Time to Talk Real: Photoshop!

[The griz]

I have been fooled only once from an online sale. When the piece came in I looked nothing like the pictures. I called the vendor and asked what they had their lights set at since I have the same led light. I set my lights to what they said the pic was shot at and it still looked horrible. Called them back and finally found out that it was a rather skeezy employee that had taken the pictures. They apologized and sent me my money back and a free $50 coral of my choosing. Now I only buy from WWC because I've seen the store in person and compared the online pictures against the actual frag in the store. The pictures were obviously cleaned up, but not saturated. Only online store I'll buy zoas from.

 

[turbo21]

Did anybody see this piece. And then the iPhone pic that followed

Hmmmm.............

 

[rdevoe11]

^heh heh, yeah I saw that one

:behindsofa:

 

[ChristopherKriens]

If we imply that iPhone photos are any sort of standard for gauging accurate colors, then we're just being dishonest as well.

 

[turbo21]

If we imply that iPhone photos are any sort of standard for gauging accurate colors, then we're just being dishonest as well.

I use an iPhone for all my photos. Straight from the phone to reef2reef and the colors are pretty close to what I see in person


Below photo taken with my iPhone

 

[Jonreefer]

Did anybody see this piece. And then the iPhone pic that followed

Hmmmm.............

dont get the point..Your comparing a photo that was taken with a Quality camera and lens it seems to a low quality crappy camera on a iphone that cant give the color or detail.
EXACTLY the scenario from my images
Taken with my Galaxy S5


then taken with my Canon 7D and 135L lens.
the ONLY edit done to the canon photo was color temp to adjust the camera sensor picking up to much blue


I can happily share RAW files if someone wants to chant photoshop again. thats all I see on this site and most are wrong

 

[revhtree]

Did anybody see this piece. And then the iPhone pic that followed

Hmmmm.............

Honestly looks pretty close to me except one looks darker. What am I missing?

 

[Pete polyp]

If we imply that iPhone photos are any sort of standard for gauging accurate colors, then we're just being dishonest as well.

Why? My old Samsung gs2 takes dang near real to life pictures. This is what I use 99.9 percent of the time.

 

[Jonreefer]

Also when it comes down to it. Photoshop isnt much different then when someone uses a very blue 20k bulb that makes the colors POP and look great then someone buys it and is running something close to 10-12k and the coral looks like a bland piece of crap. So if people are evil to adjust some colors in photoshop to get it to look like it does in person. then others are evil who are selling corals taken under very blue 20k lights to someone who is running a much whiter tank in the 10-12k range.

 

[Pete polyp]

Samsung gs2 picture

Canon t3 with post editing

although there's a difference, it's not huge. And the biggest difference was probably because the light with the dslr was twice what was used with the cell phone.

 

[ChristopherKriens]

There are accurate photos taken with phones. The snapshot I was referring to is most likely not one of them. I dare to bet that the vendor photo is far more true to life in this case.

 

[Pete polyp]

There are accurate photos taken with phones. The snapshot I was referring to is most likely not one of them. I dare to bet that the vendor photo is far more true to life in this case.

I bet is more along the middle of the two

 

[turbo21]

I bet is more along the middle of the two

My thoughts as well

 

[Pete polyp]

I believe that an "eye" is developed over time to look at something photoshopped and have an accurate guess of what it looks like in person. After seeing so many Photoshop jobs and actually see the corals in reality I have been fairly accurate. Have I bought corals online that have been photoshopped? I certainly have. Do they look exactly like the pictures? Most of the time no. Am I surprised that the colors aren't as intense when I receive them? Normally no. I'm sure I'm not alone with being able to have a good idea of what something will look like in person.

 

[Jonreefer]

God when I see people on this site blabbing photo shop makes me want to rip my hair out as seems none even understand how it's used. About 5 to 6 years ago everyone cried and said people lie posting corals for sale under 20k or heavy actinic lights to make them look great. Now a days dslr cameras are very affordable and now with led lights photo editing must be done or you will have photos that look wrong as well then everyone will find a way to cry about that with led lights are now the deceptive thing in the photo. Also shooting a coral with a macro lens will also make it look nicer then in person cause you are up close to it in photos that will make all the tiny details and colors pop even more that is hard to see in person because you can't zoom your eyes in. So this cap I read on this site with photo shop is mind boggling how many users just post it all the time. It is the only forum I read that it seems to say it for almost every photo. Rant over and stop using the word photo shop.

 

[rglewis]

Why do so many people bring this up, then follow up by saying they dont want to call anyone out or start trouble? Why not just get a list of vendors and ebay sellers together that blatantly oversaturate thier photos and try to overprice them due to coloration? If I knew a vendor was being dishonest I couldnt sit by and watch other people be taken advantage of. Maybe thats just me.

