How far do we go?

edgework · January 11, 2006

This is a response to a question posed to me offline by Rutt. Given that we are developing the ability to both resurrect bad images and turn them into something worthy of attention, how far do we go with a good image? When do we say "enough is enough?"

I started this treatment of the following image, in a different thread, where it had been discussed quite a bit:

This is a problem image for LAB because it begins so out of balance that most of the things we are doing in LAB only serve to accentuate that imbalance. Six months ago, had I encountered this image in my normal workflow, I'd have spent a half hour cutting masks for skin, shirts and greens, and I'd have gotten a decent result. Now, I'm all the more suspicious of masks, but the solution I came up with might well qualify as "too much," or "going to far." I threw a ton of curve layers at it, and converted to different spaces four times before reaching my goal. We'll see.

From the previous posts on this image it was clear that the skin tones were the biggest hurdle. Bad skin renders good grass meaningless. So I started with the green channel and did the basic luminosity blend in LAB (taking some shortcuts in my explanation here, on the assumption that people have read the LAB summaries posted here. I'll be glad to embellish anything that's missing.)

I then blended the a channel into the lightness channel in overlay mode which emphasized the faces more, over the background. I just liked the result, so I kept it. (This step hasn't been summarized yet, but it is taken from Dan Margulis' LAB book and can produce some surprising, if unexpected results).

A favorite trick of mine is to borrow channels from a CMYK conversion and use them as layer masks in LAB or RGB for contrast. In CMYK, a contrast curve to the magenta channel in luminosity mode can usually help detail in faces without ruining color. Using the magenta channel as a layer mask in lab yields similar results with the lightness channel. Likewise using the black channel as a means of pushing detail in the higher end.

Then a HIRALOAM contrast move and this is the result so far:

(Time spent thus far: about two minutes).

At this point it looks too dark and the yellows are looking drab so I added a curve that increased contrast to the lightness channel and pumped the b channel anchors 20 points in both directions. A couple of cast removal curves, targeting highlights and shadows separately turned things a bit red:

So I used these curves:

to ease up on the redness and to boost the greens a little bit, and pump a little more life into the yellow and I added yet another curve pulling the midpoint of the a channel a bit towards green and excluded the highlights and shadows with blending sliders.

At this point there is too much Cyan in the faces, and the yellow is way above anything reasonable. LAB isn't good at things like removing magenta from greens or cyan from yellows, not in any precise way.

So I went into CMYK and used these curves, basically straight out of Edition One of Professional Photoshop: "Always stretch the tonal range of all your channels to get the best detail.

with this result:

Now that the whole image looks reasonably balanced, it's back to lab for a final color boost, pulling all anchors 5 points towards the center, and a hit to the lightness channel with USM, 200, .7, then into RGB to split the sharpened layer between lighten and darken modes, pulling back the bright halos.

Total time elapsed, around 15 minutes.

I've made the observation elsewhere that I think an entirely new paradigm is evolving for the way we approach this type of image work, and it's important to embrace both new concepts and the tried and proven methods as well.

In my first step, in LAB, I think I threw about 7 curve layers at the image. If I went back and deconstructed everything I did, I could probably achieve the same result in three or four, but in a normal workflow, i don't do that so i didn't do that here. The thing I love about LAB is that it is very accepting of such an approach, and allows you to pull the image into shape for fine tuning in RGB or CMYK, or both.

Dan Margulis has always said that each image has ten plates. I think we need to be willing to embrace all ten, to come up with techniques that single spaces can't provide.

rutt · January 11, 2006

Nice result, and 15 minutes is cheap for an image this good and so much improvement.

But that doesn't really answer the question I had. There might be no answer to this question, but maybe there really is. The question is: as we get to the point where we can do just about anything, how should we decide what to do. I think the faces in this image are a good example. These guys were really pulling hard. Their faces have to look red. You need to go over the line and break the yellow >= magenta rule to make that be true.

Or faced in the sunsett. How warm should they be? Tungsten lights in windows seen from outside at night?

mercphoto · January 11, 2006

rutt wrote:

The question is: as we get to the point where we can do just about anything, how should we decide what to do.

That is a hard question to answer for me as well. I'm learning that really good photos are seldom accurate in all respects, especially color (with some obvious exceptions, such as product photography). But when to stop fiddling is the hard question to answer. I think this is especially problematic because the changes are small and incremental that we can easily creep into "too far" when all is said and done.

