Category: Art

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Created by Me

ICM blur of dead tree. Take that, generative AI.

Generative AI is all the rage now. I suppose there might be some applications for it, but you will not see any of it in my work. What I show is entirely created by me, and I have no plans of ever changing that.

It’s all around

The news is full of hype about ChatGPT and Bard and, for images, DALL-E 2. Tech companies are inventing hundreds of billions (yes, “billions”) in it, so it must be about to take over everything, right?

It is hard to read anything without seeing references to the coming revolution. It is the “next big thing” in tech. MIcrosoft, for instance, has invested huge in ChatGPT and says it will embed it in its browser and all of its applications. With so much press and money and interest, it must be true, right? Maybe.

But do you understand what it is?

What is AI?

I have said before that I am a reforming Engineer. Well, I must admit that at one time I was involved in AI applications. I even believed in it at the time. That is just to say I have some technical background in the subject, so I am not just quoting press releases.

“Artificial Intelligence” is a weird term. It is definitely artificial. Whether or not it represents intelligence is debatable. To me, there is no real “intelligence” involved. It is just a fancy computer algorithm with a lot of data embedded in it.

The AI that is hyped today is called neural networks. It is based on a fairly simple structure that tries to mimic the way the human brain is organized by simulating neurons and synapses. Then they train the network with huge sets of data. The connections and values of the neurons and synapses are adjusted to give a desired output for a given input.

To over-simplify it, imagine a patient teacher trying to train a neural net to recognize an egg. They “show” it a picture of an egg and say “this is an egg” and let the network adjust its values to give a positive output. Then they show it a picture of something else and say “this is not an egg” and again let the network adjust its values to give a negative output. Repeat it over and over thousands, maybe millions of times with different pictures. Eventually the neural net would get pretty good at identifying an egg, if the training data was good enough and extensive enough.

But so what? The AI does not at that point know what an egg is. It just classifies shapes as being one or not.

What is the good of it?

We are discussing generative AI, so I will try to focus on that. Generative AI takes a request to make a picture or song or some such work, maybe based on the style of another artist. You could say “make a picture of a tree in the style of van Gogh”. It would make one. It would probably look like something Vincent might have done.

If you were generating the image for an advertisement, you might be able to simulate a certain style without the encumbrances of creative fees or intellectual property laws. For you, the user of the image, you get to bypass paying the artist. Or maybe, charitably, you get something you wish the artist had created, but they did not.

Many companies are very eager to have AI trained to be able to produce minimally acceptable results faster and cheaper than a human. Be aware of those companies that want to get rid of their people and replace them with minimal acceptable results. Have you used an AI-based chat agent to try to get support from a company? My results have been way below minimum acceptable. Maybe search engines is the best application for these bots. Most of the search results already can’t be trusted.

So for someone wanting something cheap for a practical use, it can be a good thing.

Is it art? I have my opinion, but let’s get to that in a minute.

What are the limitations?

Neural network-based AI only “knows” what it is trained to do. Its abilities are limited strictly by the data it is fed. And I used “know” in quotes because, one of the great limitations of this system is that it doesn’t know what it knows. It doesn’t even know what knowing is.

AI cannot explain it’s actions. The data compressed into its network has been stripped away from its source. This is going to become one of the major limitations that will cripple it or stop it’s use. So, for instance, when an AI system turns you down for a loan, you cannot force it to explain why. All it can say is that you just didn’t meet the pattern. Lawsuits will come of this.

And it may produce wonderful seeming results, but it is a cheap trick. AI products are a regression to the average, at best. That is, a large set of training data defines the average of whatever domain is being learned. This is all it knows. It does not understand the difference between unacceptable and acceptable and exceptional results. It does not understand the concepts behind what it is doing at all.

So when you ask it to make a picture of a tree in the style of van Gogh, its data bank has many images of trees. It has encodings of parameters describing patterns of van Gogh’s style. It can mix them and make something. But it can’t step back and say “Wow, that is great. I’m proud of that! That is good art.” There is no more feeling than a tax form.

Where does the training data come from?

