I thought PJ doesn't allow retouching

[Craig75]

I find use of the term "retouching" to be quite strange (in this context).
Retouching was traditionally used to minimize/remove/hide features that were considered to be unwanted - things like wrinkles and pimples.
The discussion in the thread (and the rules people refer to) seems to be more about falsification in general - manipulation that tends to change the nature of the subject presented.
If someone burns in a distracting reflection off a button on a shirt, or darkens a distracting corner of a window in the background, they may be changing the photograph, but they aren't mis-representing in any way the subject in the photograph (unless the button and background window's tone are meaningful in some way). Essentially, they are just dealing with a mis-step in the photographic process.
It doesn't make sense to exclude that purely technical and essentially non-editorial item.

You are right - his terminology is way off and im not even sure he understands how Nachtwey has processed his shot. Its not even clear that he understands a contrasty scene has been heavily softened.

 

[Cholentpot]

I'm not sure I understand why you think that dealing with the mask is "processing". Somehow it seems to me that dealing with a negative image with reversed colours requires more "processing" than dealing with a simple colour mask.

First thing that came to mind. In post a simple invert will work for B&W. Not so with C-41, you need to do a whole bunch of jiggery porkery to get a normal looking image.

 

[Eric Rose]

I think Craig75 is part of a Russian fake news boiler room operation. Who knows how many people are behind the Craig75 handle. I mean has anyone actually seen him type these messages? Just saying .....

 

[MattKing]

First thing that came to mind. In post a simple invert will work for B&W. Not so with C-41, you need to do a whole bunch of jiggery porkery to get a normal looking image.

Ah, you are talking about operator adjustments.
They are way less involved then the complex processing that happens before you get to them - the inversion of the colours in particular.
If your scanning software is set up properly, most images will come up close to normal, because C41 films are all designed to be printed to RA4 paper.

 

[Cholentpot]

Ah, you are talking about operator adjustments.
They are way less involved then the complex processing that happens before you get to them - the inversion of the colours in particular.
If your scanning software is set up properly, most images will come up close to normal, because C41 films are all designed to be printed to RA4 paper.

I DSLR scan. It was a long painful road to get everything properly inverted and colored. Made me appreciate the complexity of C-41. I now have a more or less automated system which gets me 90% of the way. Still need to adjust the white balance and lighting curves manually.

I never printed RA4, I do print B&W and the amount that you can mess with is underestimated.

 

[MattKing]

I DSLR scan. It was a long painful road to get everything properly inverted and colored. Made me appreciate the complexity of C-41. I now have a more or less automated system which gets me 90% of the way. Still need to adjust the white balance and lighting curves manually.

I never printed RA4, I do print B&W and the amount that you can mess with is underestimated.

Why don't you contact Ed Hamrick at Vuescan and ask if he can add a profile for your DSLR to his software?
Vuescan Pro is set up to create Raw files for those who need them.

 

[jvo]

We should be more concerned about truth and accuracy spoken by our political leaders than PJ's imho.

name one pol whose been accused of speaking the truth!!!

 

[John Koehrer]

I think National Geographic may have a good thing going with their guidelines. Perhaps a good rule of thumb to draw from that is "Does it look the way you saw it when you pressed the button?" If not, it's not representative of the original scene and therefore questionable for photojournalism purposes. Maybe good art, but bad photojournalism.

As for colorization, when an image is colorized, it ceases to be the original image and becomes more of an "artists rendering."

Which I don't see anything wrong with, by the way. I enjoy colorized images as a way to look into the past, but not as if I am looking at an "enhancement" of the original photo. It's a different animal.

Curious thing today. Nat Geo's March 2018 images by Stephen Wilkes about bird migrations has several two page spreads
that were combined images. "Stephen Wilkes selected a vista, set up his camera and photographed from day to night. Wilkes then selected the best images and digitally blended them to compress an entire day into a seamless composite image." Each image was taken from between 30 and 200 selected images from over a thousand each day.

Fair? The process was described accurately.