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

Darryl Baird darryl at darrylbaird.com
Mon Mar 25 21:07:12 UTC 2013


 

Ok, willing to date myself, but it's appropriate sometimes... Back
in 1985, Pagemaker was introduced to the design world along with a
promise to simplify the creation of color separation negatives. I was
already making separation negatives manually from slides via RGB filters
for KWIK-PRINT work I was serious about at the time. (Lordy, that feels
like a lifetime ago) 

To return to those days and the multiple
variables of exposure, development, and registration would certainly be
a step backwards. Photoshop isn't boring, but photographers might use it
in a boring fashion. :) 

On 2013-03-25 14:39, Tomas Sobota wrote: 

>
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 [1] http://www.samk.fi [2]
________________________________________ 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? 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:
> 
> _______________________________________________
>
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Links:
------
[1] http://vedos.samk.fi
[2] http://www.samk.fi
[3]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAx_aYGmpoM


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