when is it cheating?

<p>hi all, several photographer friends won't share photos til they're edited...if i HAVE to edit to make<br>

a photo viewable, maybe the photo wasn't that good to begin with...to me, editing was always to<br>

make a shot different, no viewable...am i being too hard on myself? annie</p>

<p>A subject near and dear to my heart. I wrote something about it a while back...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.graphic-fusion.com/cheating.htm">http://www.graphic-fusion.com/cheating.htm</a></p>

<p>You're jumping through self-made hoops. If you shoot negative film, you have to make a print in order for the image to be seen. If you're taking the time to make a print, that means you've made the decision that it is worth looking at - if you're going to spend the time to make a print, it behooves you to make the best print possible. The same with a digitally created image. If you have made the decision to edit an image, then you've made the decision that it is worth looking at - and you work on it until you have the image you want. Your problem with this is...?</p>

<p>I guess you meant PS editing......in most cases a good photo is already good before PS editing...editing make it even better...more and more, serious photojournalism contests require photographer to show their raw file...if it's cheating or not depends who judges...<br />When it's not about documentary or journalism people do what they want...and often it can be superb...<br />Now if people heavily modify images they present as "documentary or photojournalism type" to impress their friends, family and/or a bunch of PN'ers, then who really cares ?...</p>

<p>It's cheating when you present someone else's photo as yours. That's about the beginning and end of it.</p>

<p>Similar to Jeff, I would say, if you deliberately lied about editing, that would be cheating. I think that every decision we make to record the image in the first place also counts as editing. With simple exposure adjustments, we can make an object appear in the image (record as mid tones) or we can make it disappear into the highlights or shadows. If you take a strict view of it, editing is inescapable. It's your photo; build it the way you want. Proceed with confidence.</p>

<p>Back when I was shooting film and making my own prints in a darkroom, I would pretty much never show anyone an image until I was done processing the film and making the print. Because otherwise there was nothing to show. And in making the print, I'd make qualitative decisions about <em>how</em> I wanted that print to be seen. Nothing, at all, has changed.</p>

<p>It's also cheating if you're a photojournalist and you deliberately alter a photo to mislead the viewer; i.e., remove something that was in the original shot or add something that wasn't. If we're talking about art for its own sake, then it's just editing. Ansel Adams probably spent as much time editing photos in the darkroom as he did behind a camera. The only difference now is that Photoshop and other software make the editing process easier, faster, and a lot less stinky...</p>

<p>All my raw files get some kind of editing. I don't see that as cheating.<br>

+1 with Jeff.<br>

It is persons vision of the scene and/or subject.</p>

<p>I always had a heck of a time getting people to gather around the light table and look at my negatives so I decided to cheat, I went out and purchased an enlarger , some chemistry and a box of paper.</p>

<p>When I purchased a DSLR nobody wanted to read the raw code from the files so I had to cheat again and ended up having to go out and buy Lightroom, Photoshop and a printer.</p>

<p>I see nothing wrong with tweaking the colors so the look the same as in real life, to my eye. This is particularly true for red roses, which are notoriously difficult for camera systems to represent accurately.</p>

<p>Is Velvia cheating?</p>

<p>When you choose to make a photo you are already editing it by choosing your composition, and choosing exposure, white balance, and all the settings you have available, including film type as Daniel pointed out. Once you have made your shot minor editing is part of the process. If you are taking photos as an artistic outlet for yourself then you are not trying to reproduce what you saw. You are trying to create a compelling interesting image. And at this point what you do to get the desired effect is up to you. You can do as much or as little as you want and it is all part of the same artistic process of creating an image with impact.</p>

<p>Now you can go to extremes with this and each person has their own tastes about this. If you modify heavily in photoshop and push the photo too far some people might not like it but that might be your own personal style. If you enjoy spending more time on the computer and less in the field then this might be what you want to do. (Or in the darkroom.)</p>

<p>My personal taste is that I would rather take photos than edit them so I usually at most do a little bit of cropping to strengthen composition and then maybe some adjusting of wb or curves to get the lighting/color to look the way I want it. I have done much more than that in certain situations and I don't feel like the heavily manipulated photos are any less artistic or "cheating" over my less manipulated photos.</p>

<p>Everything is just another tool to use to get to the end result.</p>

<p>Jeff said it in the most concise way.</p>

<p>Maybe your friends don't mean "editing" in the way you're thinking. Editing can mean selecting the good ones and throwing away the bad ones. That is the traditional meaning. If a photographer said "I don't show my pictures until they are edited," that is what I would assume it to mean.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>hi all, several photographer friends won't share photos til they're edited...if i HAVE to edit to make<br />a photo viewable, maybe the photo wasn't that good to begin with...to me, editing was always to<br />make a shot different, no viewable...am i being too hard on myself? annie</p>