 

[zibba]

I thought this thread was going to be a discussion on how to properly use photoshop for editing reef pictures with workflow exemplars, etc. Talk about a bait-and-switch!!!

This isn't really the point of this thread, but it's important to me so I'm going to just start by saying that the term "photoshopping" is being misused in the hobby. It has gotten to the point where it is now synonymous with "over saturation" and/or "misrepresentation." I hear "photoshopping" and think of "post-processing," which I think is critical step in the process to get a good representation. That said, iPhones and the like have really come a long ways in handling aquarium lighting. If the term didn't take on such a negative connotation, I'd say that it would be awesome if every reefer and vendor were awesome at "photoshopping" because then we would get accurate color reproduction.

There was a comment at the beginning of this thread about monitors and the affect they have on the end result. I just want to echo that and say that monitor calibration makes a huge difference in the entire editing process and drastically changes what we see and what others see. For example, I stopped editing pictures entirely on one laptop after realizing that the end-result weren't very accurate (I still posted the pictures to the boards...but hey, I'm not selling anything! ). And, while I don't excuse vendors from ensuring that they put up accurate pictures, I think that we have to remember that there's a chance that the person's pictures look 100% accurate to them on their end of the pipeline. Granted, they should quickly realize they have issues if they're getting negative feedback from others...but that issue has been discussed so I'll leave it alone.

I also wanted to add to the discussion about the accuracy of an acro that was posted earlier (you'll all recognize it). I was there the day after they posted the initial thread and snapped this picture with my cell phone and slightly edited it with the phone's software to try and replicate what I saw in person:

You can be the judge. I'll will say that I've never seen, and probably won't ever see, anything like it in person again.

Last thing, "accuracy" is subjective when we're dealing with photography under reef lighting. I take and edit A LOT of pictures! My significant other loves the hobby too and she'll lean in while I'm editing and sometimes say, "that doesn't look exactly right" when I thought it was spot-on, or "wow, you captured that perfectly" when I'm slightly frustrated with how the picture turned out. It's an art, so don't expect everyone to produce the exact same image you would even if you had the same raw image file.

 

[akitareefer]

I dont think photoshop is to blame. Blame LEDs and DSLRs. I took some photo's (Canon t3i stock lens) with the Radions set to 20k. These photos are straight from the camera and only have minor exposure edits that are visible. The colors automatically come out like this with white balance

 

[akitareefer]

He's the Radions set to 10k






Which does everybody prefer? I'd personally like 20k...

 

[watchguy123]

I thought this thread was going to be a discussion on how to properly use photoshop for editing reef pictures with workflow exemplars, etc. Talk about a bait-and-switch!!!

This isn't really the point of this thread, but it's important to me so I'm going to just start by saying that the term "photoshopping" is being misused in the hobby. It has gotten to the point where it is now synonymous with "over saturation" and/or "misrepresentation." I hear "photoshopping" and think of "post-processing," which I think is critical step in the process to get a good representation. That said, iPhones and the like have really come a long ways in handling aquarium lighting. If the term didn't take on such a negative connotation, I'd say that it would be awesome if every reefer and vendor were awesome at "photoshopping" because then we would get accurate color reproduction.

There was a comment at the beginning of this thread about monitors and the affect they have on the end result. I just want to echo that and say that monitor calibration makes a huge difference in the entire editing process and drastically changes what we see and what others see. For example, I stopped editing pictures entirely on one laptop after realizing that the end-result weren't very accurate (I still posted the pictures to the boards...but hey, I'm not selling anything! ). And, while I don't excuse vendors from ensuring that they put up accurate pictures, I think that we have to remember that there's a chance that the person's pictures look 100% accurate to them on their end of the pipeline. Granted, they should quickly realize they have issues if they're getting negative feedback from others...but that issue has been discussed so I'll leave it alone.

I also wanted to add to the discussion about the accuracy of an acro that was posted earlier (you'll all recognize it). I was there the day after they posted the initial thread and snapped this picture with my cell phone and slightly edited it with the phone's software to try and replicate what I saw in person:

You can be the judge. I'll will say that I've never seen, and probably won't ever see, anything like it in person again.

Last thing, "accuracy" is subjective when we're dealing with photography under reef lighting. I take and edit A LOT of pictures! My significant other loves the hobby too and she'll lean in while I'm editing and sometimes say, "that doesn't look exactly right" when I thought it was spot-on, or "wow, you captured that perfectly" when I'm slightly frustrated with how the picture turned out. It's an art, so don't expect everyone to produce the exact same image you would even if you had the same raw image file.

Totally agree with each point. Great comments