The manipulation line - gallery secrets revealed!
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Ok - first up, I have had it suggested to me that this is a fairly emotive subject, I don’t want to offend or upset anyone - just good clean fun ok! To save embarrassment I have used examples of my own work in the scale defined section. The other sections are just for fun and include lots of examples from beautiful galleries - please respect their artwork and give them positive feedback please


The scale defined - well my version of it
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I'd really like to share and collect your views and thoughts on where the line between photography and photo-manipulation is drawn? I have given this a lot of thought during the time I have spend on DA and I think the ultimate conclusion (if its not to early in the discussion to drawn a conclusion) is that its a sliding scale - pure photography at one end and photo-manipulation at the other. Personal preference, a small amount of photo-ethics as well as some guesswork ultimately making the decisions of where to post your pieces or artwork.

I guess the photo-purist would say any manipulation of a photograph makes it a photo-manip - but thing about this a little, if you adjust the white balance, add say a coken filter or add a light source - is that manipulation ? It is to a certain degree I feel. Take this example (a)looks pretty real, and you would be right if you said it had no post production but, to create the colour effect I actually held a quality street wrapper over the lens as I took the image......so now is it manipulated ? Which leads on nicely to the next stage - which I would say would be anything that you are able to capture at the time on the cell/file is the original even if you have used some photo-magic to get there.

(a)

Then there is post-production tweaks that can be applied to the photo - similar to the ones you can set on your actual camera - white balance etc.....is this manipulation ? The first example (b) had very little done to it, a crop maybe and slight colour enhancement but I would have much preferred the white rose to have been more like in this example of the same picture (c) where I used a lot more photoshop magic to make the white rose white. Please ignore the border on this one - I don’t like it either !

(b) (c)

In the macro world - a crop seems to be a big no-no, as the image can be artificially enlarged by doing a crop - creating the illusion of a macro shot where there wasn’t originally. I am both proud and disappointed with this example (d) its one of the most liked pictures in my gallery and I was impressed that I managed to take a shot like this but its not macro, the original from which the above was cropped is like this (e) which as you can see by the number of views its received - definitely the least impressive of the two.

(d) (e)

HDR - where you layer several pictures into one to create the best of all lighting scheme etc.....On one level this is photography - they are all just captured frames after all, but the end result is a collaboration of 2 or more shots to enhance parts of the picture that might have been lacking. A bit of a grey area I feel ? Here is a very low level HDR I did - (f) - Its made up of only 2 layers and not the best example in the world of what can really be achieved by the technique. It was almost impossible to get this shot in one frame as to have the lights as low as they were in one frame didn’t create the reflections on the brighter light background frame.

(f)

The most creative of all - the out and out photo-manip, and there are some truly great examples out there - most of them are extremely well created and some even look so real you couldn’t tell them from real photos. I have no issue with them - I love a lot of them - but only if they are not passed off as photos.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as the scale needs to be stretched to included digital art work, the next natural progression from photo-manipulation - if you are interested in seeing some excellent examples please see this journal [link] created by With their thanx.

So where is the line, your line ? How do you conclude if a picture is a photograph or a photo-manip?


The offical definitions
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I have only just found these and I wished someone had pointed them out before (or that I would have spotted it before more to the point!).

To find these you need to go to submit deviation, choose category.....make your selection as if you were going to be posting an image, then instead of pressing ok an additional button called 'Gallery Info' to the left of OK appears and you can check if you have the correct category in there.

Here are some interesting and relevent ones:-

Photography: Photographs taken with a film or a digital camera featuring a minimal amount of colour and exposure adjustment.

Photomanipulation: Photomanipulations are images that have been composed of two or more photographic elements to create something new.

Macro: Macro Photographs of very small subjects. (Macro nature: Macro photographs of nature. Small blossoms, rose buds, water droplets and insects are typical macro subjects.)

Digital Art: Digital artwork originally created via the use of digital programs on a computer with a pen & tablet or computer mouse.

Digital (darkroom): Photographs that have undergone significant digital enhancements using computer software.

Darkroom: Photographs manipulated in a film darkroom or digitally enhanced with the use of computer software to emulate traditional darkroom techniques.


Some examples to keep you guessing - maybe?.
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A thought - but if you want to reply with which you consider just photos and which you consider manips (or other) we could present some results in a further update? This isn’t a right or wrong thing, its just pinpointing where you think the line is....and from the research done so far it is in no fixed place !

1. - what is it? manip or just "framing"? 2. - Taken naturally or enhanced?

3. - is this a photo-manip? 4. - effects or digitally drawn?

5. - which one is the real one of the four? 6. - how was this achieved?

7. - what has been added? 8. - at what point was the technique applied?

9. - which parts have been manipulated? 10. - any changes??

11. and - similar? 12. - additions?

13. - what do you think?? 14. - manipulated??

15. - Point out the additions to this? 16. - how?

17. - has this been manipulated? 18.

19. or - which one more natural? Which one is better?

20. - is the person real or digital?


Answers:-

1. This is down to personal ethics on photography - the images have just been cropped and framed.

2. An excellent example of HDR.

3. Image is as taken, light colour adjustment is all.

4. It is a photo with a zoom adjustment done in image fx

5. None of the four are the real one.

6. The texture by scanning an old piece of canvas sheet into PS via Epson scanner, used that image as the primary ground, and then blended the sunset photograph onto the top.

7. The 'wound-line' on the arm is fake, the pendent was added, the 3 sets of words were also taken from another picture and added,

8. This is one could be done using film and darkroom techniques....but was achieved in Photoshop Elements.

9. Posterized effect from photoshop

10. Part of the plant the bug was sitting on was obliterated by a light reflection, it was cloned out.

11. They are both HDR (sky in both sourced from another image) with some clone out work done.

12. The blood was added.

13. Just a photo.

14. Adjusted the saturation to a higher level, for it to become more summer-like.

15. This is a digital art piece done in Lascaux sketch.

16. There was a desk under the horizontal body which was erased, artist feels too little after work was done to call it a manip.

17. No, just a pure photograph.

18. Slightly adjusting the black, white and gamma levels to enhance the contrast.

19. The first one is natural and the second has been photoshopped.

20. The face is real - - I have a detailed description of how the rest was created if anyone is interested.


Some excellent examples of photo-manips, photography and digital art.
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Your Artists - Please take a bow !
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Clubs I am proud to be included in.
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