PDN Article - Digital Confusion (and Digital Skin Tone)

[Agent M10]

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I picked up this month's PDN and it has an article on digital processing. Here are a couple of quotes:

 

"Another cost that gets added on to digital assignments is for retouching and postproduction. For some photo editors, the reliance on retouching is a weakness of digital imaging. "With digital, skin tones and colors in the initial capture are not very natural, then there's all this expensive retouching work done to make it look like film - so why don't we just use film?" says Real Simple's Tierney."

 

"In fact, retouching skin tones - which often get flattened by digital capture - has become a mini-industry in itself, with many books and seminars on the topic."

[aero]

I'm starting to wonder if anyone really cares anymore about the quality difference. Aside from some select Fine Art galleries that look at my work, the digital versus film debate falls on deaf ears in my 'hood. I love the way my prints look in analog film... but most can't tell the difference and "good enough" seems to be the mantra. Sorry for the bummer message - I'm a little depressed after spending 30 some hours in the dark room to hear a "high end" gallerist say "Why not print them with a Lightjet" this afternoon. Who are these people in the Skin Tones industry and who are they serving? I'd love to meet someone who cares and gets it.

 

-Bedraggled Film Dude

[Mark Antony]

I think that at the moment its the fashion to have flawless unreal skin tones, kind of the 'Stepford Wives look' not so much as this is the way all digital based files look, just the current fashion.

By contrast film is more likely to tell it how it is, and smoother highlight transitions help.

Here is a thread on another forum, where a poster asks Do these look like film?

Looking at his images it is surprising that anyone could possibly think the plastic false images could ever look anything like film, and I think that's the rub – people just don't have the experience to tell what film looks like and most of the digital 'Roolz' crowd are under the must have smooth tone, no grain, and be sharp as a razor spell.