This is a little off topic of the quality of the results, but have you considered where this huge volume of training data comes from? Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and many, many others, including your Government, collect and use all the information they can find . This includes public data like Wikipedia or the Library of Congress, but also everything they can scrape up about you. So every network search you have ever done, every web page you have ever visited, all of your email, all of your pictures, your contacts, your contacts contacts, every post you have ever made, your facial images, your job, your salary, your spending habits, all of your telephone calls, everything is just free data to them.

This is all used without your permission or control. So for an artist, for example, all of their online works can be used to train the AI to do better to try to replace them. And with no compensation or attribution.

There is currently no accountability for AI or the companies profiting from it. It has been proven that much of the training data used was biased or incorrect, producing bogus responses from ChatGPT. And Google’s Bard got a black eye the day it was announced when it gave false information to a query about the Hubble telescope. No accountability, no ability to explain.

A passing fad?

One part of me thinks AI is just another passing fad. It has come and gone before. AI was going to revolutionize the world about 20 years ago or so. It died. Now the pundits are enamored with it again. Most of them are too young to realize it died of natural causes already. But venture capitalists and tech gurus are very quick to throw billions of dollars at “the next big thing”, even if it has been unable to generate any money.

But no, I’m afraid we will have to live with this for a while. Too many billions have been invested for it to die soon. And it can show some limited tricks. Either you believe AI is a higher and more perfect form of life that will make the world better or you don’t. I don’t.

Not on my watch

Lots of rambling, but back to the adoption of generative AI. As far as I can see, I will never use this in my art. This is not like the introduction of digital imaging, where film purists wailed about the passing of a wonderful era. This is not a technology shift, it is a tool that plans to eliminate artists.

I will use useful tools, like sky selection in LIghtroom or Photoshop, but that is just a force multiplier to get my job done quicker. I could do the same thing myself and I can often get better results. It is like a woodworker using a planer to smooth a tabletop quickly rather than spending hours sanding it. You don’t say the tool created the piece of furniture.

When you see images from me, they were created personally by me. I don’t and do not plan to use AI to create my art. I don’t think art created by AI is really art, but that gets into the argument of what art is. What I call art is only created by humans.

Call me a Luddite, but I believe only humans can actually create.

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Going too far

Northern Colorado Front Range. Heavily processed from original.

We often hear this as a challenge or criticism. “You’re going too far” Meaning, back off. But as an artist, I don’t think I go far enough. I need to push myself to be always going too far. That is how we explore the limits

Too timid

I have written about this before, but it is so important I think it deserves a refresh. In a previous article I encouraged us to go “far enough“. But I think now this is too timid an attitude. We should push “it”, whatever it is, too far.

I know I tend to have too much focus on the actual captured data of the file and what the scene really looked like. Time helps. I tend now to wait to process images until they have aged enough to let me distance myself from the experience of being there.

But still, I tend to hold back and stay too true to the original. I am learning to push beyond to create something else.

As a bonus, this short video by Matt Kloskowski might encourage you to think about editing in new ways. He does not talk much about going too far, but he shows an unconventional approach. The kind of thing I am talking about when I recommend pushing beyond the captured data.

Push it

I know I’ve said it before, but I find truth in something John Paul Caponigro said “You don’t know you’ve gone far enough until you’ve gone too far.”

This is something I need to take to heart. The engineer in me tends to make the image look like the literal, original scene. That ends up creating record shots. Sometimes all I need is a record shot, but that is rare. I have to push it more to make the image into art. Into something interesting that goes beyond the original.

For example, I live in Colorado. If I shoot a beautiful scene in the mountains, so what? Anyone could have stopped there that day and taken the same picture with their cell phone. What sets mine apart? It often will be something more than just the literal scene. It has to rely on my interpretation of what I saw.

Be decisively indecisive

So when I suggest going too far, I am not speaking about relationships or physical safety, but my interpretation of the image. I am discovering more and more with time that images can take a great deal of manipulation.

