May the best photo manipulator win

but see..thats the point..its not photo manipulation. its adjustments. and you can achieve the same results traditionally in a dark room with different filters and such while processing.

Digital photography makes these adjustments easier. how many of you have tried to put together a pano or an hdr shot in a dark room? with real film. the 35mm stuff that comes in rolls, you know? almost impossible to do without training of some sort. the digital age makes it so that you do not have to do that the hard way.

And I'll point out yet again lchappell that the entire point of this thread is not to bring into question whether or not it should be allowed just that if it isn't going to be than it needs to be enforced consistently!

Malcu2iaf-you stated this....
"Er..btw in the rule
- 6.5.: Color adjustments/shifting
we can get almost 'selective color look alike' effect (Color shifting)."
what exactly does that mean? because..... it seems that it says you can do this sort of adjustment, however from personal experience here on this site...I know you cannot. i've got email copies from a photo mod stating that those sorts of adjustments are not allowed, UNLESS its in camera functions.

Jadelink, what i'm trying to say is, if you know how to 'play' with color adjustment especially on color shifting you will get that 'selective color' look alike effect and so far this is legal to do since the rule 6.5 is still there..the only thing that we cannot do is to perform 'selective tool'
- 6.20.: Masks and any selections (magic wand, marquee, lasso)

FIY by playing with color shift you can't desaturated 100% the color that you don't want for me it is impossible or maybe i don't know how to do yet.

May the best photo manipulator win

Photo manipulator = Photoshoper NOT Photographer!

locks.......modding is not a science, and sometimes entries slip through the net........
we try our best to keep up with things, and do rely, to some degree, on the members red flagging an entry if they think it is breaking the rules. If an entry is flagged, then it is more likely to come under close scrutiny.......I myself have questioned entries in order to ascertain whether they should be removed.........I have seen entires in contests that should maybe be questioned, but if the contest is not one I have been assigned, then all I can do is notify the mod of that contest, the same as you. If they choose not to do anything about it, or do not see the flag, then it is out of my hands, and vice versa.......

the rules are set by MM...........if we do not like them, he is not forcing us to stay. we should all have read them before we place an entry........

this is not defendeing MM, or even defending the mods, it is fact!....and, we are all still human at the end of the day.......I have had entries removed in the past cos I balls'd up..........never mind, I learn from it, and don't make the same mistake again.

maclu2iaf wrote:

Malcu2iaf-you stated this....
"Er..btw in the rule
- 6.5.: Color adjustments/shifting
we can get almost 'selective color look alike' effect (Color shifting)."
what exactly does that mean? because..... it seems that it says you can do this sort of adjustment, however from personal experience here on this site...I know you cannot. i've got email copies from a photo mod stating that those sorts of adjustments are not allowed, UNLESS its in camera functions.

Jadelink, what i'm trying to say is, if you know how to 'play' with color adjustment especially on color shifting you will get that 'selective color' look alike effect and so far this is legal to do since the rule 6.5 is still there..the only thing that we cannot do is to perform 'selective tool'
- 6.20.: Masks and any selections (magic wand, marquee, lasso)

FIY by playing with color shift you can't desaturated 100% the color that you don't want for me it is impossible or maybe i don't know how to do yet.

funny that you say that..because... for those exact reasons was one of my entries pulled. and i do know how to play with color adjustments, using lightroom you can desaturate level by level. meaning i can take out all but just the blue in a photo. or all but the red. meaning everything red in a photo stays. YET, per a mod in an email, those adjustments are NOT allowed.

its these exact things that make this moderation a little hazy for me. same with how they deal with the hdr etc. i've never used "SELECTIVE" tools to edit my photography, yet have had entries pulled because of a mods DECISION to do so. The point i'm trying to make is, they can pick and choose who follows what law, and what entry stays or leaves because of whatever reasoning. its just not FAIR>

if one entry follows a rule...all of them should have to follow that same rule. If i cannot saturate the blue levels in a photo just for the fact of emphasis...then someone else should not be allowed to saturate the red levels in theirs. (just an example)... i watched the self portrait competition and 3 entries that were obviously selectively edited stayed...while mine wasn't even given a full day before it was yanked off. saying it was obvious that i was using selective editing.

Maybe it's smart to start using the SBS in the photocontests. Explain what you did to an entry.
1. post the original photo in step 1.
2. next steps explain what you did in PhotoShop / Lightroom or whatever, so others might be able to recreate your entry and check it if they have doubts. The amount of what's allowed isn't that big so it would make just a couple of steps.
3. this will teach other members new tricks.
4. for mods it makes it a lot easier to judge an entry.
5. for members it will take away the discussion if a certain entry used illegal tools and so on.

This would really benefit everyone and for members who submit it's just some extra steps, it works for the graphiccontests so why wouldn't it work for the photocontests?

in alot of ways, yeah, that does make sense. i think that if you just plainly list what edit you did in your description, and post the original photo in an sbs (not necessarily going to all the extents of full screen shots and all that) it should suffice.

another thing is..if a mod isn't going to allow an edited picture, or a pano, or an hdr shot to stay in a competition, they should allow 24 hours to replace that image instead of removing it right off. removing it makes one less entry in a competition, where as the author could replace that entry with a shot that hasn't been edited, or just a section of that pano. and if the hdr shot is good enough...well, considering its 3 shots put together, why not show each shot in that sbs so people can actually see the originals before they were put together. with hdr and pano, i can see how that could be advantageous to the authors.

Rob, i think you've got a great idea there. Hope that photo mods, and more importantly, MrM, think so too!

Jade, I'll give you an example of how entries can have SBS's in photocontests.
I've been playing around with my new camera and came up with this. I've been thinking about posting it in the contest but won't now. Also have my doubts if it's photoshopped to much or not...

Step 1:

this is the original photo.

Step 2:

duplicated the layer in PS (is allowed) then used the blending layer "overlay" (is allowed).

Step 3:

gave the top layer a gaussian blur (is allowed) of 78.6 to get rid of the noise and furthermore it gives the photo a more glossy / soft look

Step 4, the final image:


It took me 5 minutes to make this and everyone can check and follow what's been done to the entry... Everyone can check if my entry would have been valid or not because I told what I did to make this (not anymore ) entry.

BTW if you want you already can upload steps, the option is there, no need to ask the mods or MM ...

Jadedink wrote:

funny that you say that..because... for those exact reasons was one of my entries pulled. and i do know how to play with color adjustments, using lightroom you can desaturate level by level. meaning i can take out all but just the blue in a photo. or all but the red. meaning everything red in a photo stays. YET, per a mod in an email, those adjustments are NOT allowed.

Honestly Jadedink, theres nothing wrong if we used Lightroom for editing our photos. That software was truly designed for photographer not for photoshoper...maybe sometimes people think the only software for photo editing is Photoshop...well i don't know its all up to MrM to restructure the rules...

Robvdn wrote:

Maybe it's smart to start using the SBS in the photocontests

Oh Honey, please don't..! We photographer already suffered alot...whenever theres a new theme, we need to go out and shoot, sometimes we spent more than a half day just to get a decent photo,,not to forget to calculate the travelling cost