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Author Topic: Learning  (Read 8727 times)

stamper

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Re: Learning
« Reply #20 on: January 11, 2011, 06:35:18 am »

Thanks for the feedback. This is taken from the blurb on the website for the course.

>This course is not designed to teach you how to use Photoshop. All students should have basic Apple Mackintosh >computer skills. Please note that this is not a troubleshooting course for personal equipment.

It looks like they don't allow time to get up to speed? :(

Rhossydd

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Re: Learning
« Reply #21 on: January 11, 2011, 06:45:18 am »

It looks like they don't allow time to get up to speed? :(
Perfectly reasonable for an "Intermediate" level course.
I'd be displeased if I enrolled on a course pitched at people with experience and found people wasting course time on beginner's issues.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Learning
« Reply #22 on: January 11, 2011, 09:11:32 am »

Yesterday I checked out a course in the Glasgow metropolitan college on intermediate digital photography. It stated that you need to know Mac to do the course. I know that Mac is popular among Photoshop users but I would have thought that Windows would have been the default computer programme or they would have used both? I am a Windows user so my options are getting lesser and lesser. This post isn't meant to start a computer war. :)

I use both operating systems, and from the point of view of Photoshop it makes next to no difference whatsoever. I wouldn't let that "prerequisite" be a discouragement - if there's an Apple store somewhere near you oir you have a friend with a Mac, go there and play with a Mac for an hour or so just to learn enough of the interface for saving and retrieving files (very similar to Windows), then join the course, open Photoshop and enjoy.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Learning
« Reply #23 on: January 11, 2011, 09:42:59 am »

... I am a Windows user so my options are getting lesser and lesser...

How true (and so self-explanatory)!  ;) :D

Mark D Segal

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Re: Learning
« Reply #24 on: January 11, 2011, 09:57:48 am »

How true (and so self-explanatory)!  ;) :D

Actually, it's not true. Apart from some arcane applications, there isn't anything of any importance you can't do on either platform and any significant operational differences between them are easily mastered. Commercially, it's a real horse-race between Apple and Microsoft to make inroads on OS allegiance at the margins, and I think this is excellent, because without competition their innate corporate arrogance would be even more insufferable notwithstanding the high-performance products they both make. Where we pay a cost for this competition is that application developers need to program for both platforms and that is surely costly to consumers who ultimately foot the bill, but I think the absence of real competition would be even costlier.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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welder

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Re: Learning
« Reply #25 on: January 11, 2011, 11:31:11 am »

... I was almost convinced till he stated that in his opinion that Photoshop had no place in Photography and cited the usual things about trying to process bad images, taking elements out of an image and replacing them and other anti Photoshop statements. He was entitled to his opinion I told him but he then said that most of the tutors in the college believed the same....

I've found that this kind of talk often comes from people who are simply not skilled in Photoshop, and rather than putting time and effort into learning how to use it they make blanket statements about how it has no place in photography or how their images are better because they are "straight from the camera". They won't admit that they have a technical shortcoming with a critical piece of modern photographic workflow.

I do find it particularly funny in this case though....can you imagine any other field of study where the teachers at a college would eschew the use of the latest advancements in their discipline?

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Rhossydd

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Re: Learning
« Reply #26 on: January 11, 2011, 12:03:26 pm »

I do find it particularly funny in this case though....can you imagine any other field of study where the teachers at a college would eschew the use of the latest advancements in their discipline?
Music ? music played on original instruments.
Art ? water colour painting rather than acrylic.
Film based photography
All immediately spring to mind, I'm suer there are very many more.

Actually the idea that you must use Photoshop is pretty daft in itself.
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NikoJorj

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Re: Learning
« Reply #27 on: January 11, 2011, 01:37:13 pm »

Actually the idea that you must use Photoshop is pretty daft in itself.
That is, if you only shoot film, and always print it chemically, and never everscan it, yes.  ;)

Otherwise, you have to face the need for some digital treatment (be it in the camera, or automated by the web gallery script...).
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Nicolas from Grenoble
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Learning
« Reply #28 on: January 11, 2011, 03:15:34 pm »



Actually the idea that you must use Photoshop is pretty daft in itself.

Nobody said you MUST use Photoshop, but one way or another the process of creating image pixels does edit the pixels, so the photographer may as well be in control of it and know why and how. Courses which deter or discourage this awareness and capability are not doing students a service in this era.
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fdisilvestro

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Re: Learning
« Reply #29 on: January 11, 2011, 04:57:46 pm »

in his opinion that Photoshop had no place in Photography and cited the usual things about trying to process bad images, taking elements out of an image and replacing them and other anti Photoshop statements.

I consider this as another example of disconnection between academic and industry needs

Photoshop HAS it place in photography, at least in a broad sense. The problem is that it is so powerful and capable that it is commonly misused.

Even in news, documentary and sports photography, photoshop is regularly used (not necessarily by the photographers themselves) for accepted practices like cropping, tone correction, sharpening, resample, etc. Additionally, if you output to printed media, you need photoshop to apply curves or output profiles, convert to CMYK, separations. etc.

