[Alt-photo] Re: Video: "David Hockney: Photoshop is boring"

[Tomas Sobota]

Photoshop and inkjet printers are invaluable tools for creating separation
negs for alt processes. This can be done in a traditional lab, of course,
but how many of us remember how to do that? I made my last separation negs
in a lab some 30 years back and I don't want to go back to that. Nowadays
Photoshop makes that relatively easy, as well as applying correction
curves, which is an art in itself with traditional lab techniques.

But creating the neg(s) is just a beginning, there's a lot of manual work
afterwards, so when the print is finished it is certainly not the same as
the print of another practitioner of the black art. No danger of that.

So I think that the opinion of Hockney just doesn't apply in our case.

Tom
P.S. When I speak of Photoshop I'm also referring to other tools naturally,
such as Gimp.

On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 9:20 PM, Vedos Projekti <vedos at samk.fi> wrote:

> Of course, you need to learn to use Photoshop... the same way you learn to
> use a hammer or a camera. Maybe because it is a computer software and it is
> supposed to be "easy" people tend to get similar results... because they
> use similar settings and default options that have been built inside
> Photoshop... easy to get started with but hard to master, as with many
> other processes. PS is not quick, it takes time just like any other
> creative work. Maybe part of the problem is, most of the people using PS
> have no idea how the traditional photography works... they have no idea
> where PS's dodge and burn tools come from, etc...
>
> A different thing is that this PS's "aesthetics" is showing everywhere in
> modern photography... cold, insensitive, sterile, standardized results...
> no wonder so many artists are interested in historical and alternative
> processes.
>
> BTW, I'm teaching Photoshop this week, and my students are doing wonderful
> and unique work. ;)
>
> -Jalo
>
>
> -- If you only look at what is, you might never attain what could be --
>
> V E D O S
> Alternative Photographic Processes
> Satakunta University of Applied Sciences
> vedos at samk.fi
> http://vedos.samk.fi
> http://www.samk.fi
> ________________________________________
> From: alt-photo-process-list-bounces at lists.altphotolist.org [
> alt-photo-process-list-bounces at lists.altphotolist.org] On Behalf Of Diana
> Bloomfield [dlhbloomfield at gmail.com]
> Sent: 25 March 2013 21:35
> To: The alternative photographic processes mailing list
> Subject: [Alt-photo] Re: Video: "David Hockney: Photoshop is boring"
>
> I agree that Photoshop is sort of like working in the darkroom (sort of),
> in that if you don't know what you're doing in the old-fashioned darkroom
> (or have never been in one)-- then you might be equally inept when using
> Photoshop.  Not sure that's true, but just my thought.   But I definitely
> think he makes a good point that so much in the world of digital
> photography looks the same.  I'm not sure if Photoshop is to blame, or just
> a lack of imagination.  I can safely say that if I see one more large color
> photograph of a teenager standing in the front yard (or in the living room)
> of an obviously well-to-do home, looking bored and staring blankly at the
> camera,  I think I'll scream.  What is that obsession?  I keep seeing that
> over and over.  The first time I saw that-- which seems like years ago
> now-- it was interesting.  But I don't get why people keep doing that, and
> why galleries and museums keep loving it.
>
> So, for me, maybe it's not the tools so much as just plain imitation.  But
> is that more prevalent today, with digital?  And I really do think that
> digital prints, from digital scans, do have a kind of sameness w/regard to
> print quality.  I can see that.
>
> Diana
>
> On Mar 25, 2013, at 2:11 PM, Vedos Projekti wrote:
>
> > Well, Photoshop is a tool... how can one say the tools are so boring,
> that's why my images are so bad! ;)
> >
> > I think users of the tool may be boring... do you think if Picasso or
> Rembrandt had had Photoshop, they wouldn't have touched it?
> >
> > -Jalo
> >
> >
> > -- If you only look at what is, you might never attain what could be --
> >
> > V E D O S
> > Alternative Photographic Processes
> > Satakunta University of Applied Sciences
> > vedos at samk.fi
> > http://vedos.samk.fi
> > http://www.samk.fi
> > ________________________________________
> > From: alt-photo-process-list-bounces at lists.altphotolist.org [
> alt-photo-process-list-bounces at lists.altphotolist.org] On Behalf Of Diana
> Bloomfield [dlhbloomfield at gmail.com]
> > Sent: 25 March 2013 15:03
> > To: alt-photo-process-list at lists.altphotolist.org
> > Subject: [Alt-photo] Re: Video: "David Hockney: Photoshop is boring"
> >
> > Thanks, Greg.  That was really interesting.  I think he's right about
> digital photography all looking the same.  He's talking magazines, where
> everything has been photoshopped to death-- but I do see that in shows,
> too.  I'm not sure what it is, except that everyone is using the same
> Photoshop apps, and I still think that images made from film (even if then
> digitally printed) have something that digital scans just don't.
> >
> > He obviously knows technology, and he didn't say he didn't use it-- he
> just said he felt that the photographic results (at least in print media)
> were all of the same.  Nothing much distinguished them.  At least, that's
> how I heard it.  I think you almost can't do any photography today without
> some technological aspect attached to it (eg, making digital negatives, for
> instance-- scanning film and cleaning up the dust marks).
> >
> >
> > On Mar 25, 2013, at 8:55 AM, Don Bryant wrote:
> >
> >> David Hockney paints with the iPad
> >>
> >> So I guess software is okay for painting but not photography?
> >>
> >> On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 5:48 AM, Greg Schmitz <coldbay1 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> FYR
> >>>
> >>> "David Hockney: Photoshop is boring"
> >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAx_aYGmpoM
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Alt-photo-process-list | lists.altphotolist.org/mailman/listinfo
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Alt-photo-process-list | lists.altphotolist.org/mailman/listinfo
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Alt-photo-process-list | lists.altphotolist.org/mailman/listinfo
> > _______________________________________________
> > Alt-photo-process-list | lists.altphotolist.org/mailman/listinfo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Alt-photo-process-list | lists.altphotolist.org/mailman/listinfo
> _______________________________________________
> Alt-photo-process-list | lists.altphotolist.org/mailman/listinfo
>