How do you edit like this?

I can see the appeal, but I guess I'm an old fart and just don't see the WHY.
I was a professional (film) photographer in the 80s and early 90s... using
FILM (remember that?) I was an Ansel Adams advocate for much of that time,
shooting a lot of 4x4 B/W using the Zone System... THAT was the "photoshop"
of its day, but required the photographer to CAPTURE THE IMAGE ON FILM
the correct way, knowing what he'd later do in the lab, which I did back then.

So now, yes - I shoot 100% digital, but I just don't do this sort of stuff. I might
crop, and adjust the gamma ("dodging and burning") but I just don't personally
see the value of doing "Avatar editing" to try to create something that never
really happened in the first place.

But I'm almost 50 - an "old fart" by any measure... and don't understand the
desire to alter a photo to the point of "make believe" like this one... that IS
a nice image - but utterly not believable to me in any classical photographic way.

Just my thoughts....

Jedi

 

It's an HDR (High Definition Range). CS5 can do it.

 

Agreed on the HDR.

What is CS5?

Jedi, we're probably the same age and I did a lot of Kodachrome/Ektachrome over the years. Occasionally I used some cokin filters (still do) and my fotography friends would tease me: If you alter it that much, why not just paint the darn thing.

So I understand your argument, but I don't share it (old fart or not). In fact I wish I had more photoshop skills to do more of this kind of fotography. Yes, it is not reality, but it does look stunning and people like to see it. And occasionally you win a prize with it.

Aside from the usual cropping and saturation tricks to me the biggest heaven sent in fotoshop is fixing all the flaws: Dirt on the chip (still can't get rid of it) and all the occasional walk-ins who ruin a perfectly serene car/landscape/architecture shot. I love making heads/arms/hands/legs disappear.

 

Photoshop, stands for Creative Suite.

Adobe CS5 is the newest, and I think it came out fairly recently.

 

i wanna learn cs5 ... any suggestions guys?

 

Ah thanks. Gotta look into that.

+1

I used Adope After Effects for movie editing and found it insanely complex to do anything. I had a hard time getting my head around their layer concept (I understand it, but found it cumbersome to deal with).

My favorite foto editing program is ACD-See.

 

I have to agree with Jedi on this one I cannot see spending a few minutes to compose and capture the image and a few hours beating the crap out of it in Photoshop.

My workflow in PS is fairly simple and if I spend more than 10 mins on the photo then it is not worth it to continue.

 

Photomatix is a great (and fairly easy) program to do HDR photography via auto exposure bracketing or can use a RAW file to over and under expose the image and combine them to produce an HDR image.

 

While HDR looks cool for some shots here and there, I don't prefer it over "normal" shots. Apparently that photo won first place in some camera club...I don't agree with that. Way too much photoshopping and it lost its originality imo.

 

From the photog:

As for the "purity" of film, I dunno - I reckon Mr Adams would be *thrilled* at the possibilities available to him today..... Why be a Luddite? [I can see both arguments, but saying such editing isn't "real", I dunno.....]

Cheers,
Ian

 

HDR is soooo 2006

 

Ansel Adams used an enlarger with an array of small light bulbs and, later, a system of bent glass tubes. He was able to control lighting in different areas of his prints in this manner. Similarly darkroom prints often used the techniques of dodging and burning to control the amount of light reaching specific areas of the print. Back in the day we used to experiment with the age and strength of the developer bath for different effects. We also played with things like deliberate tone reversals (known as a Sabatier effect) and hard lighted edges in the style of Man Ray.
Photoshop just carries this stuff to the next level. Sure, in some ways digital / photoshop make it possible for almost anyone to produce good photographs but the technology still can't provide the vision and the imagination. You can't put the genie back in the bottle and I'm not so sure that old Ansel wouldn't be using this stuff if he was still around.