And now we get into the second aspect of using the ‘Curves’ function for image editing, and that’s color management. I’m being my usual long-winded self here, so bear with me – if you can’t handle the length, there are TikTok morons that you could probably relate to.
Something that I didn’t go into within the video is, what constitutes excessive editing, or to be blunt, cheating? At what point does it become a digital creation rather than an edited photo? And there’s really no good answer to that – it’s more of a question you have to answer for yourself. I take a lot of pride in trying to capture something as close to perfect (or at least acceptable) in-camera, rather than attempting to ‘rescue’ it afterwards – and when I was shooting slide film, I had no choice, because whatever I did wrong was locked into the film. Yet I also see the value in creating something fartistic using the tools at hand – especially when it comes to monochrome images.
Then there’s the idea that the camera didn’t capture things perfectly or “as-is” to begin with – contrast and saturation settings within the camera, the metering mode and what it read from, and even the processing algorithms within the camera software all have their effects, so what’s “true”? Well, there is no such thing. BUT, being too heavy-handed in the tweaks or alterations that you do will be spotted by anyone with a modicum of experience, and it’s up to you to decide if you care or not (or up to them if they have stipulations over what is acceptable, with contest submissions for instance.) I personally avoid composites (using two or more images combined) for anything serious or fartistic, and only one of my prints has such a thing and that’s only for personal use. But I’ll have a lot of fun with them for frivolous purposes.
Getting these two videos done has laid the groundwork for some future Tip Jar posts, and I will try to link to them as needed, but knowing the basics of Curves will certainly help no matter what and is a useful skill to have, even if you do very little image editing.