Photo Retouching

(Photoshopping)

see Wikipedia for an Explanation

In the modern age of digital photography it is now possible to manipulate photographs in ways known to be in the province of the experts of the dark room in ages past. Is it too dark, to light, or tilted? Is the color "off"?  These and a large number of other common problems afflicting a photograph may now be corrected within digital imaging programs.

Below are some examples of what I might do to a photo prior to posting it to the web site. The general rule is, fix what's wrong but attempt to retain the impression the original photo carried should heavy manipulation start to creep in.

I will freely admit that occasionally I go over the line with what a news paper/magazine would feel comfortable with but, it's just recap photos so, I am relaxed about it.

Fixing with Minimum Manipulation

First a photo arrives. The above photo actually came in at 1600x1200, not the small 500x382 it appears above.

Next I play god. In this case, I rotated the picture several degrees counter clockwise to level the horizon. The person to the far left is sort of half cut off in the original so I arbitrarily decide to dispense with him altogether. So, while rotating, I cropped the picture. But, I want some grass as a border along the left side of the photo for compositional balance. When I cropped the picture I left the amount of border area I wanted in the picture.  But, that arm and hand are still visible. That looks kind of bad so ....

Using Photoshop's clone tool I just copy some grass over the hand and voila, I've cheated. I also brightened the picture the tiniest bit.

This is the typical type of retouch I do. I attempt to stay away from anything that would change the meaning of the photo. For instance:

Since Jim is taking this picture and (I believe) Richard is the guy whose arm we just removed, who are the to folks 2nd and 3rd from the left? This is outright cheating. I've only done it once that I can think of on the web site and that is located HERE. If you go to that page, look at the bottom group shot picture. I didn't have a tripod, so I took the group shot, then someone took my picture standing there alone. I cheated and added me into the group shot.

Gross Manipulation

This one is borderline insane. But, it really doesn't hurt the intent of the photo. It's just that it is a very misleading edit.

The photo arrives 1600 x 1200. I like the hunters but the students in the background are totally obscuring a nice portrait by cluttering up the photo. So, ...
 

I removed them. The above picture is the actual one posted on the recap for this flight.