When can you use photoshop?

Chris thank you for posting and sharing.

As always your contributions are of extreme value to the rest of us. I strongly recommend to everyone that you go and read the link Chris has provided us.

best Lawrence

Well it did say that you can adjust the colours, and some cropping can be allowed as some others apart from altering the image to remove things that tell the story

Also, I guess that altering to remove the shadow is not wanted, am I correct in saying that shadows of oneself isn't acceptable?

obviously the shadow of the photographer is usually something that is not wanted in a picture. (though some times it is) However for news pictures what is in the picture is in the picture be it your shadow, reflection, foot or what ever stays in the picture. I seem to recall a big upset when some one photoshoped a prominent white trainer to make it almost invisible so it did not detract.

For News work under no circumstances do you edit in or out ANY artefact. you can crop or better still (where possible) get a better angle when taking the picture but news photographers have been sacked and all their back work pulled from libraries when they have edited news pictures.

It is probably a good idea if Demotix issue a set of guide lines for the use of photoshop (also Lightroom and aperture) as requires editing.

As mentioned the problem is that if any Demotix pictures are found to have been edited for the reputation of Demotix they would have to remove the photographer from the site and all their pictures along with the name of the tog... not just the user name. You can't hide behind that..

Thanks Chris for the clarification. Yes it would be nice for Demotix to also have to say what is acceptable and what isn't

Hi guys, sorry I didn't spot this earlier. We actually took a look at those AP guidelines, and we think they're a good standard to hold ourselves to as well. Aside from the extremely limited cases mentioned in that document, there is no reason why any news images should be manipulated. If you are found to be manipulating images, you're likely to suffer some serious consequences.

We did have an interesting discussion when I was at journalism school about arranging the things you're photographing. Some famous person's body was being flown home, and a photographer had got a shot of it being loaded into the hearse. This was at an Irish airport, with Guinness ads on the luggage trolleys. The photographer had moved a trolley with an ad that said "One more for the road" or something in front of the hearse so that it would be in shot when he took the picture.

No "manipulation", but is it an honest picture?

Also there is this form Reuters on freelancers with particular note about bias and objectivity

http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/Dealing_with_stringers

There was another discussion (started by Lawrence) re identifying Demotix reporters and Bias. Worryingly we seem to have a (growing?) number of anonymous reporters who seem to have a political agendas. One has only stories about a particular group and who's followers are also anonymous and only have stories of a similar type about the same group. The bias shows though in the writing. This will make it difficult not to say dangerous for any other demotix reporter to talk to these groups targeted.

Talking of Bias there were the "interesting" comments from some one re paying (or rather not paying) non British reporters covering certain stories..... We could all do without this sort of bias. It could damage Demotix as a serious journalistic source.

Perhaps Demotix should insist on full details for the profile with a check box for people to say if they want to be anonymous. Then Demotix can have the full details and have the option to only publish on the profile a restricted version (at Demotix discretion) . Particularly if they have a Demotix Press Card.

For those in dangerous situations (rather than those who are highly biased) it would also mean that someone outside their situation/country has their details and can pass them on to www.rsf.org as appropriate if they get into trouble.

Tom, As for your question above Yes it is manipulation but so is any framing of any picture. The difference is all the elements were physically there. When manipulating in photoshop you are creating something that did not exist.

BTW see

http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2011/05/03/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-–-prove-it/

and particularly the image from Adnan Hajj a Reuters tog of smoke from Israeli missiles in a civilian area. although Reuters removed the picture and all 920 of his previously published images and fired him it started a hugh propaganda backlash against Reuters by Israeli sources and sympathisers for example

http://zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/

If you look at the photos that started it all that Adnan had done was increased the amount of smoke from the fire and explosion caused by the Israeli air to ground missile use in a civilian area. He had not changed any material facts. The BBC has shown video footage of similar incidents. However the resultant backlash and propaganda has severely damaged Reuters in many places. It has also given those with a political agenda room to cast doubt on all and any similar stories from the region.

A good reputation is hard to earn but very easy (and quick) to loose.

BTW I got pictures of Elvis... he works down our chip shop

Have you got a link to that other discussion Chris? Sounds like I should take a look.

The anonymity question is a difficult one. Obviously we like to have some information about contributors for the reasons you've mentioned; verifying who and where people are is useful for us from an objectivity and verification point of view. Having some information about the photographer available is important for building trust with the audience as well.

The counter-argument is one of information security; it's all very well us holding the information and not making it public, but we can't guarantee that, for example, the email account they used to sign up won't be hacked or otherwise accessed by someone else and used to access that data. It's a difficult balance to strike and one we're constantly thinking about - I often raise information security when we're discussing a new feature or service we could offer.