A raw file from a good camera contains a tremendous amount of data that can be exploited. Editing in Lightroom is completely non-destructive. We can re-edit at will with absolutely no loss. Likewise, although Photoshop is inherently destructive, there are processing techniques that can be used to manipulate images with no damage and with the ability to re-edit in the future. I strongly advise learning and adopting these techniques.

Yes, I know of good artists who can say they know exactly what they want to do with an image and it is OK to do destructive edits, because they will never change their mind in the future. That is not me. Every time I revisit an image I usually tweak it some. Sometimes a lot.

Does that mean I am indecisive? Perhaps. I wouldn’t argue the point. I look at it as an evolving artistic judgment. What I see and feel in an image can change over time. So I consciously decide to use techniques to give me the maximum flexibility to change my mind later. Decisively indecisive.

Don’t worry about breaking it

Let me use Lightroom (“Classic”, because I consider it the only real Lightroom) as an example. I said that all editing in Lightroom is non-destructive. Do you really understand that?

Lightroom uses a marvelous design that always preserves the original data unchanged and keeps all edits as a separate set of processing instructions. Don’t believe me? Here is a portion of actual data from the XMP sidecar file of an image I edited today:

crs:WhiteBalance=”As Shot”
crs:Temperature=”5650″
crs:Tint=”-14″
crs:Exposure2012=”+0.50″
crs:Contrast2012=”+6″
crs:Highlights2012=”+19″
crs:Shadows2012=”0″
crs:Whites2012=”0″
crs:Blacks2012=”-12″
crs:Texture=”0″
crs:Clarity2012=”+20″
crs:Dehaze=”0″
crs:Vibrance=”+5″
crs:Saturation=”0″

If you are familiar with Lightroom, you should recognize these adjustments as the contents of the Basic adjustment panel. I’m not sure what the “2012” suffix means on them, but probably a process version. Anyway, this is literal data copied from the XMP file. It is an industry standard format called XML markup. It is just text. If I change a slider, the text value is changed. These text values are read and re-applied when I open the file in Lightroom. The original pixel data is never altered. You cannot destroy the image by editing it in Lightroom.

What are the limits?

There are limits, but not absolutes. If we boost the exposure too much, at some point we will introduce an unacceptable amount of noise. If we sharpen too much we will introduce artifacts around edges. We can make such a high contrast image that it cannot reproduce properly on screen or in print. We can increase saturation to the point that it is out of gamut for the screen or print.

Most of these are sort of a judgment call by the artist of what the acceptable limit is for the intended application.

But these are just physical limits of what we can do with the tools. The bigger problem, at least for me, is what am I willing to do?

It’s our mindset we need to break

I am the one who usually limits the extents of the changes I will make. I am still too much of a left-brained engineer who is constrained by my memory of what the scene actually looked like.

One way I can tell this is happening is that it is common for me to push an image further every time I revisit it. Upon seeing it again, I think,”that is nice, but I can go further”. And I do. Sometimes the image turns into something different from what I shot. I love it when that happens.

But it is a constant struggle to give myself permission to do it. I am afraid of going too far.

Knowing how the tools work and how to non-destructively edit, I should feel free to slam adjustments to the limits just to see what happens. Then back off to the “right” value for the image. I find that the “right” value tends to be higher if I have over-corrected than it is if I come up from the original. I think this is what Mr. Caponigro means when he says “You don’t know you’ve gone far enough until you’ve gone too far.”

Give yourself the freedom to go too far, than back off as necessary. I will try to do the same.

Not for everyone

I know this advice is not for everyone. I still see photographers who say they pride themselves in getting the image “right” in camera and doing minimal editing. That’s their style and their values, so good for them. But if “right” means the closest match possible to the real scene, that seems very limiting. I think we have progressed well beyond the stage of assuming that a photography must be a true representation of reality.

At least, that is my assumption. I operate from the point of view that I am as free to creatively imagine the contents of my frame as a painter is to create on a blank canvas. Even plein air painters take a lot of liberties with what they choose to include or exclude, what colors to use, etc. Some even use the plein air session as a sketch. Later in the studio they refine and complete it according to their interpretation.

