Modern technology has added new dimensions. Mind you, digital cameras are just half the story. The other half is Photoshop that edits photos in almost every aspect, Picassa web albums used to format and organise and other websites and photoblogs like Flickr used to share, change and discuss images.
Modern cameras are high-resolution, come with a variety of lenses (that are delicate and expensive), can capture a wide variety of images, both moving and still under bright or low light. Focusing the camera, correcting a red eye or blurred image is no problem. Moving objects can be shown as still and vice versa. A new formatting called RAW now allows you to print huge photos without pixilation.
But the greatest new wonder in modern photography is Photoshop - a graphics editing programme developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated. It is not just correction but enhancing to modifying a picture, adding a new background and props, merging images, embossing images, changing the texture and returns a latest picture to the black and white image.
The Photoshop CS File Browser includes quick access to automated tools, bigger thumbnails, more flexible viewing, and editing. Photo-merge features has enhanced to accommodate much larger images. Photo-merge automatically arranges and seamlessly combines images to create a panorama.
Photoshop CS has a new addition under the filter menu - the Filter Gallery. Not only does the filter gallery give you a more visual way of selecting effects, it lets you stack multiple filter effects and apply them in one step.
The new History Log helps you remember how to repeat a technique, record time-tracking information for client work, create a legal record, and is also useful for training purposes and also a live histogram that updates in real time as edits are being made. It includes a dialog box for visually editing and creating new picture package layouts and share photos with friends and family.
"It helps newbie experiment to their heart's content," says Dua Abbas, a painter and amateur photographer from NCA. "Plus, tutorials freely available on the internet make learning photography or retouching techniques easier. The presence of photo hosting sites like Flickr encourages more and more people to photograph, compare results and improve."
"All our work is done on Photoshop, filter, format, lay-out and designing, since 1997. The upper class and tech savvy customers come with some demands but generally people are unaware. We have several brushes in Photoshop, we use different strokes, if you are good, it's all natural. I have a decade of experience and the treatment is often subtle," says Zakir Zaki from the photo studio called Sky Color Lab.
The picture quality is crucial, poor resolution will be harder to treat and more time-consuming without the desired effects. We can change backdrops, with wedding or birthday greetings. Photo books can be photoshopped with effects. 6-8-12 mega pixels, lens, and flash and natural light make a difference.
Fashion photography requires drastic photoshopping, so do photos for larger billboards. Facial defects, nose, cheeks, squints, marks… all can be cured through this software.
Picassa web albums are fairly common for organising, importing and tracking photos. Facial recognition, and collections for further sorting make Picassa very popular. It also includes photo editing functions, including colour enhancement and cropping. Images can be improved for emailing or printing, reducing file size and setting up page layouts.
"I have always used digital cameras so I don't know how the conventional ones function. There's no reel issue and no developing requirements. I can just randomly click as much as I want, take 20 pictures in one go," Samra Noori, an amateur photographer who has interest in photo-journalism.
"Photoshop includes photo manipulation and colour correction, the latter is ethical, former is not. You cannot erase a person or object. It is unethical to take a huge ground and focus on a single object by using a software," says Noori.
The fact is that churning out poor pictures on Facebook is just a hasty exercise - technology can fix the defects.
This piece was first published in The News in 2010.
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