7 ms·

This graphics style is quite distinctive. I wish books, ads and even magazines would adopt it instead of crafting special effects in Photoshop. Disappearance of

This graphics style is quite distinctive. I wish books, ads and even magazines would adopt it instead of crafting special effects in Photoshop. Disappearance of artist-made drawings is really unfortunate, especially in such categories as children books.

frozenport 11y ago
Worse than that, many people don't expect photographs to be Photoshopped, when most are.
- rimantas 11y ago
  It's like saying "many people don't expect books to be proof-read, when most are".
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > It's like saying "many people don't expect books to be proof-read, when most are". It's not. Books are written by humans. You expect them to contain fiction or opinion. Pictures are taken by mechanical equipment with no agenda. "The camera never lies" etc. Obviously you can also stage a photograph unrepresentative of reality using techniques other than Photoshop, but the general expectation is that what you see in a photograph is what you would have seen with your own eyes if you had been there at the time. But people also blame Photoshop when the problem is endemic. Only people with certain body types are hired in Hollywood. Then they have professional makeup artists and hair stylists make them up like a plastic doll, and then the pictures are photoshopped. I suspect a big part of the reason the criticism is rarely taken seriously is that the proposed alternative of "normal" people is so obviously the wrong one. The average American is overweight and doesn't get enough exercise. People aren't going to want to look at that or be inspired to look like that, nor should they be. But the concept that the represented ideal physical appearance should resemble real athletes rather than stick figures or couch potatoes doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone.
    - superuser2 11y ago
      There are a great many choices made between photons striking the sensor and photons from your computer screen striking your eyes. In the absence of Photoshop, they're made by an engineering team's best guess at a general procedure for transforming the raw electrical data into a photorealistic scene, but these algorithms do not have a special claim on the truth and the parameters they choose are not necessarily "right." In some situations (such as rooms with unusual color-temperature light sources) they are unambiguously wrong. Professionals use Photoshop when they disagree with the choices made by the on-camera chip, which is almost all of the time. Working from RAW, you can start fresh from something closer to raw sensor data and move the sliders for yourself. But those sliders have to be somewhere, effectively, and taking manual control of them (or overriding them with further transformations) doesn't make a photo less real. It's much more like copy-editing. Most images you see are Photoshopped, but most of the editing (and all of the editing in journalism) is done with the intention of making the photo a more accurate representation of what the photographer saw. Where you get people editing photos to make them more than what was really there is in art. Ansel Adams made choices in the darkroom motivated by aesthetics rather than accuracy, and he was damn good at it. I'm sure most glamour photographers would tell you they're engaged in a similar kind of artistry. I'm less interested in fashion magazines creating unrealistic representations of the human form than why people believe these are credible ideals to aspire to, rather than mildly amusing curiosities.
      - Symbiote 11y ago
        Dove (European cosmetics company) ran these two adverts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U (shows a woman's face) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17j5QzF3kqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17j5QzF3kqE (whole body, might be NSFW in the US) The Photoshop manipulation has very little distortion — the camera engineer could not have produced these images, and the intention is entirely to make the image /less/ like what the photographer saw. (It isn't just women. Yesterday's junk catalogue is illustrated with perfect-looking children and teenagers, sometimes with perfect-looking parents.) [Edited links, I pasted them the wrong way around.]
    - rimantas 11y ago
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snake117 11y ago
Art style is a great selling point for me personally. I often find my self reading articles on The New Yorker or Nautilus, not only because the content seems interesting, but because the accompanying graphic makes me intrigued even more. So when I see look at these posters, I try to take in the full message; something more than just the propaganda.
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dach 11y ago
There are still very nice books with beautiful drawings. Look for them at local book stores, possibly where the one running the shop also has a passion for art. You probably won't find such books on amazon.
DanBC 11y ago
The Kate Greenaway award recognises excellence in illustration in children's books. I made a list of most of the winners here: http://danbc.neocities.org/index.html http://danbc.neocities.org/index.html The official list is here: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/ http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/ Some of these are out of print. Some are definitely showing their age. Once you know the winning illustrators you can find their other books; or the other books of the authors; or the other books of the publisher. Sadly these are just books in English. I'd be interested to know if there are equivalents for other languages.
deleted 11y ago
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frozenport 11y ago

