Photo retouching?

[tomstockton]

Howdy, folks!

I'm seeing more and more excellent pictures posted in various threads here on the forum -- thank you, and keep up the good work! And some of them are so good, I start looking for things that tell me it's a model instead of "the real thing". Which got me to thinking -- a usually dangerous place, since I go there so rarely...

How do feel about photo retouching? My personal opinion is that, done "properly", it makes our models look more like actual scenes -- which is what I believe many of us strive for. And as long as they're done to add some non-modelable detail, like adding the steam and smoke to a steam engine or eliminating real-world "distractions" from the background -- I think they're fine.

But I wanted to see how other folks feel about photo retouching... hence, the poll. Please feel free to add comments -- I'm curious to see how many other modelers think this is an acceptable practice. And in advance -- thank you for your replies.

Regards,
Tom Stockton

 

[NYW&B]

I disapprove of major photo retouching. Within limits (adding smoke, a little steam, and such) I certainly favor some limited manipulation of a modeler's original images that might otherwise be quite impossible to actually represent in modeled form and brings a bit more realism to a shot. However, when the hobbyist starts dramatically altering a scene, such as by adding real backgrounds, foregrounds, and all manner of other detail to the scene, I draw a hard line. I'm far more interested in seeing what the individual has been able to accomplish as a modeler then how well he has developed his Photoshoping skills.

As someone quite capable of making major alterations to an original image via Photoshop myself, I increasingly fear that in time the illustrations in layout tour articles appearing in magazines will become increasing fictitious. Rather than seeing evidence of the modeler's skills and the results of his perhaps new and innovative techniques, we'll be presented with some sort of idealized picture that potentially makes that 4x8 pike look like a basement-filling empire by George Sellios! Don't think this can't or won't happen. It already has been done at least once in the pages of an MR layout tour in recent years and God knows how many times in their Trackside Photos column.

NYW&B

 

[D94R]

I think there is a difference between photo retouching and photo shopping.

Retouching is mainly for fixes slight imperfections in the picture that were unavoidable, or captured by accident. Adjusting lighting, correcting picture tilt, etc.

Photo shopping involves editing entire new back grounds. Or changing the physical look of major parts of the picture.


Of course, then there is photo editing or also referred to as post processing. This can involve both retouching and photo shopping, but I generally refer to it as what I do when I do my HDR photo's. I'm not changing the physical look of the subject of the photo's, but I am editing the combination of multi photos to be able to see all the detail.



In general, I support photo editing. You won't find a professional photographer or company that doesn't do some sort of it with their product so why can't the amature photog or hobbyiest do it to?

 

[Selector]

I do agree with pp and photoshopping, or using enlarged photos as backdrops. They don't fool me, but I appreciate the effect the poster wishes to convey in his final product. Part of the fun, for me personally, is testing myself to see how good and convincing a final product I can generate. I know I have a long way to go compared to many who post here and elsewhere. So, the model is merely the subject, but if I am bothering to create an image, I want that image to work...to pop if possible. I look at the model as a separate project. One can always super-detail a diorama and a train to get good results, but then attempting to place that in a pleasing image requires something more. So I see it, anyway.

I won't be using a photographic backdrop. I will try to paint something passable myself, which I consider to be part of my development in the hobby. Mine will never be great, but they can be good...enough. I can always do what I do if I want more realism...I use the cloning brush to paint up a 'sky', which is yet another skill. I have been working on it, and creating smoke and steam effects, the same cloning way for about eight months now. I sometimes even get it right!

I am about to embark on a new chapter of using a diorama I recently built, nothing fancy, for outdoors photography. If I do it well, I will get even better photos with a real sky and trees to scale. Nothing in the image will be altered or injected into the scene if I manage this. When the shutter opens, the lens will record everything present.

 

[Charles Smiley]

This is a great topic. It might explore the whole reason we even have this hobby.

Propping up a temporary photo backdrop behind a scene that normally is where people might stand seems OK to me. It doesn't represent how the layout really is, but it completes the scene for a photo.

If the photo's purpose is to highlight a new model, I see nothing wrong with altering things in the scene that would otherwise be visual distractions - such as a distant door or hallway. Often times I take photos from an angle that visitors could never see, and a portable backdrop behind it helps the photo. It doesn't seem much different from cropping a photo to eliminate visual distractions. A photo is 2D anyhow. It isn't how people see things with stereoscopic vision.

Another Example:
I use photoshop a lot to make scenic elements of alleys between buildings and roads that blend into a painted backdrop of hills. I use real roads and distant buildings from actual photographs of the real thing. These are always multi-layered photoshop composites that are stretched, perspective-altered and doctored with shadows that match the lighting on the layout. If you get it right (lots of revising and printing) visitors have to sometimes touch it to see where modeling ends and photos begin.

