6 ms·

One thing that I had to get through my head when I was learning photography was that there's no such thing as "no filter". Every image you take is an interpreta

by jxcl 6y ago

One thing that I had to get through my head when I was learning photography was that there's no such thing as "no filter". Every image you take is an interpretation of the scene, either through digital signal processing or film chemistry or retouching. When I spend time editing photos my dad would claim I was "lying" by editing them, he thought any modification to digital photos was wrong because the jpeg the camera produces is "reality." But of course, as this article shows, the camera is adding its own interpretation to the scene. Since our eyes can adjust to many lighting situations, the camera has to try to compensate and reproduce what it thinks our eyes would see, but it has no way to know if it's right! So, sometimes it's necessary to go back to the raw data and recreate the image as you remember it, along with whatever emotions you want it to elicit, rather than taking what comes out of the camera as "gospel".

phicoh 6y ago
There is a science of color reproduction. It is quite tough because they way we perceive colors is amazingly complicated. But it is quite possible to make an effort. Of course, most photography is not about color reproduction but about telling a story. And automatic cameras (like the way phones are mostly used) take a way a lot of control when it comes to deciding how color look in the photo. On most phones you can frame the image, zoom a bit, and decide when to take the image. Other controls like aperture, shutter speed and color balance are automatic.
- SECProto 6y ago
  One note on the phones thing: some camera apps (on Android, dunno about iOS) provide additional settings. For example, the Samsung stock camera has a "pro" mode, which lets you adjust the white balance, exposure, metering, and "ISO". Third party apps will provide histograms, long exposure, time stamps, etc. It's all similar to how many people used disposable film cameras (no options except aim and push the capture button) or cheap reusable cams (zoom, maybe exposure, etc) but film cameras that let you adjust everything existed at the same time
  - photojosh 6y ago
    There certainly are iOS apps that allow full manual control and raw capture. I'm a happy user of Halide when I need the extra control. [0] What I haven't seen yet in this conversation is that back in the film days you changed your white balance setting by changing... your film. [0] https://halide.cam https://halide.cam
mrob 6y ago
I draw the line at object recognition. If the processing involves semantic meaning (e.g. this is sky, this is a face) instead of geometric meaning (e.g. this is an edge, this is a Bayer filter artifact) then it's lying. It doesn't matter if the object recognition is done by AI (e.g. faking depth of field by blurring background) or by humans applying selective processing (e.g. painting out red-eye effect, or using a graduated neutral-density filter to enhance sky). Honest processing has no awareness of what objects are in the scene.
- jxcl 6y ago
  I don't really agree with this. I'm not sure what my definition of lying is but of course it entirely depends on the purpose of the photo. A photojournalist cropping out an important piece of context is definitely lying. Me cropping out another tourist of a photo I took of a friend is not lying. If I'm editing photos and someone has a temporary blemish or a pimple, I'm more than likely to edit it out. We don't remember faces to the same level of detail as a camera can, so it feels more correct to touch up such blemishes.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >A photojournalist cropping out an important piece of context is definitely lying. Me cropping out another tourist of a photo I took of a friend is not lying. Rules are even stricter than that for photojournalists. Photographers have lost jobs just for editing out extraneous objects (like a telephone pole "growing out" of someone's head) to make a photo look better. The thinking is likely along the lines of it's a slippery slope once you start editing out things.
    - shock-value 6y ago
      Even within journalism there is a world of difference between cropping and outright manipulation.
  - msla 6y ago
    > If I'm editing photos and someone has a temporary blemish or a pimple, I'm more than likely to edit it out. How Un-Cromwellian! https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/warts-and-all.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/warts-and-all.html > This phrase 'warts and all' is said to derive from Oliver Cromwell's instructions to the painter Sir Peter Lely, when commissioning a painting. > At the time of the alleged instruction, Cromwell was Lord Protector of England. Lely had been portrait artist to Charles I and, following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he was appointed as Charles II's Principal Painter in Ordinary. > Lely's painting style was, as was usual at the time, intended to flatter the sitter. Royalty in particular expected portraits to show them in the best possible light, if not to be outright fanciful. Lely's painting of Charles II shows what was expected of a painting of a head of state in the 17th century. It emphasizes the shapely royal calves - a prized fashion feature at that time. > Cromwell did have a preference for being portrayed as a gentleman of military bearing, but was well-known as being opposed to all forms of personal vanity. This 'puritan Roundhead' versus 'dashing Cavalier' shorthand is often used to denote the differences in style of the two opposing camps in the English Commonwealth and subsequent Restoration. It is entirely plausible that he would have issued a 'warts and all' instruction when being painted and it is unlikely that Lely would have modified his style and produced the 'warts and all' portrait of Cromwell unless someone told him to. Of course, the source of the phrase is, itself, unsourced, and Cromwell likely never said it.
interestica 6y ago
It's actually pretty interesting how much processing goes on in the brain for images. We do a sort of equivalent to the phone in compensating for the colour to make it 'right'. The orange car in the article image acted as kind of an 'anchor' for the colour compensation. The blue/white-black/gold dress [1] controversy kinda illustrates that 'anchoring'. The 'Checker Shadow Illusion' [2] is another instance where our brains 'adjust colours'. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion
- jxcl 6y ago
  > The orange car in the article image acted as kind of an 'anchor' for the colour compensation. It's funny that you mention this because to me the car kind of looks like it's grey, lit by orange light from all sides except the top. Edit: after looking at it a bit more I think you're right and I'm wrong
- mindslight 6y ago
  IMO the orange car had little to do with the output color grading. The real color temperature anchor is the bright foreground illumination.
  - gojomo 6y ago
    Yes, with the brightly-lit white undersides of the awnings.
jasonpeacock 6y ago
Even our eyes/brain interpret what we see differently from others - the famous blue/gold[1] dress is a great example of this. And then there's color blindness or tetrachromacy where some people see less/more colors than others. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
closeparen 6y ago
I was surprised to see photojournalists using Photoshop. Isn't that unethical? But it's the same thing: you correct the image to match what your eyes see.
- shard 6y ago
  Of course journalists use Photoshop. Before digital cameras, journalists also pushed or pulled the film processing, dodged and burned parts of the image, exposed different parts of the photo paper by different amounts, used different processing chemicals for developing the photo paper. It's not about correcting the image to match what your eyes see, it's an artistic and creative act because a photograph can never represent what the eyes see, and photographers have to interpret the image to get their message across.
m463 6y ago
What I found interesting as a kid is... The front door of the house was half opened and I leaned against it so that my nose was against the edge. So one of my eyes faced the inside of the house, the other eye faced the outside of the house. I waited a little bit and then pulled away from the door. One eye had adjusted to the brightness - and color - of the inside and the other hd done the same for outside. Our eyes have white balance plus physical and chemical exposure. pretty cool.

