Dan Margulis Applied Color Theory

 Trends in 2008 ACT Classes

Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: Dan Margulis
Sun Nov 16, 2008 7:51 pm (PST)

I'm back at home briefly prior to the third and last advanced course of the year. The results of the first two have been interesting; when the third is completed I'll discuss what the three classes suggested about current events and color. Meanwhile, the final basic ACT of the year was last week. For the last two years, I've polled every class at the outset on various topics and kept records of the results.

A couple of items had nearly identical results. In both 2007 and 2008, the ratio of persons claiming to work at least four hours in Photoshop on a typical workday versus those who do not was just about 50-50. Also, the choice of customary RGB workspace was nearly the same both years: about 65 percent Adobe RGB, 20 percent sRGB, 10 percent don't know, the remaining five percent or so being ColorMatch RGB and various ultra-wide alternatives. These results track closely my similar polls at Photoshop World. Five years ago, Adobe RGB and sRGB had nearly equal shares.

Over the last few years the biggest growth in attendance has come from the "super-amateurs" or whatever you like to call them. These are people, typically successful professionals in other fields, who are extremely serious about their photography/fine art printing. Most have made some money from their hobby, but they do not depend on it for a living. The three classes I've just returned from, for example, included a dentist, a cardiac surgeon, a lawyer (who was color-blind, yet) and an IT professional. More and more, it seems that people are in the field for love, not money.

There was a disturbing trend last year that, to my surprise, did not continue in 2008. I am not so rude as to ask the question outright, but I do estimate whether each student is paying out of his own pocket or whether a company is paying. In 2007, for the first time, my figures said that more than half paid themselves. I was particularly disgusted to see a big disparity between the U.S. and Canada: it seemed that Canadian companies are more disposed to spend on training their staff than U.S. firms are.

I expected this to continue, in light of the economy. I thought that with times being hard, fewer companies would spend on training, and more individuals would see the need to protect themselves by improving their skills, at their own expense if need be. Plus, the statistics would be further inflated by the super-amateurs, who pay for themselves.

It was a pleasant surprise to find out otherwise. My estimate last year was that 53 percent of attendees paid their own way; this year it was a significantly lower 43 percent. Good for the companies who realize the best investment they can make is in their people!

A couple of other interesting changes: I ask, who is the final judge of whether your color work is successful? Is it you, or is it somebody else, such as a boss or client? Historically, class attendees, being heavily involved in marketing their work to the public, would overwhelmingly have answered "somebody else". Last year, it was down to 79 percent saying the final vote belongs to somebody else. This year, a big drop to 64 percent. Partly that's due to the super-amateurs, but maybe it also indicates a trend in favor of more artistic uses for color correction, and not so much commercial activity.

Another question: we all have to work on substandard originals from time to time: photos shot by amateurs, or by professionals under adverse conditions, or just poor shots that nevertheless have to be used. Some of us, however, work on such images much more than others. Advertising retouchers rarely see them; those preparing newsletters for corporate clients see them all the time. Would you say that you have to color-correct such images often, or seldom?

Ten years ago the "seldom" vote would have been close to unanimous. Back when color correction was expensive and digital cameras poor if available at all, few would invest in having a professional attempt to correct garbage. Now, with everyone his own photographer, it's a different story. Last year, for the first time, "often" won, with a bigger margin than Barack Obama: 55-45. This year, an interesting, sharp move in the opposite direction: 59-41 in favor of "seldom." All the factors discussed above contribute to why such a change should have occurred, but the move is too big to be explained away without more. I am guessing that as digital photography has become mature and quality cameras cheaper, nonprofessionals are supplying us with better originals. Which, I hope we would agree, is a good thing.

That's it from the front line. More in about ten days when I summarize how the advanced classes are seeing the current situation.

Dan Margulis
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Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: "John Ruttenberg"
Mon Nov 17, 2008 7:08 am (PST)

Dan Margulis:

Another question: we all have to work on substandard originals from time to
time: photos shot by amateurs, or by professionals under adverse conditions,
or just poor shots that nevertheless have to be used. Some of us, however,
work on such images much more than others. Advertising retouchers rarely see
them; those preparing newsletters for corporate clients see them all the
time. Would you say that you have to color-correct such images often, or
seldom?

I think the definition of "substandard" probably plays a role here. The photograher/retoucher is in a very different situation than the person who only retouches the work of others. I'm thinking of my own work. As many of you may remember, I am a ballet photograper at Boston Ballet, and have the privilege to photograph the company's dress rehearsals. The professional theater lighting is very beautiful, but ofen very challenging. About a year ago I posted a case study featuring this shot:

http: //colortheory.smugmug.com/photos/153552178_zNF9t-L.jpg

from the second act of Giselle. Is this a "substandard" original? Well, if it just lands on your lap, I guess it is. Dan used it to torture the members of his class last year which is a good indication. On the other hand, I knew when I took it that it would need substantial post work. And I was pretty sure that among the photograpers present I was the only one with the equipment to get any usable image under the circumstances (Canon 5D, 85mm f/1.2 @ ISO 1600). And likely the only one with the patience and knowledge to make something (other than a B&W) from what I got.

