Couple of years ago internet was ful of discussions where post-processing of a photo turns into image manipulation. Between the two extremes, the old-school who would consider importing an image into photoshop something that shouldn’t be done and the other who would you allow anything… there is a golden middle. Anything that can be done to a photo in a dark chamber, cropping, contrast, brightness, levels… was OK. Any manipulation of selected picture and/or making layers was considered not just post-processing.
That makes sense with photography. With snapshoting, situation is somewhat different. Using liquify and any other tool to correct sharp edges are needed in SL snapshots. Raw colors are usually screamin to do anything with them. And I really need some depth of field in snapshots.
And then, why restrict somebody with rules what is “allowed” to be done? Except in reviews of SL platform where screenshots are needed to show actual posibilities of graphics sub-system.
When I introduced images in my blog, I was like not doing post-processing nor any image modifications except cropping. I wanted to have some kind of archive of how SL graphics is developing. In a year of two it will be fun to watch all those vintage images. Other reason is that I am usually lazy to paly with images. Or if I am not, I’ll do something more complicated and get back to torturing my eyes with dozens of layers. But then, I do now add DoF and sometimes correct rough edges.

For me the challenge in photography (RL and SL) always has been to catch that moment, colours and composition with my camera. I’m an absolute Photoshop-virgin. But seeing the beautiful pictures on flickr (or the Cannery ;-) ) and your two shots here…. maybe I should try it some day *sigh*

Post-processing have been part of photography since day one. The development process, how copies meed made, a little shadowing a little pen light. And painting on the copy. The methods have been better and better all the time.

And thanks for the tips, i now see what I have been missing in my images. You are my hero vint!

I agree with Nadine, and what most people don’t consider either is the “pre-image manipulation” that happens before a photo is even taken. I’m talking about things like lens selection, filters, aperture, and shutter speed. And if you’re using a camera that has “movements”, like most large-format cameras, then you have a whole other set of pre-image manipulation you can do. Then, there’s the kind of film you use (if you use film), etc, nevermind the fact that you’re trying to represent a 3d world (RL) in 2d, which in itself causes a whole slew of distortions.

And as an aside, coming from someone who used to print both color and b&w in a darkroom, I much prefer the “digital darkroom” ;-)

It’s all still photography to me.

Sweet! I like the effects alot, especially the shadows one :-D How’d you do that? Is it in ImageReady as well? O.O

P.S.: I tend to write very short comments ‘^_^ Sorry all! X-).

There are two types of photography. Reportage and photography. If you are a reporter taking photos for journalism, modifying the photo for anything other than technical problems (like dust on the lens removal or similar) is verboten.

Anything else in my opinion is art. It starts immediate as art because you decide where to aim the camera, where to focus, and how to frame. So, more changes and modifications are just more of the same.

Veryon: I don’t agree with you at all all photo department at newspapers does post processing. When I was just a kid I used to be in the dark rooms the seeing the development, following the copy work. Today this is done in photoshop, then it was made with lamps and masks, Black and white have became colour, darkrooms have became photoshop.

And as October pointed out the biggest part or manipulation in rl photo happens already before the photographer gets back to the darkroom, computer. This we all does, this is stuff that can’t in SL be done at the “snapshot” moment. We have to do some of the stuff usally made in the moment of taking the image in photoshop after words. like changing the aperture.

Nadine, indead. Although fixing some obvious graphics flaws (squary body when it should be round, correct texture edges, etc.) are something that should not be done IRL. But indeed, I do not think there are much digital camera photographs that do not receive at least a saturation boost before they go to the presses (or web).

using a camera that has “movements” => Technical camera you mean, Tobie? Got to play around with one a few times. It’s fun fun fun fun fun… =p

And the best ‘photoshopper’ I know, is someone that used to retouch photographs by airbrush for a living.

Nadine, what I mean is a reportage shot would not manipulate the photo to manipulate the story. An example of this would be the Reuters scandal photoshopping the bombing in Lebanon.

http://zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/

That sort of photoshopping is a no-no if the picture is to be passed off as news.

Yep indeed. I followed that with a lot of interest back then. Short after that, we had our little belgian version of it: they tried to make a crowd larger, but also duplicated our queen. *grins*

The photograph with our cloned queen.

The reaction of the newspaper - if worthy that name - was pathetic though:

The redactor said that it was an ‘accident’ that happened: “During image processing we tried to make the photograph larger in width, a procedure that is done on a daily base and has nothing to do with image manipulation. Because of a technical mistake the ‘clone stamp’ was activated during this procedure and a part of the picture was copied, leading to some people being visible twice in the image.’

Believe me - and all the others - if that was an accident, things would not have blended that well. ;)

“using a camera that has “movements” => Technical camera you mean, Tobie? Got to play around with one a few times. It’s fun fun fun fun fun… =p”

Yeah, either a view camera or you can buy special “shift” lenses for smaller format cameras. I actually own a Calumet 4×5 view camera, but I haven’t used it in years. It has full movements of both the focal plane and the lens plane. Great for architectural photography!

