touch-up versus heavy editing: a fine line

*please take note that this post is for those who are unsure of photography terms or would like to gain more knowledge about photography. so to professionals who may have stumbled upon this blog or post by accident, no rude comments about how 'noob' this post is. there's no sin in learning. if you are a pro, you should know that by now. but if you want to freshen up on the basics, you are more than welcome :)

SO, how do we recognize if an image has undergo a major 'heavy editing' or just a light 'touch-up'?
it's hard to say sometimes, but there is a fine line in between these two.
you may say 'the proof is in the exifs'. however, that does not mean it can't be manipulated. so it ain't that reliable.

you may have noticed in most photography competition esp in the rules & regulations section, they will state that 'no photo manipulation or trickery allowed, only minor adjustments'. today, i will be explaining just that along with some pictures for visual stimulation so that you won't get bored reading this post.

 visual stimulation,visual stimulation...

okay, enough visual stimulation. haha.back to the topic. so, at what point does a light touch-up turn into heavy editing? 

figure a (i):

so this is the original picture. fresh off the dslr. no touch up whatsoever.

figure a (ii):

  i loaded the image to photoshop. made minor adjustments 

to the curves to give it a slight 's' shape. you can barely

see the S shape, right? 

figure a (iii):

  the image was a bit warm for my eyes. so i decided to cool

it down a little by manipulating the color balance. 

hardly any difference. maybe a little bit. 

figure a (iv):

here comes the tricky part. please take note that 

some competitions don't allow cropping. it doesn't

happen very often and most of the time, cropping is 

allowed. again, read the rules. you'll regret it if your

sure-to-win photos have violated one of the rules

simply because you overlooked it.

figure a (v):

there, i cropped. the image looks a lot cleaner now.

more friendly to the eyes. these are pretty much basic touch ups.

 i usually stop at this step because i'm already satisfied with how my picture looks most of the time.others would probably go further ie clone stamp tool/healing brush tool to remove unwanted objects in the picture like trash or a passer-by. as for me, i do that manually in the camera by recomposing to eliminate unwanted subjects or objects. but there are times this situation cannot be avoided. 

example of a situation:  i'm shooting in a crowded area with limited movements. there is a subject that i want to shoot but it's impossible to get a clear shot. if i recompose and find another angle, it would take time and time matters in photography. especially candid shots. so i just recompose to the best angle i can find with the most minimal obstructions. removing unwanted objects will have to be done by editing.

so, how far can you push till you reach the limit of the 'touch-up' zone?

 here is an example. removing background colors

to bring attention to the subject. 

photo manipulation, that is. this is actually a violation

since you have tinkered with the colors. once again,

read the rules just to be sure. some allow, some don't. 

For Canon users: besides my EOS 550D, i do have Powershot S5IS. it has a scene mode. in it are varieties of effects like aquarium, fireworks and so on. there is also a scene called 'color accent'. now, how this scene works is that you choose a color and when you shoot, the camera only detects the color that you want. hence, the rest will be in black & white(b&w). to be more specific, if you want to take a picture of your little sister and she is wearing a green shirt. you only want the green color and the rest in b&w. that's where color accent comes in. first, you have to point your compact camera to your sister's shirt so that it can memorize the color. so if you want to change to another subject and color, you have to point at the source of the color first.  here's an example:

notice the green colored moss below? took this using the color accent effect. 

color accent is allowed since you did it using a built-in effect. no violations there.

an obvious example of an image manipulation, image trickery or whatever you want to call it:

the judges will surely kick your ass if you submit pictures like this ^^

moral of the story, read the damn rules :D

just a quick update, i will be doing tutorials about the basic stuffs.i don't want to do anything advanced. 

my goal is to reach out to all those dudes that want to learn more about photography but too shy to ask anything because all the pros will call them 'noob' or look down on them. not me, my friends. i say, the more the merrier ;D

till next time