Worse than that, many people don't expect photographs to be Photoshopped, when most are.

rimantas 11y ago
It's like saying "many people don't expect books to be proof-read, when most are".
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > It's like saying "many people don't expect books to be proof-read, when most are". It's not. Books are written by humans. You expect them to contain fiction or opinion. Pictures are taken by mechanical equipment with no agenda. "The camera never lies" etc. Obviously you can also stage a photograph unrepresentative of reality using techniques other than Photoshop, but the general expectation is that what you see in a photograph is what you would have seen with your own eyes if you had been there at the time. But people also blame Photoshop when the problem is endemic. Only people with certain body types are hired in Hollywood. Then they have professional makeup artists and hair stylists make them up like a plastic doll, and then the pictures are photoshopped. I suspect a big part of the reason the criticism is rarely taken seriously is that the proposed alternative of "normal" people is so obviously the wrong one. The average American is overweight and doesn't get enough exercise. People aren't going to want to look at that or be inspired to look like that, nor should they be. But the concept that the represented ideal physical appearance should resemble real athletes rather than stick figures or couch potatoes doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    There are a great many choices made between photons striking the sensor and photons from your computer screen striking your eyes. In the absence of Photoshop, they're made by an engineering team's best guess at a general procedure for transforming the raw electrical data into a photorealistic scene, but these algorithms do not have a special claim on the truth and the parameters they choose are not necessarily "right." In some situations (such as rooms with unusual color-temperature light sources) they are unambiguously wrong. Professionals use Photoshop when they disagree with the choices made by the on-camera chip, which is almost all of the time. Working from RAW, you can start fresh from something closer to raw sensor data and move the sliders for yourself. But those sliders have to be somewhere, effectively, and taking manual control of them (or overriding them with further transformations) doesn't make a photo less real. It's much more like copy-editing. Most images you see are Photoshopped, but most of the editing (and all of the editing in journalism) is done with the intention of making the photo a more accurate representation of what the photographer saw. Where you get people editing photos to make them more than what was really there is in art. Ansel Adams made choices in the darkroom motivated by aesthetics rather than accuracy, and he was damn good at it. I'm sure most glamour photographers would tell you they're engaged in a similar kind of artistry. I'm less interested in fashion magazines creating unrealistic representations of the human form than why people believe these are credible ideals to aspire to, rather than mildly amusing curiosities.
    - Symbiote 11y ago
      Dove (European cosmetics company) ran these two adverts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U (shows a woman's face) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17j5QzF3kqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17j5QzF3kqE (whole body, might be NSFW in the US) The Photoshop manipulation has very little distortion — the camera engineer could not have produced these images, and the intention is entirely to make the image /less/ like what the photographer saw. (It isn't just women. Yesterday's junk catalogue is illustrated with perfect-looking children and teenagers, sometimes with perfect-looking parents.) [Edited links, I pasted them the wrong way around.]
  - rimantas 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

snake117 11y ago

Art style is a great selling point for me personally. I often find my self reading articles on The New Yorker or Nautilus, not only because the content seems interesting, but because the accompanying graphic makes me intrigued even more. So when I see look at these posters, I try to take in the full message; something more than just the propaganda.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dach 11y ago

There are still very nice books with beautiful drawings. Look for them at local book stores, possibly where the one running the shop also has a passion for art. You probably won't find such books on amazon.

DanBC 11y ago

The Kate Greenaway award recognises excellence in illustration in children's books. I made a list of most of the winners here: http://danbc.neocities.org/index.html http://danbc.neocities.org/index.html The official list is here: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/ http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/ Some of these are out of print. Some are definitely showing their age. Once you know the winning illustrators you can find their other books; or the other books of the authors; or the other books of the publisher. Sadly these are just books in English. I'd be interested to know if there are equivalents for other languages.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]