That is basically what I do. Some images require more interpretation than others, and my tools allow more freedom for manipulation. One reason I think I could never paint is there is no “undo” with paint. 🙂

Go too far

So I am discovering that what works for me is to consciously push my adjustments beyond what I first think is right. Yes, it may create a bizarre effect and I have to back it off. But I often find that the new setting I back it off to is more extreme than I thought was correct originally. Seeing the extreme helped me understand a new way to view the image.

If you do it right, you can’t damage the image. Give yourself permission to experiment.

Example

The image with this article is an example. This is the mountains and plains about 5 miles from my home. It seems like every time I go back to the image, I need to tweak it a little. And I always push it a little further. I do not back off of what I already did. I think I am nearly to “far enough”.

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Am I A Failure?

Dead tree in snow. Bent, broken, but still trying to stand.

It’s the end of a calendar year. For most of us, it is a time of reflection. Are you having doubts and insecurity about your art and your capability? Do you, sometimes, deep down inside, fear you are a failure? I know I do. At this time of the year especially, I wonder if I am a failure.

An ongoing problem for most creatives

I have written before about failing. We all feel it. I think creatives feel it more than most.

The fact that we are creatives means we have to create. But when we show our creations to the world, we are very likely to get rejection and criticism. That hurts. It bruises our ego and makes us insecure. As creatives we have to be out doing new, fresh, interesting work that sets us apart from our peers. But we can’t always feel the inspiration or be on top of our game. When we look at other artists work or awards, it is natural to feel inadequate. A failure.

My reading tells me most artists feel this way at times. Sometimes a lot. Even the famous or well known are troubled with this doubt.

What are your metrics?

We have to be careful to select what we are measuring and how we are doing it. When we feel a failure it is usually compared to what we see other people doing, or our goals, or based on some negative feedback we get.

So one problem is who do we compare our self to? Remember, what you see on social media or magazines or gallery shows is the very best work they can do. But we compare our everyday work, or even our throw-aways, to them and feel a failure. What if you took your carefully selected portfolio of a few great images and compared those to these other people? Would you compare better? Even if you say they are better, can you justifiably say, “but mine is very good”? Don’t assume you are not up to the measure.

External metrics

And we tend to tie our sense of worth to external measures. Like money or recognition or winning contests. One problem with this is that these are things out of our control. We might work hard and market our self extensively, but still we cannot control our sales success. We may enter a lot of contests and open exhibits, but the fact that we are not picked very often is mostly dependent on circumstances we cannot know or understand. And no, saying we just need to get better doesn’t ensure success there.

Recognition is more subtle and in some ways more dangerous. What artist doesn’t want recognition? It makes us feel significant. It validates us and our work. We may seek it, even need it, but we have little control over it happening. The “best” artists are often passed over for seemingly inconsequential reasons. Personal preferences of judges or curators, biases, maybe entering subject matter that is not popular with them. Any number of reasons.

Who said you failed?

But when we are not selected for the show or contest or gallery, what do we internalize? When no one is rushing to buy our prints, what do we assume? We tell our self we are a failure. We are not good enough. No one said that. It is what we tell our self. We are our own worst critic. We rush to think the worst.

Of course, we could try to game the system. We could study the styles and opinions of the judges or gallerists and design work to match their preferences. This might get some show entries and even sales. But whose work are you doing at that point? Are you still an artist if you subvert your vision to the opinions of others?

The moment I decide to create my work first for your approval, and not because it scratches some creative itch within me, I have lost.

David duChemin, “The Soul of the Camera”

All critics have their own opinions. Many are locked in to certain positions because they have developed a reputation in that movement. Some cannot rise above their training. A few are just narrow minded. A lot just may not like our style of art. I’m not saying it is useless to listen to them, just that their opinion is just that, an opinion. It is not law or given from God.

Take the failure or criticism as just an input. Think about the merits, if any, but feel free to discard the advice. Your own opinion must direct your art.

Understand your goals

Be careful of needing to seek the approval of others. They can reject your work, but they cannot judge your art. David duChemin also said, in the book cited above: “Craft can be measured; art cannot”.

