Photography | Photoshop Photo Editing | Before and After

© 2009 Wazari Wazir | Before Editing | Original Unedit Picture

© 2009 Wazari Wazir | After Editing With Photoshop | Playing With Color Tone

Playing with color tone is not something new, photographers have been playing or experimenting with it since black and white film days. In those days they call it “The Art of Tinting”, they tint their black and white photograph to have some colors and the most famous one is “Sepia Tint” or tone. The process of tinting in the darkroom was a bit time consuming and cumbersome and only skilled person in the darkroom printing can do it well and most of the time the result is unpredictable.

In this digital age, where everything can be seen in an instant like a digital camera, where we can shoot and see the result immediately through the LCD at the back of our camera. We don’t have to develop the digital file in order for us to see what’s the photographs look like. Same goes to post processing, we can see the result in real time on our computer screen. We can enhance the color as close to real situation as possible or we enhance it a bit more to our personal preference.

I think photography is just like music, some like rock, jazz, classical, unplugged and there are wide variety of music in the world. People who like jazz does not necessarily like rock but I do believe some people like it both. Same like photography, there are people who like Photojournalist, there are people who like landscape, there are people who like to call themselves as “purist”, they like photography just as it is, no photoshop, they just shoot and print or just upload the image to the the web or blog just the way it was captured, like unplugged rock band, they just play music without any electrical music equipment, we just simply cannot say that this music is “real” music, this photography is “real” photography than any other genre.

People do edit their pictures since film black and white days, I think a lot of people know who Ansel Adams is, he is great landscape photographer and what make him stand out from the crowd is his expertise in printing black and white picture, he is the man who invented Zone System for printing black and white photograph. Without this one extra ordinary skill, I think his photograph will be just like any other.

I mean if you were taking picture right next to him at his favorite spot in Yosemite National Park, California, using the same camera, the same setting and the same lens, you will undoubtedly get the same result, maybe just a little bit different in term of weather or lighting but his photograph will always stand out from the crowd because of his extra ordinary “Editing” or printing skills. You cannot simply exposed the photographic paper under the enlarger and hoping the output will be like Ansel Adams prints, that won’t going o happen. You need to learn how to exposed certain part of the picture differently, there is a lot of dodging and burning.

If you are Photojournalist, then you don’t need to learn all of this skill, maybe you just need to learn about cropping here and there but cropping is part of editing too. Pure photojournalist will never edit their picture in any circumstances, they just post their picture as it is, as captured by the camera. I see a lot of Photojournalist use black and white as a medium to tell a story especially a war story, famine, hunger, oppression.

What is a different between black and white picture compared to picture with “tone color”? Why black and white is largely acceptable and “tone color” picture is not acceptable, we don’t see our world in black and white but in colors. I think using black and white as a medium to tell a story is part of “manipulation” too because most of the time black and white picture is much more stronger in term of story telling than in colors especially in War Photography. For me, I don’t really care if people called playing with tone is part of manipulation, the truth is, I did not change the content, the content within the frame is still the same, the story about the picture is still the same, I just change the colors to my liking and that’s what really matters to me.

There is nothing wrong to learn the extra skills, just like Ansel Adams, what make him stand out from the rest of the photographer during his era is because he have extra skills, which is “Editing” or people in those days call, he is expert in printing and for me the act of dodging and burning in the darkroom is editing skills just like what we normally do in our computer through Photoshop software.

If some people like to tell a picture as it is without any image enhancement, without any editing, that’s is their personal preference, for me I like to express myself through editing, for me there is a place for “pure photography” and there is  place for self expression where we edit our picture as close to what we visualize the moment we take the picture. If people call it “manipulation” then be it. We can never satisfy everybody in term of artistic expression, unless you shoot for your client, then you need to concern about their opinion, other than that be free to express yourself as long as you didn’t hurt anybody.

About the picture above, if we know a little bit about editing we can “visualize” even before editing what the outcome will be, I took that shot in Pulau Ketam with a group of a photographers and the moment I saw the lighting there, I just know that it will be great if I “tone” the image in Photoshop, to give it a little bit of warm feeling. For those of you who have purchase my Photoshop Tone Editing eBook will know the editing process and most of the time I like a photograph taken with natural light for my tone technique, for those of who who like to know about Photoshop Tone Editing technique, you may click the link below. You may agree or disagree with my article here but then again not everybody like Beethoven, some like Michael Jackson better…

Related Post : Photoshop Tone | Before and After | Ada Apa Dengan Tone

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