John R

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Re: Learning
« Reply #30 on: January 11, 2011, 09:49:17 pm »

I have just finished reading this thread with great interest. I once signed up for a photography course at the University of Toronto and it was all about visual expression and the art of seeing through taking, viewing and critiquing slide film. I never did get to enter the course because I had to move. I wish I had.

I would venture to guess the course you mention is really emphasizing the art of seeing and visual expression and deemphasizing digital processing, and not excluding it. I see nothing wrong with that. You will be learning the art of seeing and visual expression first and foremost! When I first encountered and tried digital photography, I was rather dismayed at the amount of attention being paid to photoshop and processing programs, and worse, the attitude that virtually anything can and should be fixed, as if we should all endeavour to become masters of photoshop, and the work- the images, the content- matters less. This is the impression I had a few years ago and I still hold today. Given the thousands of images most of us avid photographers take every year using digital cameras, and that most are mundane , I am all for the emphasis being on the art of seeing and visual expression. If you learn to take good images, no matter how or what processing is used, or at what level the processing is done at, people will recognize the work as good. Photoshop and processing, though a part of digital photography, represent different skill sets and are for an altogether different course, as is printmaking, which many on this site lean toward. I would suggest you contact the school and find out about the course content. Only your priorities can determine what is best for you. Some courses are comprehensive and include all the facets of photography, including processing.

JMR
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stamper

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Re: Learning
« Reply #31 on: January 12, 2011, 04:45:53 am »

I am reading a book at the moment. The title is Vision & Voice by David duChemin. He explains that you should have a vision that starts with taking an image with the best possible exposure and composition. Import it to Lightroom ( ACR users can benefit ) and zero the sliders and then process the image as you visualised it when you pressed the shutter. There are over twenty examples of before and after images and the whole process is explained with regards to each image. I guess it is the digital equivalent of Ansel Adams. The author explains it better than me. It amazes me how many photographers boast about not using Photoshop. I heard a conservation yesterday between three photographers. The first two said they used Photoshop sparingly but the third proudly boasted about not using it and, guess what, getting it right in camera. Even if you get it right 99% of images - imo - can then be processed to be even better? As one poster pointed out it is probably ignorance of the program that leads to it being damned. At the end of the day it is the final product that counts and not how you done it? ;)

Mark D Segal

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Re: Learning
« Reply #32 on: January 12, 2011, 09:29:15 am »

"Vision and Voice" is an excellent book and provides convincing evidence of the subtle inter-dependence between vision and visual expression, in this case using Lightroom. The book puts to rest any notion that these skills stand in any kind of counter-distinction. They are synergistic for producing excellent photographs using digital technology.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Learning
« Reply #33 on: January 12, 2011, 12:01:56 pm »

… it is the digital equivalent of Ansel Adams...

And yet, AA also did contact prints just as well (an equivalent of jpeg)

fdisilvestro

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Re: Learning
« Reply #34 on: January 12, 2011, 02:03:55 pm »

And yet, AA also did contact prints just as well (an equivalent of jpeg)

Yes, but he altered exposure and/or development time according to contrast range of the scene, similar to raw processing

Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Learning
« Reply #35 on: January 12, 2011, 02:16:00 pm »

And yet, AA also did contact prints just as well (an equivalent of jpeg)
Not really an equivalent of jpeg, given the fancy lightbox he used which allowed for selective (and repeatable) burning and dodging. Poor old Edward Weston had to wave his hands to do his burning and dodging; not so Ansel.

Eric
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Learning
« Reply #36 on: January 12, 2011, 02:29:15 pm »

Yes, but he altered exposure and/or development time according to contrast range of the scene, similar to raw processing

Which you can do just as well by adjusting in-camera jpeg parameters.

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Learning
« Reply #37 on: January 12, 2011, 02:42:07 pm »

Not really an equivalent of jpeg, given the fancy lightbox he used which allowed for selective (and repeatable) burning and dodging. Poor old Edward Weston had to wave his hands to do his burning and dodging; not so Ansel.

Which can be also done in-camera, i.e., in front of the camera, by either gradual neutral density filters or, as Weston did, even by hand. Not to mention that not all contact prints (by AA or others) are done with dodging and burning. And please do not be fixated on the literal meaning of "equivalency"… we are discussing concepts here.

NikoJorj

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Re: Learning
« Reply #38 on: January 12, 2011, 05:10:12 pm »

And yet, AA also did contact prints just as well (an equivalent of jpeg)
There is a big difference though : jpeg is all about your choices at the moment of capture, and after that you're stuck (or nearly so) ; while contact printing is made after the fact, and can be redone at will to better convey the vision of the photographer.
Slide film seems much more equivalent to jpeg, I'd say - and AA did use some too, even if he was quite frustrated with the process (I recommend Ansel Adams in Color to all who haven't already read it).
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Nicolas from Grenoble
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Learning
« Reply #39 on: January 12, 2011, 05:20:55 pm »

There is a big difference though : jpeg is all about your choices at the moment of capture, and after that you're stuck (or nearly so) ; while contact printing is made after the fact, and can be redone at will to better convey the vision of the photographer.
Slide film seems much more equivalent to jpeg, I'd say - and AA did use some too, even if he was quite frustrated with the process (I recommend Ansel Adams in Color to all who haven't already read it).
Well said.

Eric
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