The other day I was playing around with my doll avatar and was in a so called arty mood. I went to Dryland, always a great location for pics with a wide view and I love the desert look and feel overthere, and found a ‘skeleton’ of an Android lying there.
So I played a bit and took some pics of Dolly, waiting next to the skeleton and then played some more in photoshop with them and uploaded two endresults on flickr. No story, no big deal, just me having fun with my Doll.
To my surprise – and delight! – I saw that ‘The Long Wait- II’ was chosen as Pic of the Day by Linden Lab. W00t and yay, and yeah..I have had many Pics of the Day, but everytime it happens I feel proud and it makes my day!
Now it happens that there was this brief ‘discussion’ on Plurk today about what people thought of the Pics of the Day and specifically on processed pictures, as in edited with photoshop/Gimp or whatnot or would it rather be more fair if a ‘raw’ unprocessed pic was chosen to feature SL.
My opinion is simple: I do not mind. I love some raw images but I also enjoy the creativity in processed pics. After all, in the end, the pics are taken in SL and even processed ones, like mine from today, do represent SL. I use SL for my relaxation, my enjoyment and while taking pics I can already look forward to some time spending in photoshop ‘creating’ something that comes from me.
In other words, this particular picture of the Day is indeed a Photoshopped one, that may be obvious, as it is almost impossible to take a black and white image with a viewer and in this case I also used a filter to create a bit of a ‘grain’ look (I am unsure how it is called, as my PS speaks Dutch…).
The orginal picture looks like this, as you see…nice, but not so special – but I took this with a black- and white endresult in mind already, so the actual colours did not really matter (you can click the pics for a larger version):
The endresult, as on Flickr, after some cropping, with the black- and white filter, the grain and some brightness/sharpness edited:
I am not a Photoshop wizard, my skills are limited, I do not even have a fancy PS version but use Photoshop Elements 7, and its basically all about filters and layers in my case. It is still, for me, MY Second Life, a big part of the fun for me is playing with my own pictures.
That said, blog pics I post about locations and which feature a sim or art-installation are not processed, as I do find it important in those cases that they represent the virtual reality – being aware I have a good machine and awesome graphics which helps too!
Cait's World 
Nicely put, Caity :)
Haha, thanks Kylie..I just needed to get this off my chest….:p
Completely agree with you! The most important thing is to have fun in what you’re doing!
Thank you Caitlin… This debate raw VS edited hurted me a lot recently.. It hurts me bec i had also pics of the day and now, i feel like they were not legitimate since they were photoshoped. I understand ppl feel frutrated bec they dont have photoshop skills, but i may also say i feel frustrated bec i dont have a great graph card neither cant afford one for now (what would need i buy a new comp bec i have a laptop). Nevertheless, i never complained and yelled aggainst the fact we are not all equals regarding the machines we have for doing snapshots. Instead, i learnt by myself Pshop, with a lot of times (years) and patience. At first, to compensate what my graph card couldnt make… Now, its even over that… Now, i create over the snapshots… I never claimed they are snapshots.. but they are pics, paints, textures, call them whatever you want, buy they are MY creations.like when you say you create something “from you”… Thats the thing…The thing that most of the ppl who never tried to do can’t understand. I dont think i ever seen such segregation coming from photoshopers or gimper regarding to raw bec of course, we do them also and we know how much work they can need…Like you i like both, and im everyday amazed by raw i see in the feeds or in Flikr.
But when i see ppl write that its easy to make a pic looking good with photoshop, i strongly disagree and it hurts me a lot, because that’s just denying all the hours of work i give to each of my edited pics.
I really dont see where is the sin in wanting to make smth looking more beautiful, or wanting to add a bit of our soul in the pic and use the snapshot as a basis for create over it.
That’s just something that is beyond my understanding.
So i wanted to thank you, bec you just made me feel better.
Hi Trinity,
Well, I must say I have missed a ‘debate’ but only saw a brief discussion/thread on Plurk and this was not even a real debate but rather people expressing their take on it. I am aware though, that every now and then this ‘thing’…..raw vs processed comes up. Oh well, I guess that will never go away. I only tried to explain in this post why I sometimes edit a picture (just because I LOVE fiddling with them!!!) and why I sometimes prefer unprocessed (the cases where I blog about a location). I do it both: raw and processed and I see no reason why a processed one is ‘not’ SL – as usual I already have the processing in my mind when taking it, as this is what I love doing. Others like building, making mesh, making textures, shop..you name it. Great isn’t it? We can all do what we like and all choose how we spend our time in SL :). There will always be people with poor graphics, poor internet or the opposite: great machines and super internet, you just cannot compare and you cannot please the whole world. So be it.
Keep making pics and keep doing with thos pics what YOU want! It is, after all, also : YOUR Second Life :).
Great photo Caity and I totally agree about post-processing :) ♥ miss your photos in “the feeds” wut happened?
Just personally I’ve been thinking a lot on the subject of visual integrity (how close something is to what it really is). I’d certainly disagree here that ‘anyone’ can make anything look good in photoshop. There isn’t some ” ugliness begone” filter that you can press to make a capture you took suddenly look amazing.
Photoshop is just a tool like a paintbrush is a tool. Just because you can use a paintbrush doesn’t make you Rembrandt. Some people can make ‘Mona Lisas’ and other people will only ever paint walls. Haters are just gonna hate.