I think one has to factor in how much time and effort one is willing (or able) to take on any given image. That will impact how much to do and what to do in some vague way. Next is to ask what part of the image is most important to improve. Then start there. Sometimes the entire image does not need to be "better", only the focus part of the image. Perhaps stop when that is improved and don't worry about the rest.

rutt · January 11, 2006

These are good points, but not exactly what I'm trying to get at. As we improve our PP skills and as the state of the art improves, a point comes when we can acheive almost anything and do it pretty quickly, too. Edgework gets results in minutes that take me hours. I get results in minutes that beginners can't do in any amount of time. Dan Margulis gets results in minutes which I can't believe (I've seen it live.)

OK, given that level of adeptness, now here's the question. Should we always remove lighting casts to make (say) white wedding dresses white? I suppose the impressionists, fauvists, and their followers where struggling with these questions. Charlie Parker said, "There came a point when I realized that I could play any note and make it resolve." That was in interesting point for jazz and it took Miles, Monk, and a new generation to start to answer the question of which note to play once you could play any note.

I know this seems atypically vague and subjective, but I'm wondering if that's entirely true. Read or reread the first chapter or so of Professional Photoshop for Dan's ideas about the retoucher's goals and psychology. He has this great example with theree different versions of a picture of pigs. Turns out city folk overwhelmingly like one, people from the Midwest overwhelmingly like the second, and people from the Southeast like the third.

mercphoto wrote:

That is a hard question to answer for me as well. I'm learning that really good photos are seldom accurate in all respects, especially color (with some obvious exceptions, such as product photography). But when to stop fiddling is the hard question to answer. I think this is especially problematic because the changes are small and incremental that we can easily creep into "too far" when all is said and done.

I think one has to factor in how much time and effort one is willing (or able) to take on any given image. That will impact how much to do and what to do in some vague way. Next is to ask what part of the image is most important to improve. Then start there. Sometimes the entire image does not need to be "better", only the focus part of the image. Perhaps stop when that is improved and don't worry about the rest.

mercphoto · January 11, 2006

rutt wrote:

OK, given that level of adeptness, now here's the question. Should we always remove lighting casts to make (say) white wedding dresses white?

Probably yes, simply because a white wedding dress is likely to be the second most important part of any photo that dress is in (the first being the bride's face). At that point, the color of the stained wood railing at the front of the church is unimportant if it is accurate or not. And I guess that is where I would draw my line of when enough is enough, where I stop fiddling.

I know this seems atypically vague and subjective, but I'm wondering if that's entirely true.

It is true, and its also not bad. I think digital photography makes people focus way too much on the technical aspects of a photo. Sometimes it is those vague and subjective things that actually make or break a photo. Not everything can be judged "correct" with an eye dropper or histogram.

And this is why, by the way, those different people had different ideas on which pig picture was the better one. Which brings up an interesting point. There have been over the past many months some interesting discussions on the Rob Galbraith events forums about how to do event photography successfully. Some of the best advice I read was simply "forget your ego". The long version of that advice was "shoot what you customer wants to buy, not what you think is good". In other words, you aren't selling to yourself, you are selling to someone else. Shoot what they want to buy. So the "best" of those three pig photos depends entirely on who the target audience is.

Its possible this helps provide an answer to the question of when is too much too much. The answer likely lies in the intended audience. Does the person buying or viewing or commissioning that bride's photo want a white dress or is the color cast acceptable for some other reason?

jfriend · January 11, 2006

The technician and the artist

rutt wrote:

Nice result, and 15 minutes is cheap for an image this good and so much improvement.

But that doesn't really answer the question I had. There might be no answer to this question, but maybe there really is. The question is: as we get to the point where we can do just about anything, how should we decide what to do. I think the faces in this image are a good example. These guys were really pulling hard. Their faces have to look red. You need to go over the line and break the yellow >= magenta rule to make that be true.

Or faced in the sunset. How warm should they be? Tungsten lights in windows seen from outside at night?

I think this question can really be summarized by thinking of the retoucher's role in two parts, the technician and the artist. The new-found retouching power has given the technician an amazing ability to do almost anything. But, it is the artist in the retoucher that must decide what is appropriate for the audience. While my own technical talents don't come anywhere near folks like Rutt, Edgework or Margulis, they have improved so much in the last year that my result is now more gated by my artistic judgement than by anything else and I've realized that I need to figure out how to improve that side of my retouching skill. In other words, my end results are more limited by my judgment on what looks good than they are my ability to produce any arbitrary result.

