Photo edits - more fake in a fake world?

I love photoshop! It's an invaluable tool if you need to correct lighting, fix white balance, etc, as well as giving the pictures a more finished look. I use it to alter pretty much every picture I take. The only exception is for sales threads. I won't touch photoshop if I'm using the pictures to try and sell something, because that's just wrong!

I once bought a wig thinking it was a very pale brown (which I wanted), only to receive it and it was actually grey!!! I was not impressed, but I should've checked the pictures better. On closer inspection the sales pictures, including the extra pictures I requested, had been heavily edited with filters, contrast and levels. Oh well, lesson learned. Always check sales pictures closely and ask questions.

 

I can't imagine photo-manipulation upsetting many people, unless they were breaking photography contest rules or something of that nature.

 

I think in the case of professional photo editing, there are things that need to be considered. There are often colors lost between scanning and the taking of a photo. Any time real media is transferred to digital, you need to review the colors and lighting to make sure they come out the way you need them to.

Now in the case of sales photos, I think there's nothing wrong in improving contrast and lighting and color to better display the actual product, as long as it does not hide flaws that would be a deterrent to selling the doll. Then again, the phrase remains: "Let the buyer beware!" and shop at your own risk!

 

Well, people do the same thing for models in fashion magazines. Cindy Crawford told everyone in an interview that one magazine takes off three inches off each thigh, and even Tyra Banks openly talked about photoshopping the models who are on her reality show.

I find nothing wrong with making a doll look better than it looks in real life. In real life, wigs slip off and get flyaways. There's bad lighting, wonky eyes, fabric that gets shiny... So, I have no problem with making a doll look better in a photo than it does in reality. Companies pull little tricks all the time with back drop and flattering light. So I say go for it!

 

Well,I edit all of my doll photography.Like adjusting hues,contrast,ect;.But when I'm selling a doll,or anything for that matter,I just leave the photo as it is.

 

This is (almost) exactly what I was thinking. In fact, I'd encourage sellers to do at least a little editing, provided they approach it as fixing the image instead of fixing the doll.

Let's face it, would you rather buy a doll that's only represented by a dark, discolored photo, or the same doll with nice bright, sharp photos? One isn't a distortion of reality, it's showing off the product at its best instead of leaving the buyer to guess what that "best" looks like.

 

Couldn't have put it better myself!

 

Photographic editing is part of the artform of photography and isn't intrinsically good or bad, in and of itself. But like anything can be rightly or wrongly used in certain circumstances.

I love to see photographic editing that brings something forth, makes is seem more than the sum of what it was through artistic manipulation. I adore photo-manipulation as an art. It's amazing what we can do these days. Our imagination is the limit.

However, conversely I am greatly against the editing of images of models and celebrities for magazine covers to make them seem unrealistic swizzle-stick people or to erase the natural effect of age upon a cover celebrity or model. It's unhealthy for our young women and If I could stop it, I would--in a New York minute. Thankfully I have managed to pass on to my daughter what utter worthless crap the whole airbrushed cover model idea is.

As it pertains to the BJD hobby, If you're selling a doll, adjusting lighting effects, chromatic intensity and other aspects of the graphic image is harmless and makes the doll show to best advantage. It's not a scam, it's a skill. The line is only crossed when you misrepresent the shape and dimensions of the doll or cover flaws on the doll by editing scars and other defects. This, much like editing cover models to be rail thin instead of showing them as they really are, misrepresents the dolls. It's dishonest.

I have seen some lovely photo editing. It's an amazing artform that I enjoy playing in, because it's just as creative a field of expression as any other art. But like anything else, it can be abused.

 

Photo edits are fine and can be a lot of fun. I think only brightness and color should be edited to give as accurate a look as possible for sales threads, and clearly edited photots are alright, but I would hope that mildly edited pics (facial expressions added or the dolls edited to look different than they actually are) are explained to be as such. This is an art form, of course, but it's nice when people who change how a mold looks puts a tiny caption of "Image Edited" somewhere on the page so that people don't run off looking to buy a doll with a fake image in their heads of what it will be.

 

If you're editing the pictures just for putting them out there it's fine. I have a major problem with people shopping pictures of things they intend to sell. If you're going to sell something, buyers deserve to know if there are any flaws. Other than that, photoshop is a wonderful tool for adjusting light, brightening things like eye colors for more effect and other things that just enhance the picture but not change it.

 

As a photographer I have edited photos of myself and models to make them look better, but not overly such. I edit out pimples and lighten up some wrinkles, makes the hair pop or fill it out a little. But I do photograph for art, not commercially and I disagree with making waistlines smaller, editing so much that the person disappears completely. I'm self-conscious about my looks and I sometimes forget that people on tv are wearing two kilos of makeup, and people on magazines are photoshopped. But I have to say, I don't have a problem with editing photos. The only thing I would like dollcompanies to do, is in addition to taking artistic photos of the doll, they include a realistic view of a naked doll, without faceup and such, so we can actually see how the mold is.

As for editing photos of my own dolls, I don't see anything wrong about it.
If people find my photographs of Miyu beautiful and buy her without doing any research what so ever, I would not feel guilty at all.