</blockquote>

<p>People can take pictuers in any way they want to. You can photoshop or not photoshop. Makes no difference to anyone but yourself. The purist form of photography that I can think of would be to shoot Elitechrome 100 and then project it. Do not use filters with capture. I do love Elitechrome but I prefer to run it down the photoshop path for a little tweak. However generally speaking modern photography is with the use of digital camera's that are designed to work in cooperation with an editing program in the computer. That is just the way it is now. Like I said just do what you want. Professionals may have strict rules such as in news reporting. They must follow those rules. I guess with some exceptions I would say that cheating occurs when you purposefully do not tell the truth about it when required to.</p>

<p>In film the only "pure" way to do it is probably slides, which once developed are looked at with a projector or loupe. Any print is "edited" by means of the process required to print it (or scan it and/or print it these days). Digital cameras taking RAW are giving you raw sensor scans of the pictures you took. In order to look at it you need a program that reads the raw file and converts it to a picture. There is no white balance or sharpening level or a hundred other settings inherent in the RAW -- it needs "development" to turn it into a finished picture. There is no "pure" form. it is intended to be processed. You can produce jpegs by setting your camera with the settings you favor but that's just as edited as the ones you shoot raw and edit in the computer. But if it pleases your sensibility then ok, because you are the person you have to please.</p>

<p>Think of editing as grooming and getting dressed.</p>

We need a set of links to all of the archived discussion on this subject. No joke.

 

Andrea: You seem to have joined PN to ask this question. No problem, but we don't know you or your work at all. As others have said, unless we are talking about journalism, the specific requirements of a contest or client, or something similar, there is no such thing as 'cheating'. In your own work, are you shooting film? If so, is it 'cheating' to use a pro lab to print your images, rather than a Kodak kiosk that applies the same algorithms to everything? Are you shooting digital? If so, what do you consider an 'unedited' image? A JPEG straight out of the camera with default settings? That is merely giving the editing over to a processor chip in the camera. A RAW file put through the camera maker's software with default settings? Do you think the software magically 'knows' how to render each image as you saw it? Of course not.

<p>The abandoned photographic philosophy of "The Foundiview" (<em>look it up</em>) said your work should be what is/was "<em>Seen at the scene</em>". No "grooming" the scene, nothing added or taken away, no fakes.<br />Such a philosophy today, under which many photographers, to include Photojounalists and forensic photographers still work today, is mostly unheard of by digital only photographers. Though many news organizations still maintain a working "Journalists" ethic, others, many of whom are self-designated photographers, pay no attention to ethics or morals when shooting.<br>

So "Cheating" is when you know you've done something out of the pale but do it anyway. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>It's cheating when:<br>

1. You take someone else's image and claim it as yours<br>

2. The expectation of un-manipulated photos / captures is present - say in a news or PJ setting.<br>

3. You violate the rules of entry of a contest and change the exlif data to cover up for yourself.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Even if you shoot slide film, you can still do lots of editing. You can shoot C-41 and dev it in E-6. You can underexpose or overexpose. You can use fun things like split ND filters to get a useable image where otherwise a large part of the image would be blow out. You can take an image, modify it, and then print it with a film recorder on slide film. Ultimately, photography is subjective, not objective, and viewing it any other way is deny what can be done to an image.</p>

<p>I don't like to show images off my lcd until they are processed in Bibble... 'cause that's my vision I want to show, not nikon's....</p>

<p>Editing is such a broad term. When I edit my pictures in Bibble, it's basically selecting keepers. I'd love to photoshop my images, but photoshop's not really on linux.....</p>

<p>And besides, does it matter so long as the photographer's vision is presented? Photography itself is NOT an accurate depiction of what is shot.... any photog can make a small room look big, and vice versa.</p>

<p>Alvin</p>

<p>"It's cheating when you present someone else's photo as yours. That's about the beginning and end of it."<br>

well said Jeff-I couldn't agree more. cb</p>

<p>There's editing and then there's <em>editing.</em> I've just checked, and on PN there is still a box to tick when uploading to confirm if an image is unmanipulated or not. Basic editing allows the image to be <em>correctly</em> viewable (on a monitor or in a print) and typically covers [i quote]</p>

<blockquote>

<p>a single uninterrupted exposure, cropping to taste, common adjustments to the entire image, e.g., color temperature, curves, sharpening, desaturation to black and white and dust spots on sensor cloned out</p>

</blockquote>

<p>

<p>The Gnomes point out that anything beyond this is more PhotoShop than Camera, and should be labelled as such, to avoid confusion. This will, as the OP might have put it, make the shot <em>different</em>.</p>

</p>

<p><em>The Gnomes point out that anything beyond this is more PhotoShop than Camera, and should be labelled as such, to avoid confusion.</em></p>

<p>Actually, "the Gnomes" do not say that anything beyond this is more Photoshop than camera, nor do they indicate that you "should" label your photos as such. The unmanipulated checkbox and definition were created to satisfy people who complained it was unfair to have "pure" photos going up against manipulated photos in the ratings. The implementation of the "unmanipulated" marker didn't change the way people rated photos (they didn't start giving "real" photos higher marks or manipulated photos lower marks), but at least it quieted one group of complainers. </p>