Standards for unmanipulated photo declaration

[mg]

"Colorizing a black and white image is not allowed."

<p>

Does this actually mean that an image that is toned in sepia overall by going to PS > Hue/Saturation > Colorize and moving hue and saturation slider is considered manipulated...?

<p>

Is it considered manipulated as well if the same effect (overall toning) is produced by a sepia virage in a wet lab ?

<p>

Thanks.

[mottershead]

Carl, obviously some people consider "manipulation" a pejorative. Therefore what they do is reasonable and not a "manipulation", whereas other transformations of the captured image are sins that should be declared and segregated.

 

When you capture an image on film, it is a latent image represented by clumps of silver compounds in an emulsion. If you capture an image on a digital sensor, it is represented by "1" and "0" electron states in a semiconductor. Obviously, to get from those to an image on a monitor requires a series of transformations. Some of these are required and some are optional. Of the required ones, some of them are controllable by the photographer, such as through selection of filters in the enlarger, color spaces, etc.

 

Ideally we would say that a completely unmanipulated image is one where no optional transformations have been done and in transformations which are controllable by the photographer, control parameters are set in a range that makes the image as true to the original as possible. We then compromise a little and let in some optional transformations that by tradition (although not by logic) are not considered "manipulations", such as cropping, dodging and burning, sharpening, spotting, etc. This is basically because it would just be too radical to prohibit these, and almost no images could be marked as "unmanipulated" if we did. We impose the requirement that if these optional transformations are done then the photographer should be constrained by the requirement for "realism" (whatever that is).

 

Next, some people will argue that distortions of the image aimed at perspective "correction" are OK, although it isn't clear in what sense they are using the word correction, since this transformation does not make the image look as it did to the eye of the photographer. Others will say that stitching two images is OK, provided the images in the stitch were taken close in time to each other and sufficient care is taken to avoid duplicating a moving object on both sides of the stitch. Nobody has brought this up yet, but inevitably someone is going to say that blending two exposures in Photoshop so as to extend the exposure latitude of the film or sensor should be OK. And so forth.

 

What standard are we going to use to decide which transformations are "manipulations" (bad) and which are "corrections",

"adjustments", etc, (good)? The intent of the photographer to make the image "realistic", according to his visual memory of the scene? The intent of the photographer to make the image look like it might have looked if he had used different equipment, or had been there on a different day, or if his subject had been wearing makeup, or if he had chopped down a tree?

[root]

You'll have a hard time getting people to equate your sunset clone

argument with the equipment equivalent argument. There was a recent

thread that suggested that PC lenses will soon become redundant. I

think they may be right. . . . but then that gets us ever closer to

catagorizing more and more images as manipulated to the point where

there is really no distinction. . . . which seems to be really OK

with you, but it doesn't meet our wish to separate what is seen from

what is created. As one who enjoys shooting architectural abstracts,

it is important for me that people do not jump to an incorrect

conclusion about what is real in my images versus what is contrived.

I image Tony may feel the same way about some of his stitched

panoramas, but I'll let him speak for himself. .

[root]

Brian (and Marc), In your critique of Anna's image, you made it quite

clear that manipulated images should be held to a different standard.

Most of us agree. Whether we like most manipulations aesthetically is

a separate issue. Let's leave perjorative and evil out of this. It's

simple, did you see it or not? Perspective correction is really just

a form of cropping, when you think about it.

 

If you stitch to create an unreal image, then it's manipulated. You

are exaggerating to create conditions which really should take care of

themselves . . assuming they come up at all. .

[tom_permutt]

Surely we are not going to consider flash pictures unmanipulated, are we? Yes, Edgerton's exploding egg existed for some fraction of a second, but no one ever *saw* it, did she?

 

But I jest. I know perfectly well that it is not manipulation to light up a subject's retinas in a way that no one but an ophthalmologist has ever seen. Manipulation would be painting them black again. Unless it's done by "burning," of course.

[mottershead]

Carl, I strived like crazy to avoid a standard like yours. As long as it is real, its OK. That is a slippery slope to calling almost everything unmanipulated. I thought you guys were against digital manipulations.

 

For example, can I clone out the pimple on my daughter's cheek and call it unmanipulated? I could have put some makeup on the pimple -- I just didn't happen to notice it at the time. For that matter, if I had taken the photo the day before, she wouldn't have had the pimple. I mean, she does look like that when she doesn't have the pimple, which after all, is most of the time. When you really think about it, the cloned version is *more* realistic than the uncloned one, since she doesn't have pimples more than she does. Besides, it doesn't look that much different from just selecting the pimple and making it the same color as the rest of her cheek, and we do allow "color balance" changes don't we? Or, if you don't like that argument, if there had been a big piece of dust right where the pimple was, you would have let me remove that, right, along with the pimple underneath? So, just imagine there was some dust there.