Moral: The pure retoucher's substandard may be just a reasonable midpoint in the photographer/retoucher's workflow.

I wonder whether I am a special case here, pushing the limits in a way others don't ofen need to do. Available light makes my job harder and more rewarding when it works out. Studio photographer never has these sort of issues. What about photojournalism? I'm a little confused over the rules. How much retouching is allowed by newspapers and the like?

-- John Ruttenberg
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Re: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: "Jim Bean"
Mon Nov 17, 2008 8:21 am (PST)

dan wrote:
It was a pleasant surprise to find out otherwise. My estimate last year was that 53 percent
of attendees paid their own way; this year it was a significantly lower 43 percent. Good for
the companies who realize the best investment they can make is in their people!

my take on these numbers is that more people/companies are more aware of your classes and the associated benefits... in my neck of the woods several companies either send their graphic teams to classes in dallas/houston/similar that are actively marketing their classes.. the classes many times are subsets of service providers/suppliers such as lexjet.. the classes on a 'professional level' are bread & butter basic.. attempting to get your monitor to match your (closed loop) output... lots of 'super amatuears' in my area.. several times a year I will receive calls about 'which camera-which printer' to buy for the wifes' birthday... the client calls a camera shop, drops $10k+ on hardware and magical software and the box arrives in two days... then the wife (after burning through several cartridges and filling the dumpster..) goes to an out of state 'retreat' class on 'how to use lightroom' taught by the author of several PS books, again sponsored by printer companies..

I think your students are either understanding that the nuts/bolts are not available at these other programs and either pay their own way or take the 'benefits' approach to their supervisors and say... "we can do better if you send me to dm's boot camp."

note: even after the many years have passed... how many imaging professionals do you encounter today that even know what 'channel blending' is?

best, jim bean
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Re: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: "Ric Cohn"
Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:36 pm (PST)

On Nov 16, 2008, at 8:46 PM, Dan Margulis wrote:

More and more, it seems that people are in the field for love, not money.

I'd say it's more likely that those in the field are less and less likely to be making enough money. I suspect there are just as many people as before doing it for money who also love the field, they're just not making as much doing it. Meanwhile, the cost of entry for serious amateurs (a decent digital camera, a powerful enough computer, lots of accessible how-to info) has dropped dramatically in recent years.

I believe Dan did predict this general trend years ago.

Ric Cohn
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Re: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: Stephen Marsh
Mon Nov 17, 2008 9:40 pm (PST)

John Ruttenberg wrote:

I think the definition of "substandard" probably plays a role here.

Agreed, I think that we all face our own "unique" challenges, most of mine of late (apart from colour matching) are resizing 250pixel or 500 pixel wide images for output at at 400-600% enlargement size (2000> pixels at final size).

Stephen Marsh
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Upward resizing [Was: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes]
Posted by: "John Ruttenberg"
Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:39 am (PST)

Stephen Marsh:
... most of mine of late (apart from colour matching) are resizing 250pixel
or 500 pixel wide images for output at at 400-600% enlargement size (2000>
pixels at final size).

That seems like an interesting problem, one that a lot of people have. I have to crop the ballet shots all the time, sometimes a lot more than I might have hoped.

So I'd like to read more about how you address this. Perhaps we can get a good thread going. Maybe even a case study.

-- John Ruttenberg
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Re: Upward resizing [Was: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes]
Posted by: Michael Jahn
Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:34 am (PST)

Hi John,

Some of my clients work on development of image conversion - one is developing a paper to PDF solution for converting scanned color text book page (math books and books with maps and images) and then descreening and enhancing - this is not strick upsampling - but this might be interesting to review;

http://www.ioflex.com/imagecompare/Compare.asp?Image= 00007.tif&Loc=2x3
(example of upscale threshholding of text)

http://www.ioflex.com/imagecompare/Compare.asp?Image= 00007.tif&Loc=2x1
(example of desceen without edge blur)

There are many algorithms that have been developed for use on images captured via military satellites or in the face recognition field that can be used for "enhancing" - some results are quite astounding - of then this is done buy finding edges and creating masks where different contrast adjustments are applies - similar in the way un-sharp masking works.

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~danix/epd/

and

http://www.celartem.com/en/products/pixellive.asp

Hope this is the sort of thing you were speaking of and helpful.

