Did Ansel Adams do "Photoshopping" in the darkroom?

Question: Did Ansel Adams do "Photoshopping" in the darkroom!?
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While it's true that Ansel Adams manipulated his pictures somewhat in the darkroom, he did it in a very disciplined way only to IMPROVE his pictures!.!.!.very careful dodging and burning, etc!. His pictures were already good to begin with, from the camera!. He only improved them!. Look at his prints, they definitely were NOT what we would consider "Photoshopped!." Especially his landscape photos!. They look natural!.

I don't think he would approve at all of what Photoshop has done!. The problem is that most people who "Photoshop" their pictures have absolutely no idea how to use a camera, and they think they can "fix" ANYTHING on a computer, just by "Photoshopping" it!. They horribly over-edit their pictures!. The trend now seems to be turning up the exposure so that everything is blown out completely, and colors are oversaturated and look fake!. Then you have the selective color thing, which people ask about here at least 20 or 30 times every single day!.!.!.where they want a black and white picture with something in color!. Does anyone (who really knows about REAL photography) honestly believe that Ansel Adams would have done that!? The selective color thing looks extremely tacky, and it's just an editing fad!. It's not real photography!. People do that because they like playing with buttons and scroll bars on an image editing program, without any clue of what they really mean!.

People who don't know anything about basic photography and don't know how to even use a camera think the Photoshop can "fix" anything!. They ask here about how to "fix" a blurry picture, because they don't even know how to hold a camera steady!. Or they want to know how to "Photoshop" their blurry, underexposed, pixelated pictures taken with a cell phone camera or cheap point and shoot digital camera!.

And do you wonder why "Photoshopping" has become synomynous with MySpace pictures!? Most people here who ask questions about Photoshop and other editing programs is just because they want "kewl" and tricked-out pictures for their MySpace page!.

No, Ansel Adams did NOT "Photoshop" his pictures!. A talented and experienced photographer using real darkroom techniques carefully and with discipline to IMPROVE his pictures is completely different than someone sitting in front of a computer for hours to make their lame snapshots look "cool!."

I already know I will get voted thumbs-down!. That's fine, I really don't care!. Look at the pictures by Ansel Adams, and compare them to most of the pictures you've seen that were "Photoshopped!." There is no comparison!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I forget the exact quote, but Adams is credited with making a statement that equated the negative to a score and the print to a symphony, or performance!. I interpret this to mean that he did a fair amount of darkroom manipulation, in his case probably a lot of dodging and burning!. I would also take that to mean that any attempts at reproducing his prints using even his own negatives would still not be the same as an actual Adams print!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I learned the Zone System from Ansel Adams at one of the multiday workshops he used to give in Yosemite!. Did he manipulate his prints!? Yes he did!. Very selective burning and dodging were his two biggest tools, but he also manipulated development times, temperatures and was very exact in the contrast grade of paper he would use!.

Ansel Adams considered everything from determining exposure through to the final print as pretty much a single process with steps that built on each proceeding one and each step was a manipulation!.

VanceWww@QuestionHome@Com

If you mean did he manipulate the print, of course he did!. But it didn't hurt that he took great shots to begin with!. And the tricks of the darkroom hardly do anything to the finished product compared to the bag of digital tricks Photoshop allows!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Ansel did do a lot of darkroom manipulation in his prints and I really think if he was alive today that he would embrace photoshop for what it enable you to do,Www@QuestionHome@Com

No, but there are lots of tricks you can do with a manual camera, different lens, exposure time, using dark room techniques etc to achieve some amazing effects!.Www@QuestionHome@Com