 

YOu say this photo, which I ran through the Frosted Glass filter in Photoshop, is manipulated? I say it isn't. It only looks like it would have if I had put a piece of frosted glass in front of the camera. In fact, all I needed to do was take this picture outside after breathing on the window. I just didn't happen to have my jacket on and it was cold, so I didn't.

 

You say this composite of the swans and the sunset is manipulated? Nope. Sure, I took the swans at noon and the sunset at sunset and composited them together. But I was there at sunset the day before, when there were swans there; I just didn't have my camera with me. And it did look exactly like this picture, I swear.

[mg]

Good one, Brian... Oh, and seriously, your caricature is nothing but true.

<p>

Now, Carl, let me make you feel a lot better... I had a funny surprise just now... I actually went through my checkboxes and in fact noticed that 75% of my work uploaded WAS MANIPULATED (by the new set of rules). And you know what ? It just made me laugh.

<p>

Side notes to Brian:

<p>

1) What about my "toning/colorizing" question ? No reply ?

<p>

2) Maybe you can see now that the a, b, c, d advice above may solve a lot of problems and complains, whereas the rules you have set will still me the same.

<p>

Now that you mentionned that non-manipulated images will be on display in some places separated from the manipulated ones, the INTENT (combined with your set of rules) will be the only way to actually separate the works in as many categories as needed. And if you refuse to create the categories, trust me, you will be stoned to death...:-))

[mottershead]

Marc, regarding using Colorize in Photoshop to make an image look like a toned black and white photo. I would say this is OK. The document refers to desaturating an image to make it black and white. This is too narrow, since there are a number of techniques for doing this, including Channel Mixer, and DuoTone. These two latter techniques can also create "toned" looks. So I will include this as a nominal "non-manipulation".

[mg]

Now I can have a few good-non-manipulated-real-photos in my list and I might end up being "only" 65% of a bad guy - instead of 75%. Great ! :-))

[tom_permutt]

Toning is OK, then, but what tones are allowed? Sepia is OK, even duotones. Would a simulated cyanotype work for you?

 

I once posted a "black and white" image in which black was rendered as gold and white as brick red. I didn't expect people to believe the tree was gold and the sky red, but I didn't think it was much of a manipulation, either: just a little different perspective (sic) on what monochrome means. Or is this the Model T School of Photography: any color they want, as long as it's black or, well, OK, brown?

[mottershead]

Tom, well with digital images all you have is a bunch of numbers and you have to map these to colors. This is what color spaces are all about. All of the techniques for making digital B&W images could be achieved through converting the image to customized color space. Writing color space profiles isn't something most people want to do. It is certainly a lot easier to use Color Balance, Levels, DuoTone, Channel Mixer, etc.

 

The document says that using these tools is nominally not a manipulation, subject to the constraint that they shouldn't be used in an "unrealistic" manner, which is a big weakness in the rules. Is a B&W conversion "unrealistic"? Logically, yes, since the world is no more black and white than it is red and gold. However, black and white (and toned versions of black and white) have the weight of tradition and B&W film behind them; so as a practical matter they are "in".

[root]

I get the feeling you're working in a vacuum. That is, you have not

entered images in a manipulated versus unmanipulated

category where participating members went round and round on

this issue doing research where applicable to see if there were

precidents.

 

The example I've given you relates to camera equivalents - a

lens versus skew, and panorama camera versus stitching. In

my camera club, not necessarily the final international arbiter on

these things, but a real world example nonetheless - we decided

to allow them.

 

The pimple would also be acceptable - and I thought by your

description as well, given that it is miniscule - the equivalent to

dust. Deminimus is the legal term (probably misspelled).

 

You're trying too hard to avoid slopes that could become slippery

. . . . but you can't. Duotones will be created that don't quite look

like the darkroom equivalent, but neither of us think we should

disallow them just because the line can not be precisely drawn.

 

Someone made the point about lying. That will happen. But it

will happen less often if you cut people some slack.

[mottershead]

Carl,

 

I'm not really working in a vacuum. I'm not a member of a camera club with a lot of debate about categories. However, the issue of manipulation is not new, and I've been doing photography since high-school, being 48 now. Its an issue in which I've been interested for 30 years!