Michael Jahn
Jahn & Associates
PDF Color Conversion Specialist
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Re: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: Dan Margulis
Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:40 am (PST)

John Ruttenberg writes,

I think the definition of "substandard" probably plays a role here. The
photograher/retoucher is in a very different situation than the person who
only retouches the work of others. I'm thinking of my own work. As many of
you may remember, I am a ballet photograper at Boston Ballet, and have the
privilege to photograph the company's dress rehearsals. The professional
theater lighting is very beautiful, but ofen very challenging. About a year
ago I posted a case study featuring this shot:

http: //colortheory.smugmug.com/photos/153552178_zNF9t-L.jpg

from the second act of Giselle. Is this a "substandard" original?

I thought I gave a definition that was pretty clear "photos shot...by professionals under adverse conditions." I am not a professional photographer myself and so may be presumptuous in my assumptions, but I was bold enough to believe that when a ballerina is performing athletic maneuvers on a nearly completely dark stage where the major illumination is a blue spotlight, compromised by softer light of different color from the bottom, this constitutes an "adverse condition", and thus is likely to result in what I called a "substandard" original. It was not intended to be an invidious term, but rather to indicate a surmise that photographs shot in such circumstances are likely to be harder to fix than, say, a shot of the same ballerina in a photographic studio.

Well, if
it just lands on your lap, I guess it is. Dan used it to torture the members
of his class last year which is a good indication.

I still do. I put it in the advanced class last year, along with eight other new images. My selections weren't well received: only three of the nine made the cut for the 2008 advanced classes, but Giselle was one of them. She got favorable commentary from the 2007 evaluations and also on the first two sets from 2008, so she's almost certainly going to be in the 2009 classes as well.

The image is interesting not just because it is technically challenging but because it is a question of artistic interpretation. The principles of chromatic adaptation and simultaneous contrast are not repealed in a darkened theater. We humans strive mightily to adapt to any lighting condition. While there's no way we would see normal fleshtones under such extreme conditions, we *would* see them as far more normal, and more varied, than any camera would. The question is how far to go in catering to this known effect, and there's no one right answer.

I wonder whether I am a special case here, pushing the limits in a way others
don't ofen need to do. Available light makes my job harder and more rewarding
when it works out. Studio photographer never has these sort of issues.

I wouldn't say "never" but otherwise agree. Many of my students rarely face such retouching issues, too. I ask the questions of the classes so I can know whether such images are relevant enough to use as exercises. Nowadays, they appear to be, whereas maybe ten years ago, they wouldn't.

What about photojournalism? I'm a little confused over the rules. How much
retouching is allowed by newspapers and the like?

That question is a lot more complicated than it appears. It is very difficult to come up with standards. Consider the following reasonably well-known cases:

1) Wire service picture of a city under bomb attack in the mideast. Additional plumes of smoke added as embellishment, suggesting more violence than actually there.

2) Newspaper photo of two politicians chatting in front of a table. Can of Coke on the table is retouched out.

3) Newsmagazine cover of Ronald Reagan during the late years of his administration, highlighting a story suggesting that he was out of touch. Allegation: that the retoucher deliberately enhanced contrast and sharpening in Reagan's face in an effort to make him look older by emphasizing his wrinkles.

4) Newsmagazine cover of the mug shot of O.J. Simpson upon his arrest for murder. Allegation: that the retoucher, motivated by racism, intentionally made Simpson look "blacker" and thus more threatening-looking to a white audience.

Nobody in their right mind endorses #1, and somebody justifiably got fired for it. Of the other three, the last two are far more troubling from an editorial standpoint. #2 is the deletion of an irrelevant object of no editorial significance. The problem is that evil intent in color correction is impossible to prove unless somebody can come up with a smoking gun in the form of a specific written instruction, whereas the deletion of an object is easy to prove. So, the newspaper in #2 sanctimoniously began disciplinary proceedings against the individual responsible for removing the can, on the ground that some sacred line of journalistic integrity had been crossed.

Police mug shots qualify IMHO as "substandard originals", particularly when they have to be blown up as large as Stephen Marsh apparently has to do regularly. God knows what the color of Simpson's skin was in the actual mug shot; it wouldn't be surprising if it were green or blue. Did the retoucher try to match an overly dark photo, was it just an accident caused by his lack of familiarity with this type of retouching work, was it a neutral (if incorrect) surmise as to what Simpson actually looked like, given an obviously poor photograph, or was it, in fact, a racist act? There was too much rhetoric being bandied about for anybody to actually find out, IMHO.

I don't know what actually happened in that instance, but in the Reagan one, I was there, and I heard the art director reject the first proof of the Reagan shot with the comment "Can't you make him look older?"

We could, and did. What kind of rule can prevent it?

