I see some many good landscape and architectural photos where it looks like the shooter left his thumb on the unsharp mask key. It loses the warmth of the picture and gives a sense in the back of the viewers mind that the shot is unreal. Isn't that the purpose for many shots - take the viewer there. I vote less photoshopping - let the shot speak for itself and if it's not saying anything get a better composition. IMHO

I agree. It totally ruins a shot if someone's fat thumb is in the way.

It took me to find an unsharp mask that I liked, and even now I frequently turn down the juice on it.

Funny that this came up; Last night I was looking at a few pictures on my computer and I scrolled through 2 images, the original and the one I uploaded. In this case, although I haden't realized, I nearly destroyed the image, but this is an unusual image. I believe I will upload the original, even though I am not sure anyone will be able to tell the difference unless they compare them head to head.

I completely disagree. I think you can validly request that people use fewer filters, but you have to consider a few things:

*All* digital cameras do their own internal filtering, usually color adjustment, interpolation, and sharpening. What's the difference between the camera's internal filter, which is what some manufacturer thought was a good setting, and your own photoshop filter? I say nothing. If you think an image needs a little filtering to make it look more like what you saw, or more like what you want to show, then go for it. The image out of your camera is like a negative, nothing more. It still has to be developed. Ansel adams said that half of a photograph is in the processing, and it sure hasn't changed with digital. People have this idea that the bits coming out of your digital camera are the "real photo" and manipulating it makes it fake somehow. You have to realize that, unless you're taking RAW photos out of a really nice camera (in which case, oversharpening probably isn't a problem), then what comes out of your camera is incredibly processed already. Fixing it is perfectly valid. So when you say, "let the shot speak for itself," that's pretty meaningless, even with film. Especially with film. And the same goes for digital.

That said, yes, people can overdo it. But then it tells of their artistic ability. If you can't look at an image and adjust it right, then you need to realize that processing is an art too, and you need to work on it. Your point about composition though -- right on. People who aren't getting their post-processing right shouldn't worry about it, and instead focus on composition.

I don't turn down the juice on the unsharp mask to be more natural, but rather to look more natural. The image I mentioned belongs in the motion gallery. I had the original and the sharpened saved right nixt to eachother by file name, and when I scrolled through them on fullscreen I really noticed the difference. The image didn't necessarily move, no eye tricks used, yet when I flipped to the sharpened, it seemed to suddenly stop (if possible for never moving in the first place). I believe that falls in the overdoing-it category, not the naturalist category.

I can understand the opposite view in a few ways: it seems that at the current rate of technology, both hardward and software, in a few years it will become significantly harder to dertermien the difference between renders and photographs. Depending on how far this progresses, photographs may even be viewed as insuperior due to natural distortion. Also, I appreciate looking at a photo from which only the brightness, contrast, and color have been tweaked slightly. If too many filters are applied, even though it may look wonderful, it is now a beautiful selection of organized pixels instead of a beautiful selection of nature displayed using pixels.

Cameras never capture as the eye sees, yet you could take that to mean "I will make my picture look like I see it" or "I will learn to take pictures based on what the camera sees rather than myself". Take your pick.

i totally agree with Tristan here. i think the skill will show through with the finished result in the end anyways, a good composition, and subject will always be better than good processing, however haveing the right techniques all the way from shooting, right through the processing (till converting to sRGB to keep the colours better on the web) are all factors in making a good picture great. i have no problems with any contrast, colour, hue and sharpening adjustments so long as they add to the picture. personally i have no issue with a bit of mild cloning either, it may not be a completely accurate representation of what you saw, but you're making a work of art afterall, so you have to have some creative liscence.

specifically about sharpening, i find it can be quite effective when not applied to the entire image. by using a mask, and only applying it to what you want to stand out, or just taking it away from elements that become distracting when sharpened can be quite effective, you justhave to learn to keep the parameters a bit lower than you may initiallly like

Luke -- I basically agree with you about your image. You're the artist, so you deemed that the filter you applied made it less of a photograph somehow (however you like to define "photograph"). Great, your call. I was just making sure you (and everyone else) understood that what comes out of our digital cameras is not sacred. It has already been processed more than you can imagine, and further adjustment should not be seen as blasphemy, or as altering the "real image." What is the real photograph anyway? Photographs are inherently unreal; they're captured images of a real scene. Altering them to your liking is part of your privelage as a photographer, just as choosing what kind of film, what lens, what digital camera, what shutter speed, what exposure, what aperture, what focal depth, what zoom, what framing, what filters to use... This idea that there's some difference between creating a photograph when the shutter goes "click" versus sometime afterward is just stupid. It doesn't make it somehow more "real" if you put a filter in front of the lens, or if you put it on at development time.

That's my opinion anyway, shared by many famous photographers over the years (Ansel Adams, Galen Rowell, etc etc).

Carl -- I totally with you as well. The final word is that a photograph is a piece of art, and it's up to the artist to do whatever they like with it to make it however they want. So, Luke's saying "If too many filters are applied, even though it may look wonderful, it is now a beautiful selection of organized pixels instead of a beautiful selection of nature displayed using pixels" makes perfect sense; it just means you're something of a purist, and you like to see something like what the eye would have originally seen.

My entrance in this discussion had something to do with my camera. It's a small 2MP Casio Exilim, and the quality of the CCD is, in a word, Crap. If I don't use filters -- the usual set being a slight blur (the camera oversharpens) and levels adjustment -- then the picture looks horrible. It didn't take me long to realize that what was coming out of *my* camera was in no way sacred, and I had no reservations about altering it to make it better. The only difference in a better camera (other than a better sensor) is that it does that for you before it gives you the final image, so you end up with a more faithful photograph. You may also want to consider that when looking at these pictures you think have been manipulated -- it might just be that the CCD and in-camera processing is horrible.

The point, at last, is that manipulation doesn't necessarily make a photograph less "real," until you go too far, and it starts looking unreal and bad, like when you over-sharpen. Thus, oversharpening is bad.

The second point is to never buy a camera from a calculator company. Yeah...

Tristan -- (trying little dash dealy) Don't manipulate my quote. I am not saying that you have been, but I just want to make sure you know what I mean by it. I am only a purist when people say or imply an image is pure. If it is in the manipulation gallery, by all means, manipulate it. If it fits better in a gallery with more specification under normal photography yet you manipulated it some, then say so, especially if the manipulation you did actually moved, duplicated, or enhanced the shape of large areas of the picture. If you look in my gallery, you will see quite a bit of manipulated images (especially that negotiation series. I admit that I got caried away, I just wish that I would have gotten more criticism on them so I know what I can do and what I can't), but every single one of them is in the manipulation gallery. Knowing which gallery to put in is common sense, but I hope that it is not also deception. Call me a purist if you want, but I don't want to look at an image thinking it is as-natural-as-possible-while-still-being-art yet have it be nothing near it. Does this make sense? Maybe I am just mumbling gibberish...I keep losing my train of thought...

I'm not trying to demean your views or manipulate quotes in any way here... just saying that you have to realize that photography is just manipulation of light, and I think that using the camera's means to manipulate it is just as valid as using post-processing to acheive the same effect. I think where you draw the line on manipulation is when you do something that couldn't be achieved by doing something to the light hitting the film (or sensor) -- then it belongs in the manipulation gallery. I do understand what you're saying completely. I just went on and on about more philosophical things that were relevant :)

Basically, I think we had different ideas of what "manipulation" entails -- I was thinking more on the lines of color adjustment, mild sharpening or blurring, or black-and-white-izing; so more "adjustment" than "manipulation" -- I think you might have thought that I meant full-on manipulation. What I meant is anything that can be done with normal photographic or developing techniques, but after the fact. Anything further than that is clearly manipulation, and then the "realness" of the image can be debated. :)

Now it all makes sense. Thanks! :-)

From a photojournalistic perspective, unsharp mask, dodging, burning, cropping or any other accepted darkroom technique is completely fine. It is in no way manipulating the image, manipulating would be along the lines of adding or removing an object within the photo, such as adding the ball to a photo of a soccer player...One's workflow has nothing to do with the purity or authenticity of the image, it's just bringing the image up to an acceptable standard of quality. An under/overexposed, soft, washed out image may be pure in the sense that it has never seen the likes of Photoshop since leaving the image sensor, but is it necessarily what you envisioned or saw?

The caveat to this statement is that no amount of sharpening or processing can make a technically poor (out of focus, severely over/underexposed, etc) photo into a good one.

That’s just my $0.02