 

For another thing, I relied a lot on the FoundView standard, even though I thought the writers of that standard claimed a precision that their standard didn't have. Unfortunately the site is down now; so I cannot check. However, I distinctly remember that stitches and perspective correctioni in Photoshop were not allowed under FoundView. If you recall the site structure, there was a FAQ-structured section. This is where the questions about stitches and perspective correction were addressed. I'm very sure I'm correct about stitches: they fell because of the requirement that the image be from a single exposure (shutter release) of the camera. As for PC, I could be misremembering, but I don't think so.

[root]

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?topic_id=1481&msg_id=00

4hQo&photo_id=1350265&photo_sel_index=0

 

 

comments and 7/7s welcome :-)

[bobatkins]

I have many of the original FoundView documents. I would post them, but since they are copyrighted that may not be the right thing to do. However, here is <b>their</b> statement on perspective correction:

<p>

<em>

The issue:</em> With computer manipulation, it is possible to reshape, resize, and rearrange elements in an image to simulate perspectives that for whatever reason were not chosen prior to clicking the shutter. Post-shutter manipulations can simulate what the image would have looked like had the camera been positioned in a different spot or had a different focal-length lens been used (such as a wide-angle instead of a normal). It is also possible to make post-shutter perspective alterations to an image that simulate the effect of having used a view camera to take the photograph. (For example, through computer manipulations or by tilting the baseboard and negative stage during enlarging, converging vertical lines on tall buildings can be rendered as parallel. This manipulation is traditionally called "perspective correction.") Can images that have undergone post-shutter perspective alterations qualify as FoundView?

<p>

<em>The resolution:</em> These examples clearly constitute post-shutter manipulations of "forms and shapes" and thus cannot qualify as FoundView. This is one of those cases where even a well-executed post-shutter simulation of a pre-shutter effect is nonetheless still merely a simulation (see E-10, part 1). If the photographer wanted to record the forms and shapes before him a particular way at the decisive moment, he should have photographed them that way (see E-12 and F-1). If he didn't (or couldn't) record them that way when he clicked the shutter, he's certainly welcome to later reshape the elements in the picture�but the result can't qualify as FoundView (because it doesn't depict the forms and shapes as they were recorded by the camera when the shutter was clicked). The FoundView checkmark can only be applied to photographs that depict the perspective selected by the photographer at the decisive moment�no exceptions.

 

It's difficult for some photographers to accept this at first, perhaps because some kinds of post-shutter perspective alterations were practiced long before the digital era. However, manipulations of any kind that otherwise contradict FoundView cannot be sanctioned simply because they're "darkroom" instead of "digital" or "traditional" instead of "new." The standard must be applied consistently or not at all.

[bobatkins]

Here is the FoundView discussion of Adams' "Moonrise over Hernandez NM"

<p>

This discussion of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico refers to the vintage prints, Adams' earliest (and thus most valuable) expressions of his famous 1941 photograph. In his later prints of Moonrise, Adams darkened the sky so much that some wispy clouds high in the sky on the original negative are not visible�at least not in published versions of the image. Even wispy clouds count as "forms and shapes," deletion of which would seem to instantly disqualify these later prints of Moonrise from FoundView. On the other hand, tonal variations in photographs are often integral to artistic expression, elements in darker areas of photographs can become illegible when darkening entire regions of the print (see F-12 and E-13), and visual information (especially shadow detail) often gets lost during the journey from photograph to printed page.<b> Bottom line: reasonable people differ on whether the later Moonrise prints would qualify as FoundView</b>, which is why the earlier prints are the basis for the discussion in E-8. Adams discusses his various struggles with the photograph in Examples (Little, Brown, 1983); the image appears in that book and in a number of other Adams books published by Little, Brown. A detailed account of the last darkroom session at which Adams printed the Moonrise negative (on February 21, 1980) appears in Mary Street Alinder's Ansel Adams: A Biography (Henry Holt and Co., 1996).

[bacsa]

1. How close is a black and white photo to the "original scene in front of the camera"? Is the human eye "equipped" with a black and white retina as well? And still, using B&W film is not considered a (peiorative) manipulation. I hope it will never be. :o)

<p>

2. For us, *the larger part of the photo.net visitors*, the amateur "photographers", this is just a hobby - getting already more and more expensive. We hardly have money for special perspective correcting lenses, tilt/shift lenses, etc. [i already had to think twice before paying for the 17mm tokina ultra-wide.] But evidently all of us have access to a computer and to a (freeware?) software that can correct for the perspective. Should "perspective correction" become a privilege of the pro's and rich guys?

<p>

3. <a href="http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=574418">Myself</a> personally, I come here to learn something about the photography. You give me the opportunity, here, so I happily obey to any rules. I have no prob writing there that my basque friend is actually not sepia-toned(for the sake of those who do not know him), or that there was no black frame around that small bridge in Luxembourg. I think no sane people will post here manipulated images just to fool everybody.