Dan Margulis
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Re: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: "Bevi Chagnon"
Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:22 pm (PST)

Dan M wrote:

That question is a lot more complicated than it appears. It
is very difficult to come up with
standards. Consider the following reasonably well-known cases:

I frequently teach a class on this topic, "When does Photoshoping go too far." Here are links to some of the cases Dan mentioned.

http: //www.tc.umn.edu/~hick0088/classes/csci_2101/false.html
scroll to the bottom to compare OJ Simpson photos.

Dartmouth has an extensive list of photos, including several Dan referred to:

http: //www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

And Stalin was famous for his use of falsified photos:
http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/

In my classes (adult & college level), student response has been pretty consistent over the years:

-- Photoshopping art & personal photos, OK.

-- Photoshopping advertising photos, OK within reason.

-- Photoshopping editorial, informative, political, government, or news photos, not OK (other than color-correcting)

-- Photoshoping tabloid photos, definitely encouraged.makes long checkout lines at the supermarket more enjoyable!

--Bevi Chagnon

........................................................................

Bevi Chagnon | Adobe ACE: InDesign CS2 | www.PubCom.com
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Re: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: Dan Margulis
Tue Nov 18, 2008 8:04 pm (PST)

Jim Bean writes,

in my neck of the woods several companies either send their graphic teams to classes in dallas/houston/similar that are actively marketing their classes.. the classes many times are subsets of service providers/suppliers such as lexjet.. the classes on a 'professional level' are bread & butter basic.. attempting to get your monitor to match your (closed
loop) output...

That's the problem with a lot of training these days, more so than in the past. The service provider doesn't want to tick off a client, any client. So if they run this session, and three or four people gripe that it was too hard and they found the instructor's explanation of what a layer is too fast, this is a failure. The session therefore gets toned down to the least common denominator.

lots of 'super amatuears' in my area.. several times a year I will receive calls about
which camera-which printer' to buy for the wifes' birthday... the client calls a camera
shop, drops $10k+ on hardware and magical software and the box arrives in two days...
then the wife (after burning through several cartridges and filling the dumpster..) goes
to an out of state 'retreat' class on 'how to use lightroom' taught by the author of several
PS books, again sponsored by printer companies..

And again, probably not aimed at someone who is there to learn how to think and not to follow recipes.

I think your students are either understanding that the nuts/bolts are not available at
these other programs and either pay their own way or take the 'benefits' approach to
their supervisors and say... "we can do better if you send me to dm's boot camp."

That's probably slightly more true than in past years, but maybe not that much. Unlike all these other programs, we have a lot of warnings in place about long hours, frustrating experience, unpleasant instructor who allows students to fall on their faces rather than giving them the solution up front, etc. Consequently, those attending have already selected themselves as being ready for the experience, and we don't have a lot of interruptions with beginner questions or explanations, even though the classes often contain ambitious beginners.

One way or another the quality of the entering students has definitely improved in the past few year. The curriculum introduced in 1/08 is harder than the previous one because it seemed that the attendees could take it.

What I'm hearing from recent attendees is that there really isn't any substitute for watching other people do a better job than we do and using that to ramp up our own skills. You may recall a monochromatic image that rejoiced in the name of "Washout Skintone" from the advanced course. That has gotten more positive votes than any other, which is why it's one of only three exercises that have been in the course since 1999. That means that right around 200 people have had at it, most without a whole lot of success.

Last week in Washington, the exercises come in, and dog my cats if one joker hasn't got a much better version than any of the preceding 200, including the three or four times I tried it myself. I know basically how he did it but at the moment am failing to comprehend why it should have worked as well as it did.

On Saturday, a different group will be working that image, and I will be too, and I expect to know a good deal more about what makes it tick than I have in the last ten years. Which probably puts me in the same position as most students often find themselves during the first class.

note: even after the many years have passed... how many imaging professionals do you
encounter today that even know what 'channel blending' is?

That, I know the answer to, because the class evaluation forms ask about it. Five years ago, we had a lot of people coming in who'd heard tell that this LAB stuff was very powerful and they wanted to know more about it, and the subsequent evaluations found it very significant. Now, we're seeing the same thing with channel blending. So simple and so powerful, we wonder how we could have missed it for so long!

Dan Margulis
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Re: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: Stephen Marsh
Tue Nov 18, 2008 8:04 pm (PST)

Bevi Chagnon wrote: I frequently teach a class on this topic, "When
does Photoshoping go too far." Here are links to some of the cases Dan
mentioned.

Thanks Bevi, while on the topic - one that I just stumbled over in today's paper is linked here from the UK (note: if bikini clad female models offend, don't follow the link):

http: //www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24668374-5001026,00.html
http: //www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1086567/Victorias-Secret-model-Karolina-Kurkova-riddle-missing-belly-button.html

I thought a careless person cloned OUT her navel, but they usually have to clone one IN!

Stephen Marsh
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Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: "Eric Basir/Photo Grafix"
Tue Nov 18, 2008 8:04 pm (PST)

John, you wrote:

Moral: The pure retoucher's substandard may be just a reasonable midpoint in
the photographer/retoucher's workflow.