The reality is, no one but you can judge your art. Our creativity is a gift from God. When we create art, we are giving back a praise and thanks to him. It is from within. The judgment of our art is our own.

Sure, we can, if we are lucky, find one or more trusted mentors who can give us good feedback. But even then, it is up to us to accept or reject their input.

Out art must scratch the particular itch within us. That is the goal that matters. We must create what we have within. This is internally driven, not dependent on the whims or opinions of other people.

Never give up

I have heard it said that if you can be talked out of your goal, you should give it up. Some disagree, but I think there is a good core of truth to it. Being an artist is particularly difficult. You must be driven and willing to follow your heart despite rejection. It was much easier to become an engineer than to become an artist. The goals were clearer and more easily attained.

I like the phrase what is the thing you can’t not do? This is your art. I think it is a good description. If we have art in us, we are almost compelled to produce it. It doesn’t matter if it is rejected. It doesn’t matter if we don’t get rich with it. This is our art. We have to do it. Other people’s opinions may hurt, but they should not knock up off course.

If I do the art that is within me crying to get out, and I’m happy with it, I am not a failure.

Despite what I may feel today.

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It’s Just Data

Smoky Ouray sunset, looking up the box canyon

Digital images are just data, pixels, digital values. Yes, but… That’s like saying paintings are just pigment smeared on canvas. It can become something more.

It’s data

Every digital image is data. I won’t go into film. It is the same but different. But a piece of exposed film is just data, too.

What comes off my sensor is a rectangular array of pixel values, red, green, and blue tuples. Tuple is just a mathematical term for a small set of numbers you keep together and in order. In this case (red value, green value, blue value). This is just numbers. Data.

When this data is brought into my computer it is still data. The manipulations I do on it in Lightroom and/or Photoshop are mathematical operations. Things computers are good at dealing with. An image may be gigabytes in size, but it is still nothing more than data.

Data just is. It doesn’t mean anything.

Interpreted by our minds

When the data is displayed on screen, I can view it and interpret it as something. This is the key. It means nothing until a human interprets it.

A particular set of contrasting tones and colors in a region looks like a tree to me. Even if the computer uses an AI classifier to identify it as a tree, that is just a meaningless label to it. The computer does not know what a tree is. An image of a tree cannot invoke memory or symbolism or meaning in the computer. It can in our minds.

So the data we see on screen, that is just variations of intensity and color, becomes meaningful to us because we are human. The data itself does not encode hope or despair or memories or associations or pain or beauty. That is what we make of the data.

The pen

There is an old expression that says “the pen is mightier than the sword.” This is true, but unpack it a little. A literal pen (do you remember what those are?) is not stronger or more forceful that a literal sword. The expression is metaphorical. The force of words conveyed to people’s minds can do more than the threats of swords can.

This is the case with images. The data making up the image means little. What we interpret from the data when we view it is everything.

I do not get political in this blog, but from a sociological interest, the protests going on in China (as I write this) are fascinating. Censorship is so strict that the symbol of the protests is a blank piece of paper, representing that they can’t say anything. From an engineering point of view, the amount of “data” in a blank sheet of paper is zero. It is the meaning ascribed to it that makes it powerful. An empty of paper can say volumes.

What elevates some?

Back on track, how is it that some data creates a far different effect than others? It’s much more than just the data. For example, here are 2 histograms. This is important data about the color information and distribution of pixels in each image.

Mona Lisa histogram Random flower image histogram

Their shapes are not that different. The one on the left has more warm dark tones and is darker overall. The one on the right has a lot of bright reds. Both have a red spike at the high end. But these are just 2 sets of data.

Would it make a difference if I told you the left histogram is the Mona Lisa and the right one is a random flower image from my reject bin?

So we cannot take an engineering view of the data to infer the value or user reaction. Our human perception makes all the difference.

More than data

The famous photographer Edward Weston once said: “This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.” It is a little bit of a stretch, but I don’t think it breaks badly to say when we press the shutter, we collect data, but it is more than data.

