Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Yes, I know. And Michelangelo painted the faces of his enemies in hell.

What counts as "enhancement"?
dtb — (archived)

I guess my point was, what counts as "enhancement"? From the very process of selecting what to put in the frame, and what moment to shoot, the photographer is making choices that deeply affect what is ultimately represented to a reader. There are always "enhancements" happening, even automatically when the camera sets the white balance and in most cases, performs sharpening and jpeg compression. I don't think any photo ever makes it to my web site without me tweaking the contrast and color balance, cleaning up dust and scratches or noise, and yes, individual making a quick adjustment specifically to someone's face if the lighting was bad.

In my case, I'm usually trying to make something more "real", since that's my own artistic predilection, but what is "real" isn't an easy question. There is never a 1:1 correspondence between what you see in a print/screen image and what your eye would have seen in the actual spot at the time (see all the threads here or unmannedspaceflight about how Mars *really* looks).

I don't want to see newsphotos showing gross alteration or distortion, but it really isn't practical to say they should list all "enhancements", unless you want a list of every single piece of hardware and software, every setting, every algorithm, from shutter release to final web posting.

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