Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

23 Comments

1. Psychologists Jobs: Sports Psychology | The Psychology Careers Blog says:

   March 22, 2010 at 6:58 am

   [...] Color Whore | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection [...]
2. Review: Lexmark Platinum Pro905 multifunction printer | Print Paper Supplies says:

   March 22, 2010 at 4:04 pm

   [...] Color Whore | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection [...]
3. Sam Bennett » Blog Archive » Creating a Login System Part 2 says:

   April 4, 2010 at 9:59 am

   [...] Color Whore | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection [...]
4. Tom Quinn says:

   April 11, 2010 at 8:22 pm

   "This is a New Day" is really great – vibrant colours, and the painted effect doesn't look cheesy at all. Would definitely hang it on my wall…
   
   This comment was originally posted on Google Buzz.
5. Brenda Anderson says:

   April 11, 2010 at 8:30 pm

   Nice! I've never used Photoshop (too expensive to justify purchasing it here in NZ) but those effects look fun.
   
   This comment was originally posted on Google Buzz.
6. Thomas Hawk says:

   April 11, 2010 at 8:36 pm

   I've used most every version of Photoshop over the past 20 years. The ability to paint now with Photoshop is a huge leap from all previous versions. I'm really looking forward to how artists and illustrators end up using these new tools in CS5.

   I know that I will likely spend a considerable amount of time in the next few years painting many of my own photographs.
   
   This comment was originally posted on Google Buzz.
7. Christopher Young says:

   April 11, 2010 at 8:47 pm

   The painting stuff looks great but I've always wondered about the economics of Photoshop. I looked online and the minimum price for PS is $699. Add stuff and it gets MUCH higher. How does this company stay in business when there are so many good free photo editors?
   
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8. Thomas Hawk says:

   April 11, 2010 at 9:01 pm

   Christopher, certainly the price is steep. And Photoshop is not for everyone. Lightroom probably represents better value for most photographers, but I think that for the professional market and the advanced amateur market, it's easy to justify spending the money on Photoshop.

   It's sort of like why pay over $1,000 for L series lenses from Canon when the 50mm f/1.8 is under $100? Because L series lenses are worth it, I guess I'd say.

   For my own work I'd say processing is about 50% of my photography and in camera is the other 50%. Certainly if I'll pay $3,000 for a camera and another $6,000 or so on lenses, Photoshop seems like a bargain to me. The money I make from selling photos far exceeds the amount I spend on gear and software so for me the economics easily work.

   I agree though that for many others the price is steep and not easy to justify. But I don't think that CS Photoshop is really being marketed to the casual everyday user.
   
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9. Steven Rose says:

   April 11, 2010 at 9:27 pm

   Yea, my attitude towards Photoshop is that the retail cost of the software is the ~least~ you invest in that app to get anything useful out of it. The hours upon countless hours to get going in it far outweighs the price…if you do bother to learn a significant chunk of it, the cost isn't going to stop you.

   On the other hand, that's not to say it isn't worth trying a free alternative like GIMP. I've been meaning to get into GIMP more and more, but of course as long as GIMP is playing catch-up and there're much-needed features in PS….
   
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10. Jeff Henderson says:

    April 11, 2010 at 10:40 pm

    You think Adobe software is expensive. Try buying Engineering software. SolidWorks and ProEngineer cost about $5000 per seat with a yearly maintenance fee of over $1000! If you need additional modules for stress analysis, cable routing and advanced rendering, well that costs even more.
    
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11. Jeff Henderson says:

    April 11, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    I would agree with Thomas, that for most photographers, Lightroom is a much better value than Photoshop. You can do about 90%+ of your photo editing and manipulation in Lightroom. The only things I find myself going to Photoshop for anymore are, perspective correction, stitching multiple images and HDR. I suspect Lightroom will support all of those features in the future. Also, Lightroom is exponentially easier to learn to use than Photoshop.
    
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12. Marie Hélène Visconti says:

    April 11, 2010 at 11:01 pm

    I've never found the courage to learn photoshop but reading you I will have to in the next months…
    
    I am already exhausted !
    
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13. Chris Luckhardt says:

    April 12, 2010 at 6:45 am

    CS5 looks very good. It might be time for an upgrade from CS2.
    
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14. M Featherston says:

    April 12, 2010 at 6:53 am

    Great info. The future of photography will be greatly influenced by 3d and patch match technologies.
    
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15. Marie Hélène Visconti says:

    April 12, 2010 at 6:56 am

    I upgraded to cs4 a few months ago. There is a price !
    
    This comment was originally posted on Google Buzz.
16. Cassius Wright says:

    April 12, 2010 at 7:55 am

    @thomas hawk- great write-up, although i must say that the canon 50mm lens for $100 is a great little lens. super crisp, very fast, cheapened only by its plastic housing. all in all, a great one to get (maybe get 2 lol).
    