We could look at the data as an engineer and analyze histograms, tonal distributions, edges, area balances, and 100 other parameters. I know. I have. But my conclusion is that matters little. It gives us ways to describe the superficial data, but it says almost nothing about what the image means to us as humans.

So what?

I think we always have to ask “so what?” when we learn something new. Let me share 2 takeaways I get from this.

The first is that the data doesn’t care. I spent years trying to optimize the perfect histogram, ensuring total, crisp sharpness, capturing and preserving perfect color balance. At this point in my journey I will say that none of that really matters. All that matters is the effect I bring to myself and my viewers. Is it pleasing? Does it make us think? Is there a larger idea behind the surface scene?

The second takeaway is even harder for me to really grasp. It is just data, and the numbers don’t really matter. This means that what the original scene looked like (the captured data) should have little bearing on what we do with it. Process the data as much as necessary to create a great image. I need to stop being limited in my thinking by the reality I started with.

If it was an average, sunny scene but I feel it should be dark and moody, fine. If it was a colorful scene but I feel it should be presented in black & white, fine. Crop it. Add texture. The original data should not limit our artistic interpretation. This is one reason I often find it valuable to let images “age” a bit before I process them. I loose much of the association to the real scene and can take a more artistic view of the result I want.

Today’s image

I love this image and this place (Ouray Colorado). The sunset was almost blown out from a haze of wildfire smoke. Contrast was challenging. But I had to get something. It was too beautiful to stand idly by.

Besides B&W conversion and cropping it, the pixels have been bent quite a bit. The image is a couple of years old. I find that every time I go back to it I push it a little more to the extreme. Each time I do, it becomes a little more what I remember of the event. The less I remember the actual original scene, the more I feel free to make it match what I felt.

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Dodging and Burning

Classic Rocky Mountain Balck & White. This exhibits strong use of traditional dodging and burning.

I have mentioned dodging and burning before, but usually in the context of black & white images. Dodging and burning is much more general than that these days. They are techniques that should be known by all photographers.

History

We usually think of dodging and burning as something associated with black & white photography. This is because this is where they were invented and first applied. Ansel Adams and the masters before him used dodging and burning extensively to achieve the artistic look they wanted.

The technique has its roots in the chemical darkroom. Photographers discovered that during the sometimes minutes long exposure of a print, they could change the tonal values of the print by withholding or adding light to selected areas.

Remember that these black & white processes were built around negatives. That is, on the print material, the more light it receives the darker the area is and the less light it receives, the lighter it it. In the limit no light at all will give the white base of the paper.

Hence the origins of the names. The printer (a person creating a darkroom print) might use a small tool, usually a circular or oval shaped piece of paper on a stick, to shield a region from some of the light. This holding back some light was called dodging. It made the dodged region of the print lighter. The printer could also add light to a region, usually by cutting a small hole in a sheet of paper and using it to shield everything except the hole from the light. This was called burning. It made the region receiving extra light darker.

In today’s digital processing, the terms are archaic. I remember them by thinking that burning sounds like it would make it darker. They might better be called just lightening and darkening. In my LIghtroom process, I call these layers just “light” and “dark”.

What are they now?

In the more general sense, dodging and burning are a means of selectively changing the tonal intensities or other properties of regions of an image. We can do this in great detail now and it is not at all limited to black & white images.

I am fairly confident in saying that all images you see a professional fine art photographer print use dodging and burning. The artist may spend hours tweaking the relationships. It is so easy now and we have so much control relative to the chemical darkroom days that it would almost be foolish not to. It would be passing up a great opportunity to enhance the visual experience for your viewers.

Digital post processing

Virtually all software tools that photographers use have the ability to selectively adjust tones in regions. The different tools may use their own names for it, but they all do about the same thing. I will discuss Lightroom Classic and Photoshop since I am familiar with them.

Since we edit on a computer using software tools, we are no longer limited to it being a real-time “performance” in the darkroom. Artists back in the day had to repeat the lengthy dodging and burning process for each print. Now we can do it once to create our “digital negative”. Editing becomes a pleasant creative process we can enjoy in our office with a nice glass of wine and some relaxing music playing.