Oh my. I guess I’ve been outed that I sometimes wear prim boobs :) It’s all Veyron’s fault. (That I was outed, that is, not that I wear them. Another person, who shall remain nameless for the moment, is responsible for *that*.)

I really should post more in the Mistress Strangelove series so everyone knows how I came to this juncture. Thankfully RL is about to slow down for a while and I can return to my regularly scheduled posts of musings.

Vint, can you email a copy of that retouched photo? You did an excellent job of it and I’d like to have one.

“During image processing we tried to make the photograph larger in width….”
ROFL
Yeah, right….

Tiessa, I thought you had found a way to make the breast slider go up to 300 ;-)

you can buy special “shift” lenses for smaller format cameras Hmmm. Although I should make sure I first get decent ’standard glass’. :d

Yes, Tiessa you should post more. Email the picture: yes, but you can also go to flickr, click the ‘larger version’ and safe that one? :D (My inbetween large version of you does not have the socks and some other minor details corrected. :/) As for outing, a lot already knew? Or were Veyron and I the only ones? *grins* So I don’t think you can blame Veyron? =D

Dandellion: indeed. We thought the same. But from the people reading the newspaper, I think about 98% believes will probably believe that explenation. Actually, my mom reads a decent, (financial) newspaper, and she would believe it too.

Tobie: Geeh. I thought you knew it only goes to 11. ;)

[…] Life people has finally returned to her blog.  Tiessa is back, but I expect in a way she did not plan on….  I now hope to hear more in her in her very interesting and amusing […]

Shift lenses are pretty expensive, by the way. It’s almost worth buying a 4×5 view camera for the price you’ll pay for a shift lens for a 35mm camera. And a shift lens only give you one movement (shift), whereas with a view camera you get shift, tilt, and swing.

Try this for a inexpensive T/S lens, but it does not have A/F (most T/S lenses do not):

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1032&thread=17612257

Tobie, great, just crash my the owner’s dreams! ;) As I said, first focus on getting high quality standard glass. I’d already be happy if I could stumble upon a decent Markt I prime. *grins* (I actually like long apertures by hand, for which a ‘heavy’ lens is much more practical then that stupid plastic stuff.)

Did you ever dare to glance at the prices for digital backs for those cameras? I did a year ago and I think it equaled a nice Porsche. =d

The first time I looked up digital backs for large-format cameras, it was around 1995, and at the time it was about $30,000 for a 5-megapixel back, and the CCDs were tiny. I haven’t actually bothered to look since then, because there’s probably no way I’ll ever be able to afford one in my lifetime. =/

The Flickr one is the final one? I’ll grab it from there - thank you Vint. And not many actually knew about them before this Vint :)

Now, well, I guess *everyone* knows. First you take my top off at the meeting, now you publish them on the net. I think you have a fascination with my boobs Vint ;)

October, they are actually sculpties, which are almost starting to look decent, rather than the ones before sculpties. You still have the clothing problem with them though, most of them only come with a few fetish/slutty clothing options - which is why I happen to be in full latex fetish/slut clothing. I didn’t know I was going to a photo shoot :)

For those of you who weren’t there - my xcite was also active, because when I tried to deactivate it, my client crashed. I just left it on after that. It was not one of my more refined/classy moments in life :)

BTW - Vint, the photo looks *fantastic* you did a great job - thank you.

As far as mega-prims go Vint, this set balloons up far more than necessary without resorting to mega-prims. Thankfully, when you were playing with them and taking off my top you didn’t play with the size enlarging menu options. You would have had much bigger shadows to play with…

Well, if I look at what my her Fuji 602s is worth now - nada - compared what she payed 5 years ago - 1k euro’s for a 6mp and the way the value of her Rebel (yep, American import *grins*) now… maybe there’s hope after all. Your owner does not look above 30 and if LL does not go bankrupt you have a long life ahead still. Ow, and if the latter happens, there’s still OpenSim? :D

My owner doesn’t like to say her age ;-)

And besides, maybe eventually I’ll get to live on after my human dies! Isn’t technology great?

Tiessa, yep Flickr is the final one. Or I should somehow feel inspired to do the final work on the ‘large’ version in the near future. And as I always find new toys/things. Taking of your top was just an accident. I changed your nipples to ’sculpted’ and whoos the top went together with the non-sculpted nipples. As for the sizes: I know how far prim breasts stretch. :D Thank you for the compliment! =)))

when I tried to deactivate it, my client crashed … So Linden Labs is conspiring with whomever is being Xcite now?

Tobie: Thx for mentioning. *writes note for the family that if anything would go wrong with the RL owner they should not pay years rental for a grave, but make sure my hosting is still payed* ;)

Sculptie boobs, eh? Technology really *is* great! ;-)

Vint: about the crashing - for the past few months on my Mac, the clients have been far more unstable than the were in the previous few months - my stability is almost as bad as back in January, which was horrendous.