I wonder whether I am a special case here, pushing the limits in a way
others don't ofen need to do. Available light makes my job harder and more
rewarding when it works out. Studio photographer never has these sort of
issues.

What about photojournalism? I'm a little confused over the rules. How much
retouching is allowed by newspapers and the like?

I agree with you 100%. There are exceptions to your "moral" of the story. Albeit, they are rare. I'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble. The best photos I've seen are produced by a photographer who works with a retoucher. Photographers can only spend so much time with post-production and prepress before they cut into their creative time. Conversely, I've been in "assembly line" retouching operations where we are totally disconnected from the photographer. That too, can lead to problems.

I fall in the retoucher [only] category. I speak wholly from experience working with a slew of different clients since 1999 (wow, it seemed like yesterday...). Retouchers are fastidious when it comes to quality because we are responsible for whatever goes to the separators, press or other final--or near final--destination. While photographers dream about glorious images and compelling composites, retouchers dream about stuff you read in Dan's books: Channel blending, densitometer readings, TIL, layer blending, and rebuilding.

Whenever possible, photographers‹no matter how talented they are‹should have a retoucher(s) who they know and trust working with them. I'm not talking about an intern with a few months experience in college either (smile). Of course there are many on this list.

I wrote this short piece on our blog called Dao Te Retouching:

?As the bee is to the flower, so a photo retoucher is to the photographer
and designer. If the flower is to bear enough seed or fruit for next season
and the bee needs plenty of pollen for its young, they must work together.?

Sometimes it's not so much that a retoucher will "fix" things. He or she may
be able to offer some tips or advice to overcome the problems which lead to
the symptom.

Regarding photojournalism, it's always bad business to retouch your pictures
(I worked for quite a few papers in the 1990s). Unless you are scanning film
and need to remove fuzz, dust or digital anomalies, I would recommend doing
nothing more than a two-step contrast and color cast fix. Maybe a little
darkening around the corners to draw the viewer's eyes in. But be careful.

Some links to help get specifics:

http://www.nppa.org/
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/

--
Eric C. M. Basir
Photo Grafix
http://www.photografix.pro
1-847-673-7043
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Re: Trends in 2008 ACT Classes
Posted by: Dan Margulis
Thu Nov 20, 2008 11:55 am (PST)

Ric Cohn writes,

I'd say it's more likely that those in the field are less and less
likely to be making enough money. I suspect there are just as many
people as before doing it for money who also love the field, they're
just not making as much doing it. Meanwhile, the cost of entry for
serious amateurs (a decent digital camera, a powerful enough
computer, lots of accessible how-to info) has dropped dramatically in
recent years.

This is an old, old story that has been discussed several times on the list. As time has gone on, the value of taking a photograph (and by this, I mean the act of clicking the shutter, not something else) has decreased drastically. Sensible photographers have responded by diversifying. Those who are prospering are usually doing so by riding revenue from additional services not historically provided by photographers, such as color correction, or managing the commercial printing of their clients' work. The trend has been discussed at some length in a couple of threads, such as
http: //www.ledet.com/margulis/ACT_postings/DailyLife/ACT-Dans-photographer.htm
and
http: //www.ledet.com/margulis/2007HTM/ACT07-Dans_photographer.htm

I believe Dan did predict this general trend years ago.

Yes, from about 1996 on, at a time when photographers were in denial. I just got a chance to read Alessandro Bernardi's Italian translation of "An Infinite Number of Monkeys", the 2001 update (available in English at http: //www.ledet.com/margulis/Makeready/MA46-Infinite_Number.pdf )of the earlier columns. Just as an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce the poetry of Robert Burns, give the INOM an infinite number of quality digital cameras and one of them will produce professional-looking results. This, I pointed out, is very bad for the true professionals, because clients are often looking for *one* good picture, and do not care whether the person who offers it to them got it the first time he shot it or had an infinite number of failures first.

This wasn't a hard prediction to make IMHO not just because the equipment was becoming more readily available, but because the field is such an enjoyable one. Few jobs in this world are so attractive that people would work them for free or for a trivial amount of money. Our field, as we have seen, is the exception. Couple the drastic improvement of the equipment with a large number of people who are so enamored of photography that they care very little about how much money they make off it, and it's bad news for those who *do* care how much they make.

While it is certainly heartening to work in such a compellingly interesting field, the closing comments of that 2001 column, with an assist from Burns, still hold:

Those who can produce images effectively for a variety of
purposes from a variety of sources will be able to prosper, if
not as photographers, then at least as service providers with
a strong specialty in photography.