I can't give a definitive answer today about how we'll be dealing with anonymous contributors in the future; it's an ongoing discussion, but we'll let you know when we come to any decisions on it.

I'm not sure what you mean here:

Talking of Bias there were the "interesting" comments from some one re paying (or rather not paying) non British reporters covering certain stories..... We could all do without this sort of bias. It could damage Demotix as a serious journalistic source.

Are you saying that the person making those comments was biased, or that her accusations might be true? I doubt you're suggesting the latter since you rubbished her comment in the other thread.

As to the fact that some of our contributors may be politically biased, I don't think this is something you can get away from in a news organisation - you just have to pick up a newspaper, watch some TV or talk to a journalist to understand that. What's important is that we filter our coverage adequately to provide a balanced picture, and that we educate people about how to provide balanced coverage of the things they care about (there is a fine tradition of campaigning journalism; the facts alone can generally make your argument for you). This will be a big part of the training program we have in the pipeline, on top of the practical tips we hope to be supplying.

Regarding the links you've posted to the various Reuters photo scandals, those are indeed disturbing - and no amount of good-natured training materials will be able to eliminate deliberate staging and fakery. We rely on our long-suffering publishing team to keep an eye out for photos that look too good to be true - in sensitive cases, they're generally in contact with the photographers on the ground as well, which gives them a more direct sense of what's going on.

Unfortunately, there's no magic bullet for catching this kind of thing - if there were, Reuters would be using it - but our rules (e.g. requiring that contributors have the time on their camera set correctly) make it less likely that pictures like these will get through.

We are constantly thinking about these things and will be making changes to the site as Demotix develops - for example, if (as we hope) more people start coming to Demotix.com directly for their news, we may have to reconsider our policy on the articles people submit with their photos.

Anyway, that's a bit of a ramble, but I hope there's some useful nuggets in there. Keep prodding me if you're unsatisfied.

Hi Tom

I did try posting the link a couple of times but it never seemed to show up after I pressed post.
http://www.demotix.com/forum/serious-issue-about-photographers-idenity
Having hidden the link in some text I will try again,

Re your comment about on the text you quoted.

She was very clearly wrong and biased. Her bias was the basis of her comment about Demotix (and or British Newspapers) not paying non-British togs for pictures about stories in NI... Her arguments have been shown to be false on a daily basis for over 40 years. Would you now trust any of her reporting on anything touching an area she claims to be an expert on?

I sent the link by email as for some reason I could not get it to post here.

Hi Chris, apologies for not returning to this topic again.

@Tom writes: No "manipulation", but is it an honest picture? Obviously it is manipulation, Of course losing such a photo because not all the elements where in the right place could be infuriating, but that's photojournalism for you: it's like fishing, the best are always the ones that got away!! Context is also important and sometimes a photo can be saved but pointing things out in the caption - maybe people posing for the camera during some celebration (World Cup, Pride march etc).

@Chris quite rightly draws our attention to the issue of cropping. I wouldn't go so far as to ban cropping, but the answer must surely be: what are you cropping out? It also depends on what is the story? In a fast moving and dynamic situation one just does not have the luxury of framing, for example during a demo, a scrum by photographers and so on. Anyway, cropping should only be used to balance a photo for example removing a stray nose at the edge of the photo, small parts of a blown out white sky which occupies a large portion of the photo etc. But certainly nothing relevant to the story

And of course, I agree with Chris that those who have a Demotix press card should not be anonymous except under special exceptions. @Tom raises a good point about protecting personal information, the answer to these special cases is to get the photographer to send you the info written on a piece of paper and send it by post. The paper itself can be kept in a security box in a bank, The way I see it, given that sometime in the near future Demotix will become one of the top ten photo news agencies you/we have to start preparing the ground for the inevitable.

Incidentally, during these tense events in Madrid, ie 15m demos, I have been using the press card to enter Sol after the police had closed the square. Last night, for the first time, I was asked to show some form of identity apart from the card, but I suspect that the young police officer was practising his protocol.

best

Lawrence

Target outlets like Corbis for stock, and Reuters/AP for spot news like to do the editing themselves. I've found that at least with Nikon jpegs, use standard, zero sharpening, +1 saturation, no ADL . Its a fine line between making your photo look good, and the no manipulation rule. I would also considefr a hal stop of exp comp where the dynamic range exceeds the sensor capability. At least then one can pull the shadows and not blow away the bright areas.
The big no no is oversharpening. I guess they are after a true image of the scene, not one that is made better artificilly.
I spent a day with one of our top freelance new photographers. He is the competition and it was very interesting. He shot with two Nikon D3s and all his jpegs are set as per the above unless its dark or he's using flash. He would shoot away...always on single, and focus mode big white rectangle. Sometimes he will use ADL. He never looks at the rear display. Its easy to see he was taught the rules in the film days. I asked him about this and he said that at some point one has to trust the camera and its technology to get the shot. He said nailing focus and composition is more important that the level of exposure. Its the one thing you can't fix, so thats where his attention goes.