by jxcl 6y ago

phicoh 6y ago

There is a science of color reproduction. It is quite tough because they way we perceive colors is amazingly complicated. But it is quite possible to make an effort. Of course, most photography is not about color reproduction but about telling a story. And automatic cameras (like the way phones are mostly used) take a way a lot of control when it comes to deciding how color look in the photo. On most phones you can frame the image, zoom a bit, and decide when to take the image. Other controls like aperture, shutter speed and color balance are automatic.

SECProto 6y ago
One note on the phones thing: some camera apps (on Android, dunno about iOS) provide additional settings. For example, the Samsung stock camera has a "pro" mode, which lets you adjust the white balance, exposure, metering, and "ISO". Third party apps will provide histograms, long exposure, time stamps, etc. It's all similar to how many people used disposable film cameras (no options except aim and push the capture button) or cheap reusable cams (zoom, maybe exposure, etc) but film cameras that let you adjust everything existed at the same time
- photojosh 6y ago
  There certainly are iOS apps that allow full manual control and raw capture. I'm a happy user of Halide when I need the extra control. [0] What I haven't seen yet in this conversation is that back in the film days you changed your white balance setting by changing... your film. [0] https://halide.cam https://halide.cam

mrob 6y ago

I draw the line at object recognition. If the processing involves semantic meaning (e.g. this is sky, this is a face) instead of geometric meaning (e.g. this is an edge, this is a Bayer filter artifact) then it's lying. It doesn't matter if the object recognition is done by AI (e.g. faking depth of field by blurring background) or by humans applying selective processing (e.g. painting out red-eye effect, or using a graduated neutral-density filter to enhance sky). Honest processing has no awareness of what objects are in the scene.