Some of my distant background buildings are photos of models I have built but never installed (lack of space). By shrinking them in size and pasting cutouts of them behind flat-reliefs of actual model buildings, it can really make depth seem apparent.

Blending all that seamlessly into a model-scape has expanded my skills. That kind of blurs the issue between Photoshoping for realism before or after the shutter snaps.

Taking photos of your layout makes you notice things that you would never normally ever notice. Like a slight gap under a building here and there. They really look ugly - as if the building was just plunked down. Touching that up in photoshop seems OK now and then. If you would otherwise only notice it if you could shrink yourself down and stand at model street-level, why not?

 

[Railphotog]

The only retouching I've done with my photos is straighten some out, clean up some unwanted dust or hairs on or around models. I've removed shadows from backgrounds at times and that's about it for me.

I've used commercial photo backdrops in some scenes.

 

[Cjcrescent]

I really don't care one way or the other. I may add a background to a scene that doesn't have one. But otherwise I do very little to the few photos that I deem good enough to show off.

 

[kbkchooch]

While I do agree that removing unwanted backrounds, or correcting lighting is ok, I do draw the line there. Adding structures, figures, or even smoke & steam seems to be going over the top.
IMHO, the ability to do "tricks" in the computer, instead of actual modeling seems to make hollow the goal of the hobbyist........actual believable modeling!

 

[Gardner]

First let me explain that I am a retired journalist. Editing or photo shopping a scene for personal use is OK; for publicatioon anywherre is and will always be a NO-NO.

Gardner

 

[Charles Smiley]

When I say I use photo elements, I mean permanently as part of the backdrop. If you were referring to my post.

 

[IronBeltKen]

My previous layout had [and future one will have] two different "modes" of existence: photographic (1% of the time) and operational (99%). I figure when people come over to operate, they already know the trains and their environment isn't real, so the presence of windows and other distractions isn't a problem.

But if I want to convey the impression of tall structures, I see no problem with placing large sky blue-painted sheets of foam insulation board behind the benchwork to hide an ugly garage door for a few minutes while I stage a photo or two. Then I digitally "paint" out the unnatural-looking shadows on what is supposed to be an open sky.

In those rare cases when I do add smoke or dust to a scene, I usually mention right in the caption that the photo has been digitally-doctored and sometimes I'll even include a link to the original un-doctored version.

 

[NYW&B]

In re-reading the content of this thread today I find it quite interesting that, in my opinion, nearly every poster addressed what was meant to them by "photo re-touching" in a completely different way!

Perhaps an initial clarification to what that term meant to the OP would have been helpful in responding to the poll. As it is, the poll taken here really can't be said to reflect any general consensus concerning the acceptability by folks of manipulation of posted images and what they regard as the limits.

As I related previous, smoke and steam in at least HO and N steam locomotive photos is today almost a standard practice. It is so easily accomplished that just about anyone with a computer that it is almost expected and it really does nothing to add, or detract, from the modeler's overall level of skill being displayed via the image.

Nor do I see how one may regard placing a basic viewblock of some sort behind a scene to hide room shelves, windows, etc. Placing a modeled subject in front of a neutral, non-distracting, background AT THE TIME THE PHOTO IS TAKEN has been in common use for probably longer than our hobby has existed! Similarly, the use of photo images of some individual buildings used as "flats" against the backdrop is easily enough justified.

Where red flags should start going up is when the hobbyist starts importing major scene elements into a photo via Photoshopping, or a similar method. I called out MR several years ago on this, when the winning image in their Annual Photo Contest was nothing more than a silhouetted train and right-of-way backed by an imported sunset scene. The added sunset background (not in the original photo) occupied something like 50% of the image, as I recall! In a hobby where modeling skill supposedly counts for so much, this to me was MR's nadir as a judge of model railroad photos.

Anyway...perhaps the OP might consider re-phasing his original post, making it clear just what "photo re-touching" means to him. Then we could see if we agree, or at least get a more meaningful response from folks here.

NYW&B

 

[amdaley]

I don't approve of Photoshopping Model Railroad photo's for published works. Show it as it is. Retouching is often an excuse for bad photography.
Its got to the stage now that you can no longer depend on the validity of a photograph.That is just plain cheating.I have no problem in retouching a photo to remove slight flaws caught on camera but some published Model Railroad photo's bear no resemblance to the original subject.As a result of this people are often disappointed when they see a layout at exhibitions complaining that "It looks nothing like it was in the magazine"

 

[Railphotog]

I think the term would better be "photo manipulation" when referring to adding elements to a model photo.