My client starts up and if I type anything or open any windows in it or chat, or click on little dialog boxes too soon, it crashes. Hard. Sometimes it takes the mac windowing system with it and I have to reboot. I have to login and “let it bake” for a while and not touch it.

It will sometimes bite me later too - what happened on Sunday was I went to click on the xcite gadget to bring up the dialog box on it to deactivate it. It was the first time I’d opened a script dialog box since I started and *boom*.

I feel like I have to “get lucky” to stay logged in for more than a few minutes. Once it makes it past the initial instability - its fine, I almost never have an issue.

I’ve tried it on multiple macs at home on different OS versions and they all do it. That’s also part of the reason I haven’t been online as much in the past few months - its just *hard* to get stable online.

Very nicely done, Vint.

There are all sorts of deceptive things one can do just with positioning; forced perspective leaps to mind.

Oooh, megaprims… OK, I have that much more motivation to check out OpenSim. :)

Tiessa, that you’re able to return to posting to your blog is wonderful news. I very much look forward to it.

@Tiessa: I currently own a PC and want to switch to a new iMac… So you’re saying I shouldn’t now due to crashing? X.X

I got the “Windows-only games” thing covered, by using BootCamp for ‘em… Still, SL not working well is a nightmare, actually I want a Mac to finally make SL run like it should…

(My PC is so damaged, IE is finished, Windows Media Player is finished, making WMA and WMV files unreadable, Javascript, DHTML, and Java not working on any browser other than Firefox, etc..)

Smiley, I’d try re-installing the OS on your PC before buying a whole new computer. Back up your documents, reformat the hard drive and start from scratch. No matter how well I maintain and secure my PC, I seem to have to do this annually because *something* gets so screwed up that it can’t be fixed otherwise.

Always an interesting philosophical debate. As a Photoshopper for so many years that it becomes clear why there’s a 3 in my age I fall most clearly on the side of the “Manipulators”. Isn’t PS the best and most addictive fun you can have standing up? And aren’t the results terrific.
Interestingly, this is slightly relevant to my other great interest which is modern Chinese oil painting. Here we are madly trying to make our photos look like paintings where modern Chinese painters, heavily influenced by socialist realism, try to make them look as much like photos as possible. Dream and reality, traum und wirklichkeit, weaving in and out. Such fun. You can see an example here http://www.flickr.com/photos/7788033@N07/1029429848/

Eh, I’d try it, yet I seem to do this annually as well. Okie, i’ll do this, some day… Though I have about 10GB to backup or so…. 4GB of that Sims 2 user data ‘^_^.

P.S.: This time, I’ve set myself a 25 programs limit so I won’t screw it up like now ‘^_^.

/me pats Smiley on the back and says “It’s ok…just get yourself some DVDs =)

Or, if you’re like me, you have two hard drives…one for the OS and programs, and one for all your documents. And still back up that second hard drive!

I’ve got one with two partitions in it, proved to be troublesome :-/. Though buying another HDD, and use my existing 80GB for OS stuff and “system software” would be nice…

P.S.: Shouldn’t we talk elsewhere? Rofl.

No way, Vint loves it when I hijack her comments, don’t you Vint? ;-)

Haha… Anyway, I do want to buy an iMac also because i’m kinda sick of Windows X.X…

/me hugs her computer and sends thousand kisses to Linus Torvalds

Tobie, yeah. You may do so on occasions. Although Belle’s interesting comment gets somehow lost that way.

As for Smiley, I’m starting to consider to add an ‘whenever Smiley posts an off-topic comment, he has to click one adsense ad’ rule. ;)

Feel free to do so! ROFL. But i’ll make a “any 5 clicks on Vint’s blog will make Vint click one ad on my blog” rule ;-) Okie dokie? ‘^_^

Tks for your comment Vint. Of my favorite moderns, Little Fish could do with a bit of lique-boob-ification but I suspect Red Rose would pass muster.

Bhelle, are you sure ‘Little Fish’ is not child pr0n? :mrgreen:

Nope Smiley, although, maybe that would lead to you clicking my ads so I would click yours.

Hmm, perhaps. By the way, Vint, why don’t emoticons work on your blog? They’re a WordPress standard! O.o . What’s your WordPress version?

Another “By-the-way”: What’s your MyBlogLog plugin? Mine only tracks links :-/.

Emoticons can be turned off with a single check-box. That way you get ASCII vintage emoticons. ;)

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh……. Thanks for the explanation Dandellion! ‘^_^.

Hmmmmm Vint. See what you mean. Actually it’s one of a series and if you see the rest it’s quite apparent that the model is WELL of age. Just a little challenged in the boobal department.

Bhelle, I was just joking, don’t worry. And indeed the other pictures do look different. =)

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