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17. Cliff Johnson says:

    April 12, 2010 at 7:59 am

    I've had to get two. Dropped the first one…
    
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18. Kenton Smith says:

    April 12, 2010 at 8:22 am

    Are we going to start seeing the same kind of prejudices again that we saw when people started first moving to digital? By that I mean, people used to not consider digital "real" photography because you could potentially modify and change the image. Now with some of the new tools in Photoshop (specifically the element removal and puppet master) it will be very easy for someone to completely change the photo from the original.I certainly see the value, I just wonder if everyone will.
    
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19. Thomas Hawk says:

    April 12, 2010 at 8:46 am

    Kenton, it certainly will make it easier for people to manipulate images. I suspect that as these tools get better and better, we will get more and more suspicious of photographs and the story that they tell. Probably will impact journalism and blogging more than art photography.

    Cassius, nothing wrong with that lens. It's an amazing lens actually and unbelievable for the price. Still, I couldn't even begin to imagine not living with my 135 f/2 even though it costs more than a copy of Photoshop. No doubt there are some great cheap tools. But sometimes it's very easy to justify paying more for what you get.
    
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20. Steven Rose says:

    April 12, 2010 at 1:09 pm

    @Kenton – As a model photographer, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this issue of what is a "real" photograph vs. a "manipulated" one. The conclusion I've come to after a long, hard think is that any photo is a "legit" photo provided that the photographer is plain about the result of any manipulation. This doesn't mean the photographer has to share the details of the process in most cases (so you don't get to learn the Dragan effect or Dave Hill's methods ).

    Underlying my view is the notion that photography inherently manipulates every scene. From the choices the photographer makes about what to include or exclude in the frame, selective focus using aperture, etc, no image is a completely faithful view of a scene. Just with shutter speed alone, I can: show motion blur where you would perceive sharp detail, freeze a fast-moving subject where you would perceive a blur, and make the night sky look like day.

    At the core of this discussion is: what does it mean for a depiction to be "faithful"? If I'm looking at a white object, my brain makes it seem white even if I'm under a colored light source (like incandescent). So if I custom white balance that scene, is that more faithful to my perception, or have I "faked" a neutral light source?

    What about flash photography? The scene only appeared the way it's captured by flash for the briefest instant, certainly that's a drastic manipulation of what appeared before the photographer. On-camera flash yields a view that only a miner (with miner's headlamp) would be familiar with, yet I'd challenge you to find a forensics department that doesn't use it to create images that participate in a legal chain of evidence.

    How should we regard black'n'white photography? And speaking of black'n'white, what if a given photographer's perception of the world actually is different? Should a photographer with red-green color blindness produce images that are consistent with his view of things, with those colors muted, or someone else's? If someone else's, whose?

    You'll notice this entire line of thinking supersedes anything specific about image manipulation in a program like Photoshop, because at the end of the day it's not a discussion about tools, it's a discussion about intent. You can pick most any tool in Photoshop and I could probably contrive a use of that tool that would alter a given photo to make it more faithful to a scene by some standard. I don't see how we can judge tools directly, only how they're used. (Or, to put it succinctly: in the hands of a surgeon or a mass murderer, a scalpel is still just a scalpel.)
    
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21. Thomas Hawk says:

    April 12, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    I'm just a total image whore. I just think people should make images look as good and as interesting as they possibly can using any and all tools at their disposal including cameras, lenses, software, lighting, whatever they can possibly find to make the images work better and better and look stronger and stronger. I know I do.

    Publishing photos for journalistic purposes one should probably take more care that your images reflect some degree of reality or don't purposely misinterpret events. You have a credibility issue to deal with there because you're largely reporting. Everything else though, I say manipulate to your hearts content. The only limitation should be one's imagination.
    
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22. Kenton Smith says:

    April 12, 2010 at 3:45 pm

    I agree with both of your comments Steven and Thomas. It is still cart a fine art after all and art gives you a pretty wide berth for making something your own. I just remember the debate and it was often just pointless. Journalism is certainly the area where it matters the most and we all basically have to assume that the people shooting and publishing those photos are honestly depicting the scene and/or check it out for ourselves.
    
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23. Steven Rose says:

    April 12, 2010 at 4:14 pm

    The main thrust of what I was getting at above is that it's hard to define the notion of "manipulation" independent of the context in which the photo is used. I'd argue that journalism images, images used for scientific purposes, artistic images, etc…they all have to be honest in certain specific ways if they're of any use to anyone.

    In order to produce an honest piece of artistic photography, it may be necessary to manipulate that elephant's trunk using the Puppet Wrap filter. For myself, I've found that thinking through why I have the impulse to make certain manipulations has made me more confident in the kind of alterations I make because I've taken the time to understand clearly what I'm trying to convey, why, and how the process serves that end. This awareness has even, on occasion, pushed its way up my workflow, causing me to light something differently than I otherwise would, or choose a different perspective, whatever.

    Like most people, what I first started using a camera I just shot pictures without thinking too deeply about it. Now I think about the intended uses before I release the shutter and ask questions like: what am I trying to say?, am I telling a purely visual story here, or is there some other point, etc?

    Thinking through these issues led me down this path–I don't say it's the only right conclusion, of course, but I do think formulating a clear position on this stuff will lead nearly everyone somewhere good…
    
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