So to make it easy for the Demotix guys, do what they say, but just as important, know why.

There has been an interesting display going on now in a French gallery, if I remember right, of the Robert Capa photographs from what is called "The Mexican suitcase". This is an archive of negatives that turned up after being stored away, and forgotten, for 70 years of Capa's work.

In the archive is clear proof that he did in fact stage at least one of his epic war scenes. There has always been doubt that he also staged his most famous piece "The falling soldier". With this new (old) proof that he did in fact stage at least one of his works, in today's world he would be banned from reporting, and everything he did destroyed, except for what he personally kept.

In another example of staged work, but in a different context, the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima was recreated. On the first raising that wasn't staged, a very small flag was used that a soldier had in his pocket. This didn't make an epic picture so a larger flag was found, and the scene was recreated using the larger flag.

Both these instances show staged, and recreated work, but still stand as epic pieces, and one of the most famous reporters in history.

With the other recent scandals about how news was obtained, and the dubious lengths photographers went to in presenting their work, it basically gets down to what sells, and what people want to see, and hear.

It is difficult to find the news that sells on a constant daily basis. Some resort to creating it, and this is sad, but who did they learn this from? Did they decide on their own to do this? From historical accounts, and present day investigations, it's not new, and in some cases overlooked by their bosses.

It all gets down again to what sells, and in this day, and age, if they can get away with it. That is what makes Demotix a better news outlet. There is enough overlapping coverage of big event that it is practically impossible to stage any of the pictures coming in, other than having people pose for the camera. There are pictures coming in from every angle you can imagine, and not from just one photographer, but dozens. Everyone has a camera, and Demotix shows this.

It is possible to see some bias in the reporting, but when you read everything posted from an event you can see the bias by some, and know. This isn't the case with other news agencies, they report one story on an event, and introduce the bias their advertisers demand in too many instances. They don't allow multiple stories on the same event. In this manner Demotix polices itself from blatant bias.

On the reintroduction of being anonymous. Who are you trying to say needs to know who someone is? That is the confusion. Demotix knows who is reporting for them if they want to get payed. You might not, but Demotix does. Is this what seems to bother you, that you personally don't know who they are?

This is where personal safety comes back into the picture. Most contributors know that Demotix will not intentionally give out their personal information if they request that it isn't done, and that includes their picture. Can they be guaranteed the same security from everyone that reads Demotix?

Do they want other photographers coming up to talk to them if they are trying to work because they recognize them from Demotix's website? This is the biggest, and most unarguably valid reason I can see for not posting a picture.

Just to say that in the UK this isn't a concern for safety reasons is assuming that that person also doesn't travel outside the UK into unsafe regions. I see anonymous (no picture) UK photographers reporting on Darfur. Are you saying that because they are based in the UK then they should risk their personal safety traveling into hostile countries if they so choose?

I really think it is the social issue, and that by not having a picture posted then someone can't recognize them to gossip with, and I can see this as why not to post a picture. If I'm out shooting I don't want someone coming up, and trying to influence what I'm doing because they recognize me, and this does happen constantly.

My comments are not about the UK. They refer to practices in Australia. We don't have the draconian anti terrorist laws that get abused by authorities here. And I was seeking to give an example of why we don't usually worry about being identified.
Compared to Europe we don't have the pressing socio/political/economic issues that you do. Relatively speaking life is pretty quiet down here. Its front page news if a politician pays for a hooker on his government credit card. But you'd deserve it if you were such a moron as to do that. And a couple did.

I grant you that there are circumstances where you have to be anonymous. When I worked in the Balkans I never used my real name on any pictures or editorial I wrote. My editor knew who I really was but thats all. Those situations make it a pretty sensible rule. And if bad stuff happens in other locations, even the UK, of course you need to put an alias up. The trouble with that is you then 'you can't put any of thoses images up on your website if you are serious about preserving anonymity. So all this does not distill down to black or white. Its a grey area depending on the situation.

So is it ok to crop and get rid of noise if using extremely high ISO?

Cropping is normally permitted AFAIK . The editors will crop anyway to fit the page.

Any other processing is a slippery slope. It is worth looking round the guides from Reuters, AP, AFP news services to see whet they accept also Corbis as Demotix feeds that.

