Image Enhancements

Since we all live in a digital world, I never thought twice about this until recently. Traditional UW photographers may have a very strong opinion. I use a digital Sony P10 P&S with an Inon D-2000 strobe. There is a limited amount of manual control I have. The strobe has made all the difference in the world in the quality of my photographs, but when I bring them home, download them, and view them in programs such as iPhoto (Mac) and Photoshop they always look a little better after some image color enhancement, contrast changes, and cropping. This relieves me of some of the thought process that a traditional film photographer might go through under water because I can take my time to tweak the photos and make them look better while sitting in a chair. Does everybody do this? Am I cheating or is this more and more becomming the norm for UW digital photography? Do I only need to divulge this type of information if I ever want to publish?

Pat

The edits you are talking about are pretty much considered legal for any use and are pretty much done to every photograph - film or digital.

If anything, the average digital print has less manipulating than the average film print. Next time you are at the supermarket geting your film developed, watch what they do closely. You will see them tweak the colour and then crop every picture before they print them. It is hard to believe but most digital shooters do NOT have photoshop and when they print at home, there is zero post processing done.

When it comes to more indepth edits, like copying the angelfish from one picture, into another or erasing the diver who got in the way. It depends on what you are doing with the images and what you want them to be. I your goal is to have pictures that are pleasing to you to print out and hang on the wall, email to friends or similar. Edit them as much as you desire. But if you are wanting to enter them into a contest, these things would probably be considered cheating.

Just remember Ansel Adams did a lot of post processing in the darkroom to get his pixs.

Now if I can only figure out how to use Photoshop........

I find the main limiting factor is time! I really don't have the time to spend ages photoshopping images. If I can't achieve what I want with the RAW converter then I usually won't bother.

The one thing that hours in photoshop quickly teaches you is it is much less hassle to get it right underwater and in camera!

Alex

I find the main limiting factor is time! I really don't have the time to spend ages photoshopping images. If I can't achieve what I want with the RAW converter then I usually won't bother.

 

The one thing that hours in photoshop quickly teaches you is it is much less hassle to get it right underwater and in camera!

 

Alex

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ditto from me on this - but I don't think anyone is going to object if you use the healing brush to spot out some backscatter here and there. Color and tone adjustments are pretty much standard practice whether you are printing from a film slide or a digital original.