Quote Originally Posted by Hamster View Post
Here we go again. These discussions always end up in people denigrating forms of the topic in hand that don't conform to their own version of what is "true". .....
I don't think this is the issue at all.
Maybe for some people it may be(FWIW: certainly not for me).

For me it's simply about differentiating between graphic arts(which can still be great) and photographs.

Like TG(OP) implied .. for some folks their ability to edit is limited, yet for others they seem to be grand masters in the art.

it's not about right wrong, left/right, or black/white at all.

The matter is much more simple than that : is it a photo, or is it graphic art?

I'm happy to admit right here and now, photography which would be pixel content generation of > than 95% by means of a camera is inferior compared to graphic art images which is probably > than 95% computer generated pixel content!

The only thing I believe should happen with respect to this issue is that photography should be categorised for what it is(and has been for nearly 200yrs), and that computer generated art shouldn't be categorised as photography.

The issue was highlighted recently with the AIPP controversy.
Lisa Saad is a great photographer, yet she seems to have won her award without winning any photography categories!
All her images are computer generated graphic art.
While the content within each of those images may have been shot via the use of a camera, the images themselves were not shot with a camera, and they're labelled as such .. either advertising or illustration or whatever.

So to the uninitiated, they go to the AIPP site and see 'photographer of the year'(and all the images she's presented) and they assume ... wow! ... she's some sort of elite camera operating god or something .. how the hell does one capture photographs that look like that?

The question is: if we allow computer generated pixels to count as photography, then why do we discriminate against paint stokes layered by hand as photographs and disallow paintings to be classified as photographs?