Bearing in mind that if you shoot JPG you are doing some processing in the camera if you are shooting RAW you do it in Lightroom (or PS) so it all gets debatable.

The less editing the better but I can find no clear cut and solid line. The problem is if you overstep this variable and ill defined line you suddenly find NO ONE wants any images from you and it can take forever to get your reputation and standing back..

I assume that for example reversing a photo so a flag appears to be on the "right way" is breaking the rules, correct?

I have no idea what the definitive answer from various agencies would be but I would think it would not be permitted because you are changing a material fact. Why do you ask? Have you found a case where a flag was reversed? I know the Union flag is often flown upside down. And of course both the raising of flags on Iwo Jima and the Reichstarg were both re-enactments the day after the original event.

However with the continual fuss over "photoshopped" adverts the world is getting more uptight about the ease of changing digital images.

I was just curious, because I was going through old material I shot this year, not that I published the image itself. I was just asking because the image was ok, but the flag was being blown by the wind....

Anyway, thanks for the help. Looking at the AP link, it means just minor changes though reversing images isn't allowed, so not going to do that

Richard, (and everyone else) whilst I take an interest in these matters for my own benefit I am NOT an authority on this. You should look at the various Reuters, AP and other agency guidelines. Eventually, probably like Reuters after they have been hit over the head for a "photoshopped" image Demotix will issue their own guide.

There is a world of difference between shooting *NEWS* images and portraits, adverts etc where there isa LOT more latitude. This is why very many press togs use something like Lightroom which is a catalogue, caption and key-wording system rather than photoshop whichj is an image editing system. BTW Bridge is use for handling files like finder or file explorer it is NOT a photographers tool (see Kelby and Kalwalski's 100 reasons for NOT using Bridge.for photographic work. (though our graphic designer swears by Bridge)

as usual reply went to moderator.

Why does the reply have to go to moderators?

You tell me.... The anti Spam system can take up to 75% of posts to the moderators! Makes posting here very frustrating. Though the one person he have on maintaining the web site has to work on the business side of things before the forum and the spam trap.

I was just saying I am NOT an authority on the subject, just interested for my own benefit. You need to check with the relevant agency guidelines. Eventually Demotix will get around to producing their own.

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/feature/2133918/post-processing-digital-age-photojournalists-10b-photography

Hi Chris and Richard: re spam: I seem to get better hits if I keep my text together (no paragraphs) and keeping it short. As for the flag, as Chris says, it would be changing a material fact. Plus of course, the technology is advancing to the point that such changes can/will be detected. So probably not allowed. Do you remember last year (??) the photographer who won the Word Press award but then taken away because he removed the tip a finger (or something like that) of someone that appeared behind the hand of the subject of the photo. Best Lawrence

I have good friends at Adobe and there is an internal push to add certain extra data to the exif info when the web-based/subscription only version of Photoshop is used.
It comes from a few lawsuits that have not gotten any publicity where models have sued photographers or picture editors for unauthorised editing, including one who had her entire body replaced by one over -zealous publication.
The new data will enable a photo manipulated in Photoshop to be "rolled back" revealing the edits. Its being done to protect Adobe in future court cases. It should be interesting to see what happens.

Stephen that's very very interesting. thanks for sharing. best Lawrence

Great discussion, guys.

By the way, this one is very useful too: http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/A_Brief_Guide_to_Standards%2C_Photoshop_and_Captions

This is a bit confusing now, should I now put my dpi back up to 300dpi?

Definitely follow the link above but the relevant part from the Reuters hand book is

Allowed:

Cropping
Adjustment of Levels to histogram limits
Minor colour correction
Sharpening at 300%, 0.3, 0
Careful use of lasso tool
Subtle use of burn tool
Adjustment of highlights and shadows
Eye dropper to check/set gray

Not Allowed:

Additions or deletions to image
Cloning & Healing tool (except dust)
Airbrush, brush, paint
Selective area sharpening
Excessive lightening/darkening
Excessive colour tone change
Auto levels
Blurring
Eraser tool
Quick Mask
In-camera sharpening
In-camera saturation styles

Exactly, Chris. Good summary

Remember though, that is only for Reuters, other buyers don't accept some of those edits allowed by Reuters. It is best not to do anything more than a simple crop, and possibly a color adjustment if you can see it is not right. Anything more ,and you risk not being accepted by some buyers. Reuters is not the industry standard, and keeping to that guideline only meets Reuters requirements. I don't think Demotix sells much to Reuters either.

Steve, which guide would you use as indicative of the industry standard? do you have a link?
Personally all I do is crop and check the colour balance.

