K. Praslowicz

Dirty Snow Photography, et al.

 

Guys, I Have a Confession.

You may not know this, but, here I go anyways. All of the photos on this website are Photoshopped.

Is the stunned silence over with? Good, lets move on. Take this recent portrait of mine for example.

Yes. Every last pixel on it has been changed in Photoshop. In a last ditch attempt to come clean with the Image Capture Purity Party out there who insist that what comes out of the camera is the most true way to present a photograph, I am also going to release this photo in its original form out of the scanner so that they may draw their own conclusions.

100% Unedited Film Photograph 100% Unedited Film Photograph
100% Unedited Film Photograph

Glad that is off my chest. This post was for Shawn.

Bonus

What the hell. Lets go one step further and at least inverse it.

Inverse Scan Inverse Scan
Inverse Scan

There. I’d still get laughed out of the Camera Club if I showed up with that as a print.

These steps have to be done. If they’re not done by you, then it is a best approximation by an algorithm that a programmer as Nikon, Canon or Epson came up with. Tweak it yourself if you don’t like the computer’s stab at it and take some pride in knowing the final result came from your hand. Using Photoshop (or any other brand name of post-processing software) doesn’t have to imply creating grotesque HDR images or slathering Gaussian blur all over your photo and calling it Tilt-Shift. Just be gentle with the image. It’ll love you more for it.

5 Archived Comments

Dave Szweduik
Dave Szweduik August 28, 2017, 6:04 PM

My favorite part of this, both the first time I read this way back when you published it and today as I re-read this, is the last 2 lines. "Just be gentle with the image. It'll love you more for it." So very true! And thanks for re-sharing the link to this article with me, it's a very good point.

lee
lee January 28, 2013, 8:06 AM

oh and came across your work on the street revererb site btw. really nice stuff your doing, subtle, thoughtfull and beautifully composed, the car wreck shot reminds me of an old joel strenfeld shot, nice one mate.
lee

lee
lee January 28, 2013, 8:02 AM

ha ha nice one and a good point for all the rivet counters of the photo world out there

minimodi
minimodi January 5, 2013, 11:20 AM

wow, thats a lot of truth for one post! and i tought it was me who sucked 😉 word man!!!

samh
samh October 25, 2012, 4:50 PM

Much LOLs. Thanks, Kip.