Photo Editor
Here are a few thoughts on the role
and work of a photo editor. To learn more about our services, please
see Photo Editing
and Retouching Services.
By Michaela Freeman
The Surreal World of Photo Editing
The longer I work in the design business,
the more I realize that we're absolutely surrounded by a world
of manipulated and enhanced images.
Newspapers,
magazines,
billboards, product packaging, promotional materials, the Internet
and much of what we see on TV is heavily worked-over.
Unless you
work in the documentary field, where showing imperfection is
the purpose, your images and photos for the web and advertising
need
to be perfect as well. And not just for advertising!
Photo labs automatically fix the red-eye problem. Every other teenager
nowadays edits the family's holiday pictures, making family members
tanner and thinner.
To be an accomplished photo editor, one needn't necessarily be
a good photographer. Actually, photographers generally dislike
the idea of photo editing. I can see why. It's a little like
putting hot sauce all over a meal the chef took
hours to prepare with perfectly balanced the flavors. For me, the
requirement to edit photos came from web design and my
digital
art, so I never dealt with this problem. I simply love
it, hot sauce and all.
Photographers in the Digital Age
I have several friends
who are professional photogaphers and watched them reluctantly
picking up digital cameras and working with computers.
Photographers love to catch the light, wait
for the moment, print, find the best paper ... that's how
they see their art. In the "old days" of shooting on
film, there was a science to selecting shutter-speed and lens opening.
One simply had to be a skilled photographer to get good shots.
Now you
can grab a digital camera and shoot endlessly
until you luck into something worthwhile.
Photo vs Image
Working on a web design with a business partner who's also a photographer,
I realized just how differently our minds work. The first noticeable
thing was that he always said
"photos" or "shots", while I automatically
refer to them as "images".
He would respond to photographs based on what's there - the quality
of light, depth of focus, amount of detail. I responded to the
same photos based on what could be there,
if I worked on them - getting rid of background, retouching imperfections,
changing tone
etc. For him, the photo was the final product, for me it was the
modeling clay, representing only potential. In my world,
a photo is a starting point
Tweak-ability
Our jargon for editing images is that we "tweak" them.
The potential of a photo to be tweaked is "tweakability".
The perfect image for tweaking is one that has lots of character
in the subject, is
shot from the correct angle, capturing a smile or a direct and
knowing look at the camera. There is simply something,
that's unique about it - it somehow caught an essence.
From then on, it's a playground. We decide overall color
tone, the amount of light, backround and frame. We fix
minor flaws, make sure skin tone is right,
that other little embarrassments are taken care of. With
Photoshop, almost anyone can look like a supermodel ... and ...
supermodels only
look like supermodels
because of Photoshop.
But tweakability goes beyond image. I remember selecting
a ribbon for a gift which we were about to photograph for a design.
My partner
worried about different colors until I simply selected one that
was most tweakable - not too light or dark. Originally
rust colored,
it ended up brilliant gold. In an odd way, image means less than
shooting something tweakable.
The Natural Look
Despite all this (or maybe because of it) I have huge
respect for good photography and working with quality
photos is always a joy.
The
less required,
the better.
Not only because of budget issues, but with less tweaking,
photography always looks more natural.
The natural look is the ultimate goal of image editing. We
want people to think "wow, that's pretty" rather than "I'm
sure this has been edited". For instance, I'm not a believer
in cutting out subjects for transposing on different backgrounds.
I'd rather do 20 subtle changes of the original background, just
to sustain light intensity and settings, with shadows falling
naturally and correctly across a scene. With Photoshop, pretty
much anything
is possible, but not everything is worth it.
Bringing Out the Best
If I were a musician and heard wonderful music badly arranged,
I'd say "the trumpets are awful, but the
melody is great. Play this on a piano, with a flute
intro and it will stun you."
A photo editor's best asset is
not how well they click the mouse - it's the ability to recognize
the essence within a picture and bring it out.
|