And because we are no longer limited to black and white and chemical processes, the range of what we can adjust is greatly increased. We use the same techniques to selectively adjust colors and sharpness and contrast. It is even almost trivial to remove distracting elements.

It’s a great time to be to be a photographer!

Lightroom Classic

Ah, a marketing blunder by Adobe. Renaming “Lightoom” to “Lightroom Classic” was an affront to photographers and a thinly disguised attempt to push most users to the (reduced capability) online version. Thanks. Now that I have that off my chest let me just say that I will call the product just “Lightroom”. Know that I mean the desktop version where I have all my images stored locally.

That out of the way, Lightroom is a fantastic product that is vitally important to a large percentage of photographers. It is where we store and catalog and search for and edit our image library.

In addition to everything else it does, Lightroom has very capable dodge and burn tools and they are being enhanced all the time. At the time I am writing this, Lightroom version 12 was just released. It adds some significant new features.

Lightoom has several selection tools for dodging and burning and general editing. They are called the linear gradient, the radial gradient, the brush, and color and luminence range. In addition, there are “AI-based” features to aid in selecting the sky, the subject, people, and objects.

The purpose of all these tools is to select a certain region of an image to modify. Once we have a selection there is a range of editing that can be applied, such as exposure, contrast, texture, clarity, dehaze, temperature and tint adjustments, saturation, and sharpness. This gives us a very fine degree of control of the look of our image, down to arbitrarily small regions. And a wonderful bonus is, all adjustments in Lightroom are non-destructive. Everything can be modified or rolled back however much we want, even all the way to the original image.

Photoshop

Lightroom gets more capable all the time and is used as the exclusive editing tool for many photographers. But Photoshop is the granddaddy, the patriarch. While Lightroom makes it easy to do a lot of things, Photoshop does not restrict us from doing anything. We can mash, bend, distort, replace and modify any of the pixels in an image. You can combine multiple images together. You just have to know how.

Adjustment layers with masks are a primary means of local adjustments. These layers can be used to do traditional dodging and burning adjustments. There are even tools in the Photoshop tool bar that do dodging and burning, but I would not suggest using them, since they directly modify pixels. The ability to use a non-destructive workflow is important in Photoshop. At least, it is important to me. Some people disagree. Do whatever works best for you.

There are probably 2 main ways to do dodging and burning in Photoshop: 2 curve layers or 1 overlay layer. The first uses 2 curves adjustment layers, one set to lighten about a stop and the other set to darken about a stop. Each has a black mask. By painting in white areas in one of the masks we can selectively lighten or darken.

The method I more often use is to create a layer filled with 50% gray and a blend mode of Overlay. Then when I paint lighter than 50% gray on the layer it lightens or darker than 50% grey it darkens. I like this better because it is only one layer and it is more intuitive to me to use white to lighten and black to darken.

Either method is easily alterable and non-destructive. Each can be set up by a simple Photoshop action.

It has been edited

So in today’s photography world, assume any image you see has been edited – a lot. It is easy. It makes our images better. We are making art, not documentary.

There are photographers who think any modification of an image is wrong. They are, of course, free to feel that and act on their beliefs. I feel sorry for them. They are severely limiting their artistic potential. And they are probably “stretching the truth”. They do some color and contrast correction. Maybe a little dodging and burning and vignetting. Take out an errant twig sticking in from the side. Be skeptical when someone tells you an image has not been modified. What is the limit of “purity” vs. “artifice”? Who sets the rule? Why should there be a limitation?

Dodging and burning and related transforms have been used since the early days of photography. Masters like Ansel Adams would never have become famous without them. That is why it took many hours to print an Ansel Adams print. Most people would say it was worth it.

If you are doing photography today, I believe you need to master dodging and burning and all the related tools we have to work with now. The tools are there for us to use to make our images better. The concepts are timeless, only the technology changes. The editing controls are there because we need to use them to achieve our vision for our images. Not using them is like tying one hand behind your back. Maybe it makes a statement, but it artificially limits you for no good benefit.