As with other forms of art such as watercolor painting, the artist must decide what they are trying to achieve and use their artistic judgement for when they've achieved it. The most talented artists have both technical strengths and artistic strengths and know how to combine the two.

While we're on the subject, I'm in search of ways to improve my artistic judgment for what looks good. The method I'm using now is to just post and participate in hundreds of retouches and learn from people's feedback, though I'd love to supplement that with excellent reading or something else with substance. For example, next time I see an otherwise well corrected image that has some skin tone that's too red, I'll think twice before I try to make that skin tone comply with some mechanical model for how skin tone is supposed to look. It's probably more likely that's how it really was in real life and if I don't have any other evidence or client preference to guide me, I should probably leave it the way it was.

photocat · January 11, 2006

Interesting discussion. I recently have decided to not fiddle too long anymore with bad pics. We can do a lot now with photoshop, but I am still standing on my first view point from when I started digital photography.
I think that it is important to get as much possible correct at the moment of shooting. I think it would be sensible to only fiddle with pics that are mostly good, and only fiddle a lot with pics that are once in a life time shots, that you want to save at all cost.
I think photoshop can not make a bad photograph good.
I have become a lot better in chucking, instead of pondering if I could 'do"
something with it...
Don't know if this answers the question, but I will follow the thread... Very good point indeed, when is enough enough...

rutt · January 11, 2006

Very well said, John. You're getting at exactly the issue I want to discuss. Exactly!

Here is what I keep thinking. When Dan started I don't actually know how much people knew about the "by-the-numbers" approach he is assiciated with now. But that approach really added some objective tools to the "artistic judgement" that people instinctively want to use for this type of thing. Instead of worrying about calibrated monitors, Dan measured white and dark spots, measured skin tones, came up with some basic rules about skys, skin, shadows, highlights. And then, to quote him, "he could teach a color blind gorilla to color correct."

Now (largly thanks to him) we have taken a quantum leap in our color correcting ability. But what about in the objective standards we use to apply the new techniques? I'm wondering if we could make some progress...

dandill · January 11, 2006

edgework wrote:

From the previous posts on this image it was clear that the skin tones were the biggest hurdle

This is an amazing piece of work, but I wanted to make a general comment.

I am a rower and have been photographed under intense anaerobic exertion, as I think these guys are experiencing. In such circumstances, reddened faces are what I would expect (and have certainly shown!). In the original, the arms do not show quite the same redness, which is consistent with the efficacy of the head relative to arms at dissipating heat. So, maybe a little face redness in such situations is ok?

gus · January 11, 2006

In 20 years that there will be raw file readers/editing progs (CS 156.5 maybe ?) that will fix all that in a jiffy.

Keep the RAW & just wait.

edgework · January 11, 2006

rutt wrote:

Very well said, John. You're getting at exactly the issue I want to discuss. Exactly!

Here is what I keep thinking. When Dan started I don't actually know how much people knew about the "by-the-numbers" approach he is assiciated with now. But that approach really added some objective tools to the "artistic judgement" that people instinctively want to use for this type of thing. Instead of worrying about calibrated monitors, Dan measured white and dark spots, measured skin tones, came up with some basic rules about skys, skin, shadows, highlights. And then, to quote him, "he could teach a color blind gorilla to color correct."

Now (largly thanks to him) we have taken a quantum leap in our color correcting ability. But what about in the objective standards we use to apply the new techniques? I'm wondering if we could make some progress...

Dan has always pitched his books and classes to the mechanics (like me) or to the craft side of the photographer's art. I think "Professional Photoshop" is still the only book out there that addresses itself strictly to the production side of image work: no flashy filters, no zippy 3d text effects, no whiz-bang light beams, no futuristic weird interface designs. It's nuts and bolts, and, while the material he presents is copious and complicated, once you get a handle on it, it's fairly straightforward. And it's pretty easy to determine what works, what doesn't and where the line falls between.

No matter how far you can take an image with his techniques, I believe his purpose is a utilitarian one: get the image to represent it's information in the best possible way, to fully realize it's potential and convey the scene in it's best light. I don't think there's going to be much disagreement on this. It all comes down to three basic things: stretch the tonal range to maximize highlights and shadows; make the colors pop, and bring out as much detail as possible. Disagreements abound regarding the best tools to use and the optimal sequence to follow, but it's pretty easy to see when the goal has been reached.