Last month I was visiting a friend's layout to see his newly kitbashed station for his main yard. It was during an operating session, and I wanted to get some photos of the new station for the owners' website that I maintain for him. I brought along my mid-sized digital camera, a Canon SX30; it has a fixed 24-840mm zoom lens and is pretty capable. I didn't want to use my DSLR, tripod and such that would disrupt the operators. So I opted to used the smaller camera and shoot hand held. I often set the camera on the layout or leaned against a post or something to steady it.

One of the best shots I obtained this way is shown below left, as it came from the camera. The fast clock was right behind the new station, and I ran out of backdrop as the camera was pointing upwards. So I cloned out the clock and added some sky to cover up the ceiling. I wanted to showcase the structure in a realistic scene. The clock and the ceiling were not realistic! The clock is hard wired so is not removable. I also cropped some of the out of focus foreground.

So is what I did bad?

BTW I do not use Photoshop, I've been using variations of Paint Shop Pro for years, now using version 11.

 

[Selector]

I look at what Bob describes, which I do freely when a window casing intrudes on what is otherwise a photo of my layout and backdrop, as staging. To me, it is no different from moving some ground foam bush clumps over there, in front of an outsized or not-so-well built hand-made throwbar actuator. Or placing an engine on a bridge when at the outset the bridge had no engine on it. The staging could just as well have been placing a nice backdrop behind the area to be viewed, if temporarily. If I painted the backdrop, and it wasn't a photograph, and if I placed it behind the scene only for this one scene, is the lens no longer recording my model? What if I took the photo backdrop I am using myself...would that be acceptable? It depicts what my camera sees at the time. I'd have to ask what it is in the scene, then, if not what I am capable of producing and staging for a pleasing shot.

We have had this discussion before today. It seems to come to separate listings, one for entirely unaltered images, including PP, of what exists on your layout without any props, blocks, backdrops brought in, etc. All you can do is change lighting, exposure, and camera location. At the opposite extreme is do what whatever you wish...fill your boots, try to fool us, or just make something fanciful and artistic. I submit that somewhere in there is a place for making your models look like photos of the kind that were taken of the 1:1 scale back in 1941. This would include nipping the trip pin off the front coupler on scale locomotives, using RTR cars that you kitbashed, and not what came out of the box, or ones you super-detail that look much more realistic than the RTR model that is its base. It could include weathering. It could include other simple realisms, such as not hooking up the tender to any of the offered drawbar holes, but leaving the drawbar unhitched for the shot and shoving the tender up nice and close the way the real assembly looks. Maybe pivoting pilot trucks and the nose of the engine to look less weird on the sharp curves, and more realistic. All these things I have done. None is permanent, except for the glued items, the painted ones, or the removed trip pin. I move human figures from image to image.

Perhaps the best thing is to rely on the honour system and have people describe, to the best of their recollection, what they have done to the original image with the original EXIF data.

Crandell

 

[Secondhandmodeler]

I've been trying not to reply to this, but I guess I'll share my opinion. I don't really like the practice of digital manipulation. Cropping the picture, adjusting the lighting or other basic camera adjustments seems fine. Where I disagree is when you start adding things and taking away others. Some how it feels like cheating. This isn't a competition so I guess it shouldn't really matter to me. It's just how I feel.

 

[Artieiii]

My .02....it's your railroad do whatever you like. Since you are taking pictures of your railroad then if you want to alter them in any way go for it. Who cares what others think.....I don't. If you think that it's cheating then you need to realize that every picture in every modern magazine has a team of people that make changes to suit the publishers. It's not cheating its just the way it is.
-Art

 

[amdaley]

My .02....it's your railroad do whatever you like. Since you are taking pictures of your railroad then if you want to alter them in any way go for it. Who cares what others think.....I don't. If you think that it's cheating then you need to realize that every picture in every modern magazine has a team of people that make changes to suit the publishers. It's not cheating its just the way it is.
-Art

I suppose it depends on what your definition of cheating is ? Just because its the way it is doesn't make it right

 

[Artieiii]

Yes amdaly tis true. But if all magazines use this technique and you want to get a magazine quality picture then I think "when in Rome" applies.
-Art

 

[Railphotog]

My .02....it's your railroad do whatever you like. Since you are taking pictures of your railroad then if you want to alter them in any way go for it. Who cares what others think.....I don't. If you think that it's cheating then you need to realize that every picture in every modern magazine has a team of people that make changes to suit the publishers. It's not cheating its just the way it is.
-Art

Do you have any concrete examples to show this has happened in model railroad magazines? Or are you just making things up?

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I do doubt that such adjustments are made in model railroad magzines. I've had around 850 of my photos published in the hobby press, and know of only one time a photo of mine was worked on. The photo they chose for the cover showed the top of one of my diesels, and I had slopped a bit of black paint over the edges of one of the roof grills on a white model. Normally it would not have been noticed, but the photo being so large on the covered showed my boo-boo. It was a minor cleanup of the area and in no way compromised my model photo.