Photogrouch rant

[snousle]

OK, can we agree that fake tilt-shift has been done enough already?

Creating an actual synthetic aperture, through camera motion or optical tricks, to genuinely compress the depth of field and make everything look small and toy-like, is a delighful technique that actually adds information to an image by communicating depth in a new way.

Manually blurring nearer and more-distant objects in a careful and thoughtful fashion is a reasonable, if time-consuming approximation of the real thing that can be used to good effect. Sometimes.

But merely blurring the entire top and entire bottom of the image, regardless of what is there and without regard to the actual distance from the camera to the objects in question, looks cheap and ridiculous. I mean, look at this piece of crap:



Don't make the Baby Jesus cry, m'kay?

Comments

[dhpbear.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty bad - bit even with its faults, it still makes things toy-like, especially the green and blue containers.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

You're gripin' about nothing. Make it HDR, then posterize it, then desaturate all except one colour, and then we can talk about making the Baby Jeeziz snivel a little bit. Kthxbye.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

True, that.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Photoshop ought to be a heavily regulated tool with only basic functions (rotate, crop, resize; adjust contrast, hue, sharpness, and saturation within a very narrow range) enabled without a licence that requires years of study and a very difficult test with practical and essay questions. One ought to be allowed to use its many filters and special effects only after demonstrating a broad, deep, keen understanding that one generally shouldn't.

[h0gwash.livejournal.com]

Manipulated images are fine by me, so long as the image is improved. My problem with this image is the landscape is boring, or else the subject IS the photochopping which is strangely distracting.