Scanning ethics ????

[fotch]

What everyone has said. If you start using PS layers and making a new picture out of it, then, its no longer representing an traditional film shot.

Of course, the alternative is to print 43,000 prints and bulk mail to everyone.

[Loris Medici]

...
This kind of discussion is allowed on APUG, as it relates directly to scanning for the APUG portfolios and galleries
...

I would agree with the above. BUT, I don't understand why the question was placed in the alternative processes forum specifically. I mean, since when scanning is an alternative process!?

Regards,
Loris.

Edit: In case someone decides to bring it up, I can tell in advance; perhaps "scanography" could pass as an alternative process BTW - worth to discuss at least...

[Edward_S]

One of the reasons I became a subscriber was to have access to the gallery, and I always enjoy seeing other people's work. But I do feel that I can learn the most from scans of actual prints, because then I know that such a picture is actually possible with analogue techniques, and it gives me something to aim for.

On the other hand, doing it by analogue methods is a two-stage process; it could be argued that the negative is as important as the print, so why not show those too?

But there must be a limit somewhere - if I scanned a negative, turned it blue, added a few other arty effects and said "this is what it might have looked like as a cyanotype", then presumably that is going too far for the APUG gallery?

Edward.

[JBrunner]

I would agree with the above. BUT, I don't understand why the question was placed in the alternative processes forum specifically. I mean, since when scanning is an alternative process!?

Regards,
Loris.

Edit: In case someone decides to bring it up, I can tell in advance; perhaps "scanography" could pass as an alternative process BTW - worth to discuss at least...

Quite right. I hadn't noticed that. Moved to Presentation and Marketing.

[Thomas Bertilsson]

On the other hand, doing it by analogue methods is a two-stage process; it could be argued that the negative is as important as the print, so why not show those too?

Some people have shown neg scans first, and then scans of prints. It's educational.

For me, I didn't have a choice for over a year, having been without a darkroom. Can't wait to make more prints and share those instead of neg scans.

[Toffle]

Edit: In case someone decides to bring it up, I can tell in advance; perhaps "scanography" could pass as an alternative process BTW - worth to discuss at least...

I'm pretty sure the correct term wouild be "scanotype".

[stradibarrius]

The reason I placed the original post in the "hybrid" section was keep peace in the B&W section. I would have never thought to put the question in presentation and marketing.
Part of the question was about using PS to do simple things that could be done in a traditional darkroom. I didn't want to get the nasty grams about PS.
Many times when I look at my negatives on the light box they look so much better than the scan.
I love this forum and of all the photographic forums I go to this is the one where I go for opinions I trust.

[Vaughn]

Sometimes scanning the print is not the most advantageous method -- highly textuted papers are difficult. The texture can end up being over-emphised. Rephotographing the print digitally works better, but scanning the negative and manipulating the file to look like the print is a easier, and as accurate a representation as one could look for.

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Scanning a 20x24" print has its challenges too...

The option of photographing the print with a digital camera remains, assuming one has a digital camera.

Vaughn, have you tried photographing the print with a digital camera? If yes, does that help with the texture?

- Thomas

Sometimes scanning the print is not the most advantageous method -- highly textuted papers are difficult. The texture can end up being over-emphised. Rephotographing the print digitally works better, but scanning the negative and manipulating the file to look like the print is a easier, and as accurate a representation as one could look for.

[Monophoto]

In my view, this is not a matter of ethics so much as it as matter of artistic judgment.

I can and often do manipulate images during the course of printing in my darkroom. Cropping, changes in contrast, local burning or dodging, spotting, even bleaching are fully acceptable tools to create a final print. And I don't have any problem doing the digital equivalent of any of those things when working with a digital file.

For the last few years, I've been the editor of an international technical journal that regularly publishes pictures from various technical conferences. These images are published to tell a story about some event. Often, the images are produced by amateurs whose photographic competence is far short of the average APUG member, so the quality is not always high. I don't have any problem with manipulating the digital files of those images to make them sharper, to crop them to better tell the intended story, and generally more publishable. I routinely clone out distracting highlights (I can't think of anything more distracting that a lighted wall sconce growing out of the left ear of an award recipient at a banquet), and I have no ethical qualms about editing 'grip and grin' type images to remove individuals (recognizable or not) who aren't actually a part of the story that the image is there to tell.

Where I do have a problem is where technology (whether it is digital or analog matters not) is used to create an image of something that actually didn't happen. Some of the more offensive images include a mountain landscape with a steam locomotive coming around a corner - supposedly from a place where there actually was no railroad. Yes, the image was pictorially nice - but it was a fabrication of something that was not real.

Years ago, shortly after the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, a friend showed a print of a ski jumper coming off the end of the high jump at Mt Van Hoevenburg. And behind the jumper was a series of shadow jumpers, all lined up in a neat arc, suggesting that a number of jumpers had come down the jump together. In point of fact, the print was made by abstracting an image of the jumper using litho film, and then printing multiple images of the same jumper on the same print. Graphically neat, and clearly demonstrating great printing skill, but the final image was a total fabrication. It created an impression in the mind of the viewer that something had happened that existing only in the darkroom and the creative mind of the printer.

I find that kind of photography to be objectionable, regardless of whether it is done digitally or in a chemical darkroom.