The attack of the infinite number of monkeys is indeed
fearsome. The twenty-first century photographer has the
choice of preparing for battle, or of huddling in the cold,
waiting for events to overtake him:

But, och! I backward cast my e'e
On prospects drear!
And forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess and fear.

Dan Margulis
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About a month after the above, I posted a similar message discussing events in my advanced classes.-DM


From the 2008 advanced courses
Posted by: Dan Margulis
Thu Dec 4, 2008 6:11 am (PST)

In October and November I teach advanced courses, open only to those who have already suffered through the three-day ACT course. These are the most valuable classes of the year for me because of the skill level of the students. The first class exposes a lot of of errors in technique. In these advanced classes it's unusual to find students making outright errors, so it's more of a comparison of techniques without introduction of extraneous silliness. There's no better way to get a definitive answer about how to get the best results from a certain image than to assign it to 23 experts to try to correct it with a method of their choosing and compare the results. That's how I've validated a lot of my own techniques over the years--I use them in these classes before the public knows about them, and see whether I'm doing better than all these knowledgeable folk who don't have access to them.

Once the classes they're complete (and the last one was last week) for the past few years I've discussed what was learned both from the standpoint of color correction but in terms of trends in our field. People who are so committed to quality that they suffer through a three-day session with me (and sometimes more; seven of the 23 attendees this year had taken the advanced course in prior years) and still want more are probably worth listening to. Also, a high percentage of the people who took the advanced courses are members of this list and may be interested in hearing an overall wrapup, so I'll go on at a little more length than in past years.

CLASS MAKEUP.
Obviously the main topic of non-color correction discussion was about the economy. Before talking about the disastrous last couple of months, the very makeup of the classes said a lot about trends in the last couple of years. For the first time in memory two groups were totally missing: newspaper production people, and professional photographers-- both, presumably, victims of the economy. Their places have been taken by the continually growing number of "super-amateurs", people who have all the attributes of professional photographers, including occasionally selling their work, but who are professionally successful in some other field (often medicine or law) and so are not constrained to support themselves with their hobby.

We had six such people in the classes this year. Two others had different legitimate reasons for needing to know how to color-correct but were also ultra-serious photographers, so more than a third of the attendees fell into the category of super-amateur. Understanding that some folk are difficult to classify, I arranged them as follows:

*7 people work in what might somewhat inaccurately be termed an in-house setting. They work with specific types of image for a specific purpose.

*6 super-amateurs, as described above, who AFAIK rarely work on anything but their own photos.

*5 persons who do retouching for a service provider and thus accept jobs from the general public. None were from commercial printers, however.

*4 freelance retouchers.

*One person who falls into a unique category: a bestselling author of cooking books who, not surprisingly, wants the food pictured therein to look appetizing and doesn't trust anybody else to make it happen.

THE ECONOMY.
Everybody is affected, but some people have not yet been personally hit by it. The freelance retouchers say their clients have advised them that things are drying up, but their own projects still are proceeding as scheduled. The service providers similarly: no huge downturn just yet, but the signs are not promising.

And that (along with the absence of professional photographers and newspapers) was the basic feeling. An eerie absence of any positive feeling and ample reason for foreboding. Even the people who are being helped, if you can call it that, by the situation, tell the same story. One super-amateur is a professor at a large university. Applications from people older than typical students, he reports, are way up as people who cannot find work decide to make use of their free time. Another is a physician who performs life-saving surgery. When a life is at stake, the hospital cannot ethically withhold its services whether the patient is able to pay or not. This student works in an area hard-hit by the economy, and he reports that a large percentage of what he does is now not paid for by anybody, meaning that it's paid for by the hospital, and eventually by us.

And a field that we wish would not get any bigger: some students worked in a police forensic lab. All those of us who complain that we have to work poor-quality originals should be condemned to process images shot at a crime scene in the middle of the night by a police officer who wouldn't know an F-stop from a lens cap. Unfortunately, they are expecting a rise in the number of images they need to so process, due to the economy. On a more interesting note, we got to work on some evidence photos, trying to enhance fingerprint detail and trying to resolve marks of blood found on a distractingly colored background. In doing this, LAB techniques were quite successful. Being significantly more magenta than green, blood can be isolated in the magenta half of the A channel, which can then produce a mask that will knock almost everything else out.

And an even more disturbing note: some people who think they are exempt from these economic times find out the hard way that they are not. One such student worked for a graphics division of a well-known large company. On the first day of class, she advised us that there had as yet been no impact. A few hours later the phone call came, announcing that the company had laid off a thousand people.

As for me, I continue my warning that this is the worst economic climate by far in the last 75 years, and that it's only going to get worse in the immediate future until a panicked populace starts to spend money. In the last few days I've had to visit my car repair shop and my dentist, two operations that you wouldn't think would be affected, but they are. Both report that their clients/patients are radically reducing the number of non- emergency visits. They're waiting until the car fails totally, or the tooth starts to hurt. My cousin has to relocate, and he found a newly-built luxury residence in the city he's going to, but could not afford the million dollars the builder was asking. As a lark, he offered around 40 percent less, cash on the barrelhead--and the builder, presumably unable to pay his own suppliers, took it.

