One for the photo geeks
Oct. 3rd, 2007 07:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieIf you're interested in portrait photography and modern trends therein, check out iWanExStudio. Specifically, go to their Portfolio section, click on one of the thumbnails (which will pop up an enlarged version). Hover your mouse over the enlarged version to see the original photograph (or what they're positing as the original photograph). Move your mouse off of the image to see the final, Photoshoppped version. It's a truly impressive bit of artistry (and a well put-together site, too).
Having worked in PhotoShop for several years now, I recognize several of the tricks they're using. I am startled, though, to realize just how much of the adjustment they're doing is to correct for crappy or improper lighting in the original photo. Have professional photographers gotten so used to fixing/adjusting lighting in PhotoShop that they don't really bother with great lighting setups in the first place? Or is it more that great lighting is really, really hard to do and not worth the effort if you know you're going to digitally alter it anyway? (Like anything else in art, proper lighting is very hard, and takes a particular kind of genius and much practice to do really well.)
I also find the trends shown in these images very interesting. Back in the heyday of "glamour" photography (the 30s through the 50's), publicity photos involved insane amounts of light (and not an inconsiderable amount of makeup) to achieve the flawless skin and radiant look of the great beauty shots (see old black-and-white shots of Jean Harlow, Olivia DeHavilland, Vivien Leigh, et al for examples of what I'm talking about). Those lights were huge and hotter than heck. Today, it's done with a combination of monkeying with the contrast settings, blurring some of the channels, and the history brush (among other things, or so I'm guessing). Still takes a lot of artistry, practice, and hard work, but I'm going to theorize here that if you *know* you're going to be tweaking things in PhotoShop anyway, your motivation to get your lighting design to the "great" level (instead of merely adequate enough to get something you can work with) is much less.
Anyhow, it's a fascinating before-and-after, even if you're not a photo geek. If you are, what are your thoughts about the process? Lighting? Etc.? If you're not, what do you think about the before and after? Would you want your photographs altered this way?
Having worked in PhotoShop for several years now, I recognize several of the tricks they're using. I am startled, though, to realize just how much of the adjustment they're doing is to correct for crappy or improper lighting in the original photo. Have professional photographers gotten so used to fixing/adjusting lighting in PhotoShop that they don't really bother with great lighting setups in the first place? Or is it more that great lighting is really, really hard to do and not worth the effort if you know you're going to digitally alter it anyway? (Like anything else in art, proper lighting is very hard, and takes a particular kind of genius and much practice to do really well.)
I also find the trends shown in these images very interesting. Back in the heyday of "glamour" photography (the 30s through the 50's), publicity photos involved insane amounts of light (and not an inconsiderable amount of makeup) to achieve the flawless skin and radiant look of the great beauty shots (see old black-and-white shots of Jean Harlow, Olivia DeHavilland, Vivien Leigh, et al for examples of what I'm talking about). Those lights were huge and hotter than heck. Today, it's done with a combination of monkeying with the contrast settings, blurring some of the channels, and the history brush (among other things, or so I'm guessing). Still takes a lot of artistry, practice, and hard work, but I'm going to theorize here that if you *know* you're going to be tweaking things in PhotoShop anyway, your motivation to get your lighting design to the "great" level (instead of merely adequate enough to get something you can work with) is much less.
Anyhow, it's a fascinating before-and-after, even if you're not a photo geek. If you are, what are your thoughts about the process? Lighting? Etc.? If you're not, what do you think about the before and after? Would you want your photographs altered this way?
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Amazing Stuff
Date: 2007-10-03 07:35 pm (UTC)That's all pretty cool and creepy, in equal amounts, IMHO. I first saw that kind of technique on the Web site of Greg Apodaca (http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html). And of course one of the short films (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZoyfhG0Wwk) that came out of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty (YouTube link).
I have to say that I think this kind of shenanigan is inevitable. I am a competent Photoshop technician: I am also an incompetent photographer. I used to use Photoshop to tart up my crappy catalog photos on an almost weekly basis. Until we got a true photographer on staff, every single image that we put out in any format was tweaked to Hell and back. Now they're tweaked only halfway to Pandemonium and back. Really, everything I do on my computer on behalf of my employer is basically an exercise in augmenting my organic talents with hardware and software. I'm not only a crappy photographer: my hand-coded HTML sucks. ;-)
And of course we as a consumer public want our media sprites to be absolutely perfect. If we're not doing it in Photoshop, we're doing it with (semi)elective surgery. Even our Rock 'N Roll--that bastion of the independent American spirit--is pitch-quantized using Pro Tools so that we don't have to hear a hard-core death metal guitar lick that is even a twentieth of a cent off key.
Among its many other boons and banes, technology has allowed two things to happen simultaneously, in any number of arenas of artistic endeavor. First, it has allowed great artists to produce more and better compositions in their media than ever before. Second, it has allowed talentless hacks to more and slightly less bad compositions in their media than ever before. This is either a bad thing on a good thing depending upon your tastes.
Re: Amazing Stuff
Date: 2007-10-03 07:36 pm (UTC)Re: Amazing Stuff
Date: 2007-10-04 05:44 pm (UTC)Yes, the before-and-afters are really kind of freaky. I didn't realize just how much the public demanded that "beauty" include "day-glo poreless skin that looks illuminated from within." And Photoshopping definitely beats actually lighting people from inside, which would look rather gross, all things considered.
Tweaking catalog images of mushrooms and 'shroom products seems much more benign than what they're doing to pictures of people, IMHO. I suppose it's all relative.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-03 11:12 pm (UTC)Part of the problem is that photographs have just become harder to light. Fifty years ago, you could put a dab of Vaseline in front of the lens, pour on enough light that the cake makeup started to melt, and print the result on low-contrast magazine paper, and anybody with European ancestors and good bone structure would look like a movie star. If you do the same thing now, but put the results (in color!) on modern gloss or semigloss paper or on a computer screen, everybody looks like a vampire. (Marilyn Manson made a career out of that.)
To get good lighting now, you either need to spend a lot of money for studio lights or spend a lot of time learning how to get good results from Home Depot shop lights, a few sheets of foam core, and someone patient enough to let you take a few thousand bad pictures of them.
If you're too cheap for good lights, too lazy to practice, or not lucky enough to have a model, you buy Photoshop.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 05:53 pm (UTC)I agree that lighting well for good print paper in color is definitely a more complex problem than lighting for poor print paper in black and white (and would continue the argument to say that lighting well for color is just tougher than lighting well for black and white, period). That being said, from many of the before pictures, I'd say the photographer(s) weren't even trying for good lighting. I suspect that "too cheap" is a bit of it, but it's probably not so much being too lazy to practice so much as "why bother practicing lighting when I could be using the time to practice in Photoshop?"
no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 08:50 pm (UTC)The digital spackling doesn't freak me our nearly as much as the other adjustments; like trimming a bare whisker of tummy off of a midriff, or moving another woman's right boob up about three centimeters. What the hell was that??
Ever see the horrible 80's sci-fi movie Looker? We're there with a bag of chips.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 09:32 pm (UTC)Assuming this is Uncle Andrew, that is. If not, well, uh-oh.