Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/14
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Frank Conley wrote: "Someone on this list discussed the advantages of masking using Photoshop, which let him brighten up the colors of a flower. While that may be a nice technique for an art photo, it has no place in a news photograph whatsoever." In general I agree with the sentiment expressed here. However, in the particular photograph where I employed masking to selectively accentuate color, I was simply restoring color contrast which appeared in the slide (and in the original scene) but had been reduced in the scanning process. This type of correction would not be out of place in a Sunset magazine article on gardening, for example. The orange of poppies is amazingly saturated in real life too. In the days where black and white photography was common in photojournalism, did the photographers manipulate the prints (i.e. with burning and dodging) to heighten the drama? Based on what I have seen in Life during the years I was growing up, I would have to assume so. Can any of you oldtimers enlighten us on this? It seems that with the advent of color slide film, a new purism has descended on photography, where any manipulation of the image (beyond what is injected optically by filters, or mechanically by the scanning and halftoning processes) is considered to be unacceptable or unethical. I would think that there is an ethical level of image manipulation, which heightens the visual impact without doing disservice to the truth. By the way, I find that the use of highly saturated color slide films is, by itself, sometimes objectionable. Call it "Fujification of the evidence." Mark Davison