But as soon as we ask "How far should we go," we imply a push beyond mere representation and this takes us deep into aesthetic issues; I don't know how objective you can get with these. By definition they are subjective, not easily quantified, subject to whim and mood. Soon after I started playing with my shiny new LAB techniques like a kid with a new toy truck, I had an image bounced, one that I'd spent a lot of time on. Seems I'd brought too much color back in the drab background. Seems the art director liked the drab, fuzzy mood. In that instance, "too far" came too soon and aesthetics trumped mechanics.

We've been honing our skills at bringing out a full range of color, but what about desaturation techniques? There is a wealth of possibilities in toning down color as well. Sharpening is great, but blurring effects too are important, and most of the time a good result requires more than a simple gaussian blur. And what about the kinds of manipulations from artists like Andrzej Dragan, creating a hyper-real mood that never existed in the real world? When does a red channel luminosity blend before converting to BW cease to be a means of bringing out needed detail in the sky, and instead become a way to create a depth of contrast, mood and emotion that takes the image into a whole different space?

None of these questions has an easy answer, not like finding the right numbers for a set of curves. Once you step past the goals of photo-journalism you've dropped down the rabbit hole. And things get curiouser and curiouser.

It would certainly be a worthy area to explore.

rutt · January 12, 2006

photocat wrote:

I think photoshop can not make a bad photograph good.
I have become a lot better in chucking, instead of pondering if I could 'do"
something with it...
Don't know if this answers the question, but I will follow the thread... Very good point indeed, when is enough enough...

There is a lot of wisdom here, but take a look at this thread.

Edgework can tell you that when professional photographers have their work printed in books and magazines, a little magic happens, and sometimes the photographer doesn't even know it. That magic has various names, sometimes "digital prepress work". What it really means is that a guy like Edgework takes a pass at the shot so that it will look its best in print. When things go right the photographer is pleased and not really aware of what happened. When it doesn't happen, the photographer wonders why the publication did such a bad job of printing his shot.

This doesn't happen to your shots before you print them or let dgrin print them. At best, you let dgrin's auto color process happen, which is not even in the same universe as a skilled human at this. So unless you know how to do at least some simple stuff, your shots are never going to look as good as they could and you are always going to wonder why those National Geographic images look so sharp, so saturated, so good compared to your own.

I've tried to help people to learn enough post processing so their shots can look much better in print. I can't teach everyone to make his/her images look as good as if a pro had worked on them, but I have helped a lot of people get a lot closer than if they did nothing.

My original question wasn't about whether or not to do this. It's an advanced question for people with advanced post processing skills. Actually I don't think it's just one question at all. More like a family of questions:

When to let skin tones break the rules about magenta and yellow balance?
When to show that light wasn't really neutral?

I'm sure there are more but my brain isn't really working right now.

rutt · January 15, 2006

My apologies to Photocat and anyone else I might have offended with that last post. I sure sounded bleeding high and bloody mighty there, didn't I? Sorry.

The real point of that post was to sing the praises of people like Edgework who are really unsung heros of photography. Many great photographers (I know one who is very famous) are barely aware of the existence and role of the prepress people, although they would hate it if their photos were pusblished without this kind of attention.

The business about "advanced ... skills" was unfortunate. I was trying to focus the discussion on something I think must be a very subtle question. Even the best original image can benefit from a little post processing; but, once we are ble to do anything with the relative colors of an image, what should we actually do, given that we are trying to make images more realistic and believable? There is a huge range of opinion on this topic and, and actually, I don't think it's a single topic at all. I do hold out hope, though, that maybe there are some things to learn that will apply to more than a single image. For example, how far to go in getting the blue out (adding yellow) to faces of people under special circumstances. Edgework's initial post shows that he felt he had to do something about this in the Pull! picture. I've felt I had to do something about it in pictures of people outside on cold, wet days. Now, I'm thinking, this takes more restraint than I've exercised in the past.

edgework · January 16, 2006

rutt wrote:

My apologies to Photocat and anyone else I might have offended with that last post. I sure sounded bleeding high and bloody mighty there, didn't I? Sorry.