 

I'm very much a photoshop geek. I love the damn thing (though recently I think I've come to rely on it a little too much ><). It's in invaluable tool for digital art and photography. My photos of dolls are to me more artworks and less pictures of dolls, so I think it's better for them to be beautiful, even if that means copious amounts of 'shopping...
As for selling things, I would only ever use photoshop to crop etc., NEVER change how the item itself looks. When selling something, I thinks it's more important to get good light and therefore an accurate image of what I'm selling than having to 'shop it to make it look more appealing.

 

Well being a photo Minor, I can say that the editing of photos goes even through out the non doll world. It's only natural to want to correct something to make it more aesthetically pleasing. I find that this is okay as long as it's not somebody intentionally trying to mislead a customer in the MP.

 

I support photography edits for personal use because snapshots are almost always terrible-looking piles of shit. Photography editing is especially helpful to individuals using digital non-SLR units--it can be easier to overcome the limits of the unit with a little help from Photoshop.

 

I just wanted to add that I saw a picture of a doll done by a very talented artist that had the joints edited out. The doll was already very lifelike, and the appearance of real limbs made him just pop out of the screen. It was amazing.

 

I think there is a serious disconnect between professional (or semi-professional) photographers and what someone earlier in the thread called the 'lay public', and I appreciate that a thread like this can help bridge that gap somewhat. (In fact, it might be nice if a similar discussion could occur in the media somehow!) I am not a professional or skilled photographer, but the things I have learned, or had emphasized in a way that I could more clearly understand them, from this thread are:

a.) When laypersons say "digital editing," we are almost always talking about editing a photo of a person to achieve unrealistic levels of beauty (flawless skin, smooth skinny bodies, sparkling eyes, white teeth, etc.). When a photographer says "digital editing," they are talking about adjusting a photo for brightness, contrast, cropping, color, sharpness, blurriness, and a whole lot of other things that I probably don't know exist. This is a big difference in meaning that is not expressly clear from the language used to discuss it, and I think it leads to misunderstanding when these two groups of people engage in dialogue on the subject.

b.) There are different 'branches' of photography, and different sorts of editing may be appropriate for each of them. Photojournalism is not the appropriate venue for intense glamourizing of portraits, but artistic photography probably is. (Photographers, please forgive me, as I'm sure I'm not using the correct terminology at all. Hopefully my meaning is clear enough despite my lack of correct jargon.) I suspect that non-photographers who are angered by excessive editing are mostly concerned with this in commercial contexts, ie: models who are transformed from being extremely lovely young women to flawless ultra-idealized goddesses. The entire debate can perhaps be distilled down to a disagreement about whether commercial photography is art (and subject to no more expectation of realism than one might expect from a Monet) or advertising (and, by extension, subject to a higher expectation of realism).

c.) All of that aside, when it comes to BJDs, it's much easier to determine the difference between sale photos and artistic photos. The photos I take are snapshots, although I try to be aware of things like spacial relations and lighting and backgrounds. However, I have a semi-professional photographer friend who has taken some shots of my girl, and the things he does with lighting and lenses are astonishingly better, even on raw-from-the-camera photos. It's absolutely a skill set. I might not like excessively edited photos, especially in a commercial context, but I think it would be equally wrong to demand that photographers stifle their art by throwing out such a flexible tool in their arsenals completely.

 

Dolls (and everything really) are more beautiful in person. A good photographer can get one hell of an image, but it wont ever rival the beauty of the moment. However, with editing it truly gives the perfection of memories a fighting chance compared to the place/person/thing as it is in front of the lens. Sometimes editing just brings back that incredible radiance the lens can't see.

Now if someone is intentionally duping a person from a sales perspective into thinking a doll is flawless by editing out marks, eye color, a bad hair cut, a broken joint etc, that's totally immoral and also false advertising.

 

I consider BJDs art.

But editing...to an extent. I don't support editing to enhance a face-up or make eyes look glossier or different colors...nah. But, with people who have fantasy-themed dolls, editing in a cool background is their own choice.

Or simply blurring out a background in PS. That is acceptable.

The way I see it...nothing to enhance the doll itself. That should be taken into consideration with the skill of the photographer.

 

I actually thought of Bobobie and Resin Soul as opposed to DOD when I read the first post. But I thought the opposite.

I do like that you can see exactly what the doll looks like. But the photos are so horrible and untouched that until a friend of mine had some and I could see them in the real world, I had no desire at all to have one, or to even search for user pics here on DOA.

 

"Wrong" I don't know, but I don't really like to look at edited photos as much, and I don't like to edit my own photos (of anything, not just dolls) too much. I mean some color/contrast correction is totally fine, (I think almost everyone agrees on this) but the more edited it is, the more you can tell, and the less genuine it looks... and it just stops being interesting because you realize it's just not even a photo anymore. D: And it's not that things that aren't photos are bad.. but the subject is the doll, right? In the case of doll photos, I want to see the doll, and admire the IRL craft of the sculpt, faceup, clothes, etc. If it's too edited, it's just like I'm looking at a big sign that says "PHOTOSHOP".