With as much travel as I do, I can draw some conclusions about how certain industries are being affected. In all three of the cities I just visited, the restaurants were empty everywhere. Worse, we're seeing desperation pricing of some services. Since my trips are scheduled so far in advance, I usually book hotels more than a month out. Then, before leaving, I check rates again to see if better bargains are available.

I had made the mistake of scheduling a Washington class over Veteran's Day, when hotels are usually full. So, I wound up paying more than I would have liked, and in fact would have paid even more if I had booked at the last minute. But in Chicago and Toronto, food grief. I found hotel rooms in both at very desirable establishments for $115, which is about half of what these two usually charge, and far less than I've ever paid at either one before.

Tonight I have to pick up a car at the San Francisco airport for a week. My reservation was going to cost me about $225, which is pretty normal. A few days ago my rental car company sent me an e-mail stating that due to my status as a preferred customer and all-around nice guy, they were pleased to offer me $40 off the next rental I made, provided that it occurred in December, in addition to my customary upgrade. Of course, that caused me to cancel the existing reservation and rebook it using my $40 discount. But when I did so, I found that the base rate itself had been reduced to $100. So, I am about to rent a full-size car, in California, at $60 for a week.

THE STATE OF THE FIELD.
Each year I ask a series of questions as to whether things have gotten better or worse in certain areas, with a view to seeing whether there was any consensus. Here's what the advanced class attendees said this year.

*It happened that only three attendees deal with multiple commercial printers. Therefore, one can't draw too much from the responses to my question as to whether printers are today more quality conscious and/or more knowledgeable than they were too years ago, especially since one person answered yes, another said they are worse, and the third said they are about the same.

*A lot of people receive files from photographers, however, and here there *was* a consensus that the quality is considerably higher than it was two years ago. The speculation was that this is largely the impact of better equipment being available to more people.

*A surprise: two retouchers said that a majority of their originals came in in raw format. I had been under the impression that few photographers would agree to this, on the grounds that it makes their work too much of a commodity and takes them out of the creative process. I surmise that the agencies are telling them raw or nothing.

*Those who have purchased Photoshop CS4 have reacted negatively. Everyone notes the speed differential and the new stability of Bridge. This is not seen as compensation for having to relearn adjustment layers, particularly given that the most important adjustment for this group, curves, is considerably less efficient than in previous versions.

*As to clients, the group confirmed most of what has been said by advanced classes in the last three years: expectations for turnaround times continue to decrease. This time, unlike past groups, we did not hear about pressure to reduce prices. OTOH, this group repeated the contention of last year's that clients often have no idea how difficult certain Photoshop maneuvering is and believe that almost anything can be "Photoshopped out" at no charge.

COLOR CORRECTION.
The advanced classes not only work more images than a basic ACT class does, the images change more frequently from year to year. Since 1999, advanced classes have always worked 26 images, but some get discarded each year and replaced by new ones that I think may be instructive. This year I replaced 10 of 26, which is a new record. Nevertheless, with 16 holdovers from previous years, where I had saved the best results, it's possible to make some comparisons.

Last year's group was outstandingly strong, full of professional retouchers. This year's did not have that experience, although there were a couple of stars. By and large it did not do as well in exercises that were technically difficult and required imaginative treatment. However, it seemed to do better than previous years in examples that had no serious defect, such as scenics, or where the allocation of color as opposed to contrast was more critical. This IMHO was due to the influence of the picture-postcard workflow.

The difficulty this year was that the advanced class attendees fell into three categories: those who had taken ACT prior to mid-2007, and had thus not seen the PPW as such; those who attended in late 2007 and therefore had some exposure to it, and 2008 attendees who went through an ACT that had been overhauled to emphasize that workflow. In the first half of the class the later students did better than those that had taken the course earlier, indicating the efficacy of the new moves.

I noted the following:

*Everybody is seeing the value of an extended luminosity step while in RGB: a consideration of channel blending and/or contrast-enhancing curves on a luminosity layer as opposed to the traditional method of one correction pass that improves both contrast and color simultaneously.

*In consequence, the color often looks tired after the luminosity step. In traditional workflows, the very act of establishing range improves color. Now, we're doing a better job of establishing range, but omitting the desirable color improvement. When an image has no problem other than overall unimpressive color (and that's where we usually are, after the luminosity step), LAB has a decisive advantage over either RGB or CMYK. So I would say that people found themselves in LAB at some point in about 90 percent of all images. This is a much greater use of LAB than in previous years. Interestingly, we are now in LAB almost always to exploit the A and B--while the L channel is useful, it's now being reserved for slight adjustments only.