The real point of that post was to sing the praises of people like Edgework who are really unsung heros of photography. Many great photographers (I know one who is very famous) are barely aware of the existence and role of the prepress people, although they would hate it if their photos were pusblished without this kind of attention.

The business about "advanced ... skills" was unfortunate. I was trying to focus the discussion on something I think must be a very subtle question. Even the best original image can benefit from a little post processing; but, once we are ble to do anything with the relative colors of an image, what should we actually do, given that we are trying to make images more realistic and believable? There is a huge range of opinion on this topic and, and actually, I don't think it's a single topic at all. I do hold out hope, though, that maybe there are some things to learn that will apply to more than a single image. For example, how far to go in getting the blue out (adding yellow) to faces of people under special circumstances. Edgework's initial post shows that he felt he had to do something about this in the Pull! picture. I've felt I had to do something about it in pictures of people outside on cold, wet days. Now, I'm thinking, this takes more restraint than I've exercised in the past.

Back in the dark ages, when Photoshop went from Version 2.5 to Version 3.0, layers were introduced. Up until then, a vast array of tricks and work arounds were necessary to do things that are taken for granted now. I was working in a design studio at the time and still recall one of the artists grumbling that "Layers are for wimps."

If you're a professional musician, you'd never dream of releasing a track that hadn't been optimized with the best digital sound equipment possible. Used to be only a high-end studio could provide that. Now, you can achive the same standard on a laptop—but you still need it.

So it is with Photoshop and photography. Technology changes things and alters workflows. You'd never expect a sound engineer to "get it right with the mics, so you won't need a mixing board," but I still hear photographers talk as though "getting it right in the camera" produces a purer result than if you pull a curve or two in Photoshop to help things along.

I see Photoshop as simply another step in the process, one that puts far more control in the hands of the artist, and brings an additional layer of responsibility with it. When Dan Margulis published his first edition of Professional Photoshop, his point was that there is no scan that can't be helped by a judicious Photoshop treatment. That's all we had to work with back then, but I'm sure he'd say the same about digital shots these days, though, given that the camera can capture all the information necessary, whereas a poor scan could easily erase detail that could never be retrieved, it seems that there is far more potential with today's images.

The thread Rutt referenced above is really all that needs to be said on the subject. Even bad shots have good information. If Photoshop can help you find it, and create the image that you always intended, then the answer to the question of this thread is: Go as far as it takes, to get the image you imagine. And if it takes new skills, or additional skills, or "advanced" skills, so be it. It's not elitist. It's essential.

Viking · January 16, 2006

Hmm. A question:

Do all of you guys here do the HIRALOAM at the Start of the editning of the picture, or before/after the final Sharpening? I do it just before the final sharpning, and thinks the result is very pleaseing.

DavidTO · January 16, 2006

Viking wrote:

Hmm. A question:

Do all of you guys here do the HIRALOAM at the Start of the editning of the picture, or before/after the final Sharpening? I do it just before the final sharpning, and thinks the result is very pleaseing.

I do. It makes sense to me to do everything else first, so you can see how much HIRALOAM you need. Plus you wouldn't want your subsequent steps to accentuate it.

edgework · January 16, 2006

DavidTO wrote:

I do. It makes sense to me to do everything else first, so you can see how much HIRALOAM you need. Plus you wouldn't want your subsequent steps to accentuate it.

Mostly I agree with this. I'll always do my true USM moves after the HIRALOAM, though I might insert other steps in between, depending on the image. In particular, results I might have tried to obtain with luminosity curves to bring out contrast can often be shared with the contrast that HIRALOAM produces over the whole range. I find that often I need far less effort with my contrast curves after I've used HIRALOAM. Usally I'll try it both ways, see which sequence gives a better result.

Also, I haven't found much difference where the color moves in LAB appear, but usually they work best after the contrast and levels have been dealt with.

Andy · March 11, 2007

edgework wrote:

And what about the kinds of manipulations from artists like Andrzej Dragan, creating a hyper-real mood that never existed in the real world?

http://www.adventix.net/blog/2007/03/11/famous-photographers-and-their-photos-andrzej-dragan/

Nimai · March 11, 2007

Andy wrote:

http://www.adventix.net/blog/2007/03/11/famous-photographers-and-their-photos-andrzej-dragan/

Holly crap those are cool!

photocat · March 12, 2007

Nimai wrote:

Holly crap those are cool!

