Can you see the difference?

(Hint: cover one half with your hand, then cover the the other side)

Some people have sent me comments telling me that they can’t see the difference between the photo processed using this technique and the original. This is both bad and good. Bad because it doesn’t look like I did anything, and good because that’s exactly what I intended. Let me explain.

Photographic enhancement techniques can ruin a good photograph in the same way that the over-application of fonts leads to gaudy, divergent designs. Although you could argue that an over-enhanced photograph is stylized, in most photo-retouching situations, you aren’t trying to stylize the photograph (of course, there are exceptions). You don’t want your viewers to say “wow, you’re good with Photoshop”—you want them to say “wow, I wish I could take a photo like that”. If your viewer can definitively say “after” is better than “before” but has difficulty articulating why, then you’ve succeeded.

Of course, your taste may be different than mine, but that’s part of the fun. Here’s the game you should play: how far can you push and prod a photograph without your viewer knowing anything was done to it?

Feb 13, 2008 by mike Trackback
Tags: digital darkroom, enhancement, photo editing, photoshop
Filed in: Photography Process
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