*Continuing, but intensifying, a trend in workflow that we've seen in the last year: now that most files eventually get to LAB, we're finding it more useful to make the image *too* colorful and then figure out an intelligent way to back off, rather than the traditional way of trying to accent colors that aren't vivid enough. In almost every exercise now, I've got some layer on top that's WAY more colorful than I finally intend the image to be.

*In those images where the above workflow was appropriate, those who followed it murdered those who did not. The problem was in identifying the images in which it *wasn't* appropriate.

*There was much more use of the Man from Mars Method this year than last, owing to the emergence of new techniques to control undesirable changes, often by partial blends of the original A and B channels to prevent the image from getting too cold.

*We had better results in noise reduction than previous years. I am now recommending that shadow noise in underexposed pictures be reduced by the use of Surface Blur at an early stage of the process.

*We had better results with hiraloam sharpening than in the past. I now recommend that immediately after this type of sharpening we blend the original into the sharpened version at 50% Darken mode. This corresponds to my practice with conventional, low-radius sharpening. More, however, it now seems clear that hiraloam is not very effective in the three-quartertone to shadow range. I therefore suggest doing the hiraloam on a layer with what seems to be an absurdly high Amount--say 200% Amount and 30 Radius--but loading a layer mask from a luminosity-based channel to reduce the impact in darker areas, before finalizing the move by reducing layer opacity.

*In comparison to past years, the 2008 classes did best in images calling for aesthetic judgment, such as Lake & Fountain and Over the Colorado. They did worst in images requiring imaginative solutions to specific technical problems, such as Giselle and Mother-in-Law. The only time the group actually crashed and burned was on one such image, Purple Skintone. We got 23 unsatisfactory solutions to a problem that wasn't all that difficult to resolve.

*The images used in the advanced course are initially chosen by me, but they only stay in the curriculum if they get votes on post-class evaluations. If the classes say they're learning from them, they stay in, whether I approve of them or not. But each year I dump some of the low scorers and replace them with new, hopefully more interesting challenges.

My recent selections have suffered from bipolar disorder. Of the eight images new in 2006, six are still in, and three of these (Mother-in-Law, Chinese New Year, and House Fire) are in the top five of all vote-getters. By contrast, my 2007 selections fell flat. Of the nine introduced last year, six didn't make it to the 2008 classes. John Ruttenberg's Giselle image continues to be popular of the three remaining ones.

The 2008 selections fared somewhere in the middle. There were no stars, but eight of the ten new images got enough support that they'll probably be seen next year. Of the other two, the classes didn't find much use for the Deer in Undergrowth exercise. I disagree, and will probably retain it. OTOH, I concur with the classes' judgment that the Vietnamese Taxis exercise was not an inspired choice.

*Since 1999, every advanced class has been required to correct a set of three color images with the monitor turned to grayscale. They do not get to see what the color looks like before beginning. For competent people this is not difficult, and the results, year after year, aren't much worse (if at all) than if they had been able to see the color. (Back when I was a supervisor, I used to force recalcitrant employees to work this way if they were making foolish errors by failing to check the numbers.)

Traditionally classes are split radically over whether this is a worthwhile use of time. Many professionals, realizing that working this way isn't hard, find it boring. Those who have never considered the possibility, however, often find it an epiphany, the best part of the class, an experience so exhilarating that they go home and correct more images in black and white.

Over the years, I haven't put anything calling for tough color decisions in this group. But to cater to the bored people, last year I threw in an exercise that clearly calls for vivid color and artistic judgment, a shot of a setting sun playing over water with a European city in the background. That kind of shot is challenging to correct on a grayscale monitor. Given the approval of that image last year, I added a similar one this year: a glacial lake that the students are told is known as one of the most lovely in the Canadian Rockies, so much so that the photo shows several painters on the shore trying to record it. The name is Lake Beauvert (beautiful green, in French) which puts us on notice that the color may not be typical of most lakes.

For whatever reason, this segment of the class was considerably more popular with this year's group than it usually is, with many positive comments on the evaluations. And there was one rather irritating result, in the third (Toronto) class. Of the three images being corrected in black and white, two had also been corrected that way in previous years, so I had successful efforts of others to display in the event that this year's class didn't get good results themselves. As the Lake Beauvert image was new and I wanted a "par" correction with which to compare the class efforts, I saved a copy of the one I did when I demonstrated the image at a recent lecture in Calgary.

When the class works in color, I usually participate and enter my own version into the contest, not always successfully. When somebody else gets a better result than I do, that's great, it's a learning experience. I never expected, however, that on an image like Lake Beauvert, where a lot of aesthetic judgment is called for, a student working on a grayscale monitor might do better than I would with the colors visible. But