jxcl 6y ago
I don't really agree with this. I'm not sure what my definition of lying is but of course it entirely depends on the purpose of the photo. A photojournalist cropping out an important piece of context is definitely lying. Me cropping out another tourist of a photo I took of a friend is not lying. If I'm editing photos and someone has a temporary blemish or a pimple, I'm more than likely to edit it out. We don't remember faces to the same level of detail as a camera can, so it feels more correct to touch up such blemishes.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >A photojournalist cropping out an important piece of context is definitely lying. Me cropping out another tourist of a photo I took of a friend is not lying. Rules are even stricter than that for photojournalists. Photographers have lost jobs just for editing out extraneous objects (like a telephone pole "growing out" of someone's head) to make a photo look better. The thinking is likely along the lines of it's a slippery slope once you start editing out things.
  - shock-value 6y ago
    Even within journalism there is a world of difference between cropping and outright manipulation.
- msla 6y ago
  > If I'm editing photos and someone has a temporary blemish or a pimple, I'm more than likely to edit it out. How Un-Cromwellian! https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/warts-and-all.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/warts-and-all.html > This phrase 'warts and all' is said to derive from Oliver Cromwell's instructions to the painter Sir Peter Lely, when commissioning a painting. > At the time of the alleged instruction, Cromwell was Lord Protector of England. Lely had been portrait artist to Charles I and, following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he was appointed as Charles II's Principal Painter in Ordinary. > Lely's painting style was, as was usual at the time, intended to flatter the sitter. Royalty in particular expected portraits to show them in the best possible light, if not to be outright fanciful. Lely's painting of Charles II shows what was expected of a painting of a head of state in the 17th century. It emphasizes the shapely royal calves - a prized fashion feature at that time. > Cromwell did have a preference for being portrayed as a gentleman of military bearing, but was well-known as being opposed to all forms of personal vanity. This 'puritan Roundhead' versus 'dashing Cavalier' shorthand is often used to denote the differences in style of the two opposing camps in the English Commonwealth and subsequent Restoration. It is entirely plausible that he would have issued a 'warts and all' instruction when being painted and it is unlikely that Lely would have modified his style and produced the 'warts and all' portrait of Cromwell unless someone told him to. Of course, the source of the phrase is, itself, unsourced, and Cromwell likely never said it.

interestica 6y ago

It's actually pretty interesting how much processing goes on in the brain for images. We do a sort of equivalent to the phone in compensating for the colour to make it 'right'. The orange car in the article image acted as kind of an 'anchor' for the colour compensation. The blue/white-black/gold dress [1] controversy kinda illustrates that 'anchoring'. The 'Checker Shadow Illusion' [2] is another instance where our brains 'adjust colours'. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

jxcl 6y ago
> The orange car in the article image acted as kind of an 'anchor' for the colour compensation. It's funny that you mention this because to me the car kind of looks like it's grey, lit by orange light from all sides except the top. Edit: after looking at it a bit more I think you're right and I'm wrong
mindslight 6y ago
IMO the orange car had little to do with the output color grading. The real color temperature anchor is the bright foreground illumination.
- gojomo 6y ago
  Yes, with the brightly-lit white undersides of the awnings.

jasonpeacock 6y ago

Even our eyes/brain interpret what we see differently from others - the famous blue/gold[1] dress is a great example of this. And then there's color blindness or tetrachromacy where some people see less/more colors than others. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress

closeparen 6y ago

I was surprised to see photojournalists using Photoshop. Isn't that unethical? But it's the same thing: you correct the image to match what your eyes see.

shard 6y ago
Of course journalists use Photoshop. Before digital cameras, journalists also pushed or pulled the film processing, dodged and burned parts of the image, exposed different parts of the photo paper by different amounts, used different processing chemicals for developing the photo paper. It's not about correcting the image to match what your eyes see, it's an artistic and creative act because a photograph can never represent what the eyes see, and photographers have to interpret the image to get their message across.

m463 6y ago

What I found interesting as a kid is... The front door of the house was half opened and I leaned against it so that my nose was against the edge. So one of my eyes faced the inside of the house, the other eye faced the outside of the house. I waited a little bit and then pulled away from the door. One eye had adjusted to the brightness - and color - of the inside and the other hd done the same for outside. Our eyes have white balance plus physical and chemical exposure. pretty cool.