Tom should Demotix publish a guide of it's own? (not that you don't have enough to do anyway

AP, Getty and Corbis distribute some of my picture through different partnerships, and I DO use sharpening, contrast and saturation on camera. I think those standards apply to their staff photographers, since it's not logical that they would impose their rules (different set of rules for each wire) to freelancers who will send their work to as much agencies as possible. The fact that they distribute my work is prove of that, I'm sure if I were in their payroll they'd ask me to comply to much more strict guidelines, but as long as I freelance, I'll just try to please my photographic style rather than a hipotetic client.

I use the Corbis guidelines and set up my D700 to spit out jpegs that meet the rules.

I have a pathological refusal to learn Photoshop. If I need to save images as NEFs then I just upload direct from the camera to ViewNX2, then save as tiffs. I find with ViewNX2 for my purposes I can get most images pretty well ok. If I need to change the picture controls I can make the adjustments in ViewNX2 and save back to the D700. I do this a few times and the camera has the correct settings 90% of the time. Then I will load up the jpegs to ViewNX2 instead, and do the cropping there.

I can understand that photographers wishing to create fine art need PS, but I don't, I also shoot film on an F4 and just get the negatives processed by one of the better labs. A friend has a good Epson scanner and I create the digital files with the Epson software. Thats enough for me.

is there a link to the corbis guidelines? What might be a good idea is to collect links to all the main guidelines into one place.

You have to go to the small print at the bottom of the web page. They don't make it easy.

why not just post the link?

http://contributor.corbis.com/knowledgebase#Resources

Hi,

I don't know if anyone caught the script that Corbis provides on the page that Chris linked to:

http://contributor.corbis.com/content/Resources/Forms%20and%20Guidelines/Pre-Flight-v1-1.zip

"A custom Photoshop script that catches potential images problems undetected by the Gateway upload. It reports on the number of layers and channels, bit-depth, color mode, and white and black points in a single or group of images. Please note that this is a reporting tool, not a repair tool. We recommend that you use this script as an added check of your hi-res media prior to upload. Installation instructions are provided in the ZIP file."

Remember Corbis is a Stock agency NOT a news wire. The requirements are different. For News work you should be doing virtually ZERO photoshop work other than cropping

People are still grappling with the submission rules. Whats so hard?

I'll spell out my rules to conform, and yes, its news...content is paramount, not image quality. These in-camera settings for a D700 allow you to almost eliminate post except cropping and basic +/- on exposure compensation.

Colour space: S RGB
White Balance: Auto
File format: Large, fine, optimum quality jpeg
Picture control: Standard
Saturation: +1
Sharpening: +3
Active Dlighting: off
Auto ISO: 200-6400

Its just a guide, but this gets me close and more importantly when they are fed through the computer they look as natural as is possible. With Nikon, using Neutral rather than Standard can improve flesh tones, but hey, newsrooms aren't looking for portraits.

If your aim is to use Demotix as a feeder to Corbis, then thats another matter. And I'm not good for stock images anyway.

Photoshop is not a process it is simply a very advanced photo editor, and can be used anytime you want to make any kind of edit to a picture. It is not the most efficient to use for photo-journalistic work as it takes advanced set up, but it can be used very effectively, and there is never a situation when it can not be used.

To say "For News work you should be doing virtually ZERO photoshop work other than cropping" is not understanding the program, and assuming it is a process rather than a picture editor. You can do exactly the same kind of news picture editing you would do in say Adobe Lightroom, or Photo Mechanic, or any other editor. The only thing limiting you in Photoshop is the batch processing functions found in the other programs, but they can be easily set up through the creation of "Actions", or "Droplets".

You say of Photoshop " there is never a situation when it can not be used." this is NOT correct. When I do pictures for the Police I have to lock the RAW images in the camera and no editing of any sort is permitted. Otherwise they can not be used as evidence.

Quote:
"If your aim is to use Demotix as a feeder to Corbis, then thats another matter. And I'm not good for stock images anyway."

Stephen, I also suck at stock, but Corbis is using quite some of my news pictures (and so are doing AP, Getty, now ZUMApress and a couple other agencies), and they come either from processed RAWs or JPGs coming straight off camera with saturation +1 and sharpening and contrast applied, apparently two no-no in tis "rules".
I say worry about the content of the picture and shoot according to your personal style. Whenever someone puts me on a payroll and I get money whether they sell or not I may think of shooting according to their rules. Otherwise, my pictures are my voice, and they should reflect the way I see things, not the way I expect the agencies to see them...

Interesting that Time has used the work talked about in this link.
http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/feature/2133918/post-processing-digital-age-photojournalists-10b-photography