<p>

So, I still consider a huge waste when I see <a href="http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=14630">the</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=416299">cream</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=357714">of</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=476769">the</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=524475">site</a> (no sarcasm applied) spending his time discussing these issues.

[bobatkins]

I think some people are missing the point. Here it is:

<p><b>

You can upload any image you want to the photo.net gallery section as long as it is based on a photograph (or photographs).</b>

<p>

The only thing you can't (i.e. should not) do is mark manipulated photos as unmanipulated. There's no prize, no contest, no benefit and no detriment to marking or not marking an image as "unmanipulated". You can still PhotoShop until your mouse wears out and upload a montage of your last 1000 shots.

<p>

The only thing we now have is a way for photographers who prefer to present unmanipulated photographs to label them as such and thus differentiate them from the work of graphic artists who work with photographic based images.

<p>

No need to get upset about this unless you have an inferiority (or superiority) complex.

[Spearhead]

I've added the "Image Manipulation Box" to the list of reasons I have my own website rather than upload images here.

[root]

If we're taking 'foundview' as our sole or primary reference, then PS

perspective correction appears to be out of bounds even by a miniscule

amount. I see they used the darkroom equivalent as well as the lens,

yet if the darkroom can alter shapes slightly, as in dodging and

burning without obliterating them, as in later 'Moonrise, Hernandez'

prints then I would have thought that the manual equivalent would have

been acceptable.

 

In the real world, I know that very few people would consider my minor

skews to be manipulations, certainly not of the sort that initiates

these discussions, but if we're determined to keep it this way, then I

think we'll end up requiring technical descriptions of ALL uploaded

images. Otherwise, how do you know if an image is manipulated or

simply 'unchecked'? That has been one of the most frequently

mentioned requests, after all. . . . . . . to get not-so-obvious

manipulations as well as setups to be up front about it . . . . . .

[markci]

<i>

The only thing we now have is a way for photographers who prefer to present unmanipulated photographs to label them as such and thus differentiate them from the work of graphic artists who work with photographic based images.

</i>

<p>

Is that really all we have? Because we had that before. I could type "this is an unmanipulated photograph" into the technical comments box and achieve the same objective if it's only a label.

<p>

No special galleries, search flags, etc?

[root]

Since we do not have 'yes', 'no', and 'not declared' as options, all

we have really done is make it clearer to people who upload images,

the manipulations are acceptable as uploads on this site. That's

worth something, especially to Brian and Jeremy who have to put out

fires on this subject far more often than should be necessary. . . . .

.

[mg]

"You can still PhotoShop until your mouse wears out and upload a montage of your last 1000 shots."

<p>

Hehe... Nice one, Bob ! I'm getting started today...:-)

<p>

Carl, MarK,

<p>

We can certainly presume that this "reform" doesn't stop here. Before that you COULD indeed write - or not ! - "unmanipulated" in the technical details... Well, now, YOU MUST. Why ? What if you don't ?

<p>

Well, that's part 2, but I think it is fairly obvious. The next step is that there will be indeed a filter and probably separated top-rated pages... If not, indeed, why would photo.net do this ?

<p>

What I've been wondering since this started is why photo.net didn't announce this next step... I think our dear Editor is being naughty here...:-)

[bobatkins]

Yes Marc, it's a conspiracy. Next week we make it compulsory to mark all manipulated images. Then the week after that we delete them all. You've found our secret plan.

 

As I've said before, no good deed goes unpunished and that's certainly the rule here rather than the exception. Whatever Brian does is either (1) Wrong or (2) Not enough or (3) Too much

 

If I was him I'd turn off my email, stop reading the forums and try to concentrate on the more important things that all this stuff must be distracting him from doing. In fact I may try that for a while too.

[mottershead]

You don't have to mark manipulated images. You have to mark (honestly) UN-manipulated images -- if you want people to know that they are unmanipulated. If they don't meet our requirements, but the only manipulation you did was minor (according to you), and you feel the need to explain why you didn't check "unmanipulated", by all means do so in the "Technical Details": e.g. "this would be unmanipulated except I removed an electric wire".

 

Or don't do anything if you don't feel like. Keep doing exactly what you did before, ignoring the new box. The only thing we don't want people to do is to create their own definition of "manipulated", ignoring ours. The box is an "Unmanipulated according to the photo.net standards", NOT unmanipulated according to me, the rules of my local art association, all my friends, etc.

 

If enough people mark their images as "unmanipulated", eventually we will have some kind of Top Unmanipulated Images page.