
Fun discussion followed when he fessed up the frog was a rubber frog. Not quite as natural as we all thought and was implied.

Can you find the link? It would be interesting to see the discussion.