Holy crap they are... Mind you, his pics are stunning to start off with...
Such detail! Love it...
Some people are SO artistic....
I don't see myself ever to come to this level... sadly enough!

rutt · March 12, 2007

Here is a link to another really great photographer's site whose art incorporates some pretty dramatic and extreme post processing.

photocat · March 12, 2007

I agree Rutt, he knows what he is doing. But it is no bacon for my beak...
I like photography more then digital art. I think that what he does is digital art. I recognize his mastership in it, and I can only imagine how much work goes into them, but they don't really appeal to me.
As he does stockphotography, I guess he makes a good living out of it.
Thanks for sharing that link...

rutt · March 12, 2007

I met him in one of Dan Margulis' classes (Dan calls Lee a "though customer" when it comes to color correction and having had to compete with him, it's true. Lots of his work is for movie posters, so the customer is always right. Sure, some of his work is over the top and at it's best is very Maxfield Parish-esque (google), like this, or this this, but there is also more pure photography, like this, this and this.

Lee's a tough customer. Hope he doesn't find out about the LPS contest.

photocat · March 12, 2007

I really like his shots of the sporting people... If he is that good a photographer, it raises the question with me why he needs all that processing magic. I like his normal stuff the most...
I am probably not romantic enough ;o)))))))

pat.kane · March 12, 2007

Wow, what a fabiously interesting thread to read. Thanks!

rutt · March 13, 2007

Lee's business is making wow shots for movie posters, album covers, that sort of thing. He has taken the tools he developed for this to his own personal expression.

You know it's a personal thing. Cartier-Bresson scorned the darkroom and thought that the capture was everything (though I'm sure there was someone in his darkroom with great chops.) Ansel Adams loved the darkroom and labored over every print. Man Ray could be every bit as extreme (in his own way) as Lee Varis or Andrzej Dragan.

So? It's go to swing. Photography and other visual arts aren't totally distinct. There's a continuum. The great B&W photographers knew this.

photocat · March 13, 2007

rutt wrote:

Lee's business is making wow shots for movie posters, album covers, that sort of thing. He has taken the tools he developed for this to his own personal expression.

Yes, I think everyone is agreeing on that one. He has developed his photography into a new art.
It is as you say, it IS personal. I don't like it but I DO see his master ship...
I liked the portraits though, the eyes of the people are so filled with life.

I think all photographers do some kind of post processing in the digital age, as the photo's are so much more vibrant and popping after... even if you only crank up the contrast and saturation a bit...

Just as they did in the darkroom. Dodging and burning was changed into an artform too....
Good exposure is the big bang, the processing afterwards is the wild card...

pathfinder · March 13, 2007

Our excellent digital cameras are gradually being reduced to camera obscuras collecting the basic image that is then created in the Artist's palette of Photoshop.

Photography and painting are moving towards each other with every new version of Photoshop.

photocat · March 13, 2007

Photography and painting are moving towards each other with every new version of Photoshop.[/QUOTE]

And for me, this is not a positive element. If I want to paint, I will paint. If I want photographs, I will shoot them. There are a lot of filters in photoshop, and I admit that I hardly use them... I am talking the sketch, paint and other brushes here. You can do fun stuff with them, but if I want a watercolor, I'd rather buy it then make it from a photograph.
I do like the move in photoshop for instance to get a better merge function. I was really blown away with the stitch function in CS3 beta...
I wished they would put more energy in "photographic" basics then into the artsy filter effects... Lets face it, how many times do we use the ripple polar effect??? But a lot of people will not agree with me here, so that is fine... We need different opinions. ;o))

adventix · March 13, 2007

Hello!

I see you found my blog with Andrzjey Dragan photos. Actually i plan to interview this perfect photographer, i'm going to Poland in April/May. So, if you have some questions to Andrzjey, feel free to ask your question at comments, i'll forward them to him.

And, ofcourse, welcome to our Famous photographers and their photos directory. Daily updates and alot of really good photos, commercial and personal.

Sincerely yours, Alex[ADVENTIX]

Duffy Pratt · March 13, 2007

I have a hard time recognizing the "mastership" of any art that I don't have some appreciation for in the first place, and that includes this sort of digital art. I recognize that some other people go for it, but I don't like it. Since, I don't like it, I don't feel qualified to judge whether some practitioner of it is good at what they are doing or not.

Duffy

How far do we go?

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