Comments on: Blue Skies Lookin’ at Me

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:12:33 +0000

There is a question that does not seem to be answered. How does one just ‘pop’ one shy or another into a photo? Abracadabra? How do you get those people out of the first sky in the beach photo? Last I knew there is no popping a picture onto another background with out getting rid of the first background. Am I to believe that there is software that understands the command, ‘get rid of sky’, ‘put in this sky’? How are they done? Do you have to go in and cut out the photo (delete) from the sky?

By: models photo retouching

models photo retouching — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:13:32 +0000

now a days for the models image editing .. when they working on a open area picture or natural place they change the sky colors to be kinda greeny with more contrast and less brightness .. makes the image ..really great .

By: chaz

chaz — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:10:43 +0000

“that world should not be manipulated, save for slight adjustments”

Interesting discussion. Everyone wants to pick the exact spot to gore the other’s ox.

Properly done, even “slight adjustments” to things like skies can make DRAMATIC differences in the what is conveyed by a photograph. Where do you draw the line between “I made what was there more clear” and “I made what was there covey what I saw/felt, even thought that’s not what was there in the original photo”? I don’t know the answer. However, the only one’s really qualified to answer the question with authority are your target audiences–and I dare say you will get different answers from different audiences.

Thanks for the brain stimulation. Now I gotta go think…

By: undefinedsimplicity

undefinedsimplicity — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:29:40 +0000

Personally, I think the beach scene was beautiful the way it was. Simple. Why ruin it? I appreciate what the author was trying to show, though it could have been better. And with the Sydney picture, the sky just looks odd. It doesn’t go with the feel of the other objects in the picture. The author had a good thought going, though.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:12:38 +0000

Why even bother with picture the Newport beach picture. It has major composition issues. For any photographer it is always much better to do it right in the camera. This photographer needs to get rid of all post processing software and learn how to do it right in the first place. Once that part is mastered, then post processing would be the next step. There is no software in the world that can fix a picture that is bad to begin with. The second version has also major artifacts and noise issues. By the way, a picture with lots of trees over the horizon would have been more interesting for a sky replacement. This one is too easy. I also think that the photographer tried to clone something. There is a hard square “dip” in the horizon, just left of the bench. It is hard to see, but it is there.

By: Tim Collier

Tim Collier — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:44:47 +0000

I believe that as a photographer (not a digital artist) you deal with what is infront of you. It’s about trying making sense of a complex world and that world should not be manipulated, save for slight adjustments – levels etc. Whatever the conditions, you are experiencing the real world, and how you deal with it and interpret it is where the skill, and fun lies. Lets not dilute the purity of the image in the new digital era.

By: Reid

Reid — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:32:45 +0000

@Peter: I think that the two mediums are different. With a painting, every reasonable viewer knows that the image presented has been interpreted through someone’s brain and perhaps manipulated. But photos “look” real, so the viewer experiences them as real, and I submit that this intuitive reaction is very hard to displace even if at an intellectual level one knows that the photo has been manipulated.

@Ruth: I agree. I’m not arguing against photo-illustrations or “photo-manips” (learn a new term every day), but it needs to be clear to the viewer what’s going on at an intuitive level as well as intellectual — or, alternatively, that fooling the viewer accomplishes a purpose. (For example, there’s an excellent photo-manip of Ahmed Ahmadinejad cowering in fear of a computer mouse in this week’s Newsweek.)

By: Rose Pratt

Rose Pratt — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:14:57 +0000

The second example would probably be better if the contrast was adjusted rather then the hue/sat. I find adding a little contrast helps make things that get washed out (like bright clouds) more as you see them without the camera.
If it is being passed AS A PHOTO I see nothing wrong with changes that could be easily done in a dark room developing. However if things are being moved around or swapped out I think it should be categorized AS A PHOTO-MANIP, as it is no long a photograph, but a manipulated photograph.

By: Jesper Revald

Jesper Revald — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:15:06 +0000

Totally agree. The middle picture looks way to fake. A small distance between the clouds and the horizon would have helped. The general idea is good though. As long as it’s not photo journalism I personally don’t see anything wrong with improving an already good picture with some added skies or similar.

By: Peter Latham

Peter Latham — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:14:27 +0000

Reid

Artists have been painting landscapes for centuries, moving objects to improve composition and painting in the sky that best fits their ideal vision. Is changing the sky or removing unsightly objects from an image any different. Most people do not take photos as factual representations of what they are seeing, so if they want to change things in photoshop then I do not see anything wrong with that, as long as it is done with a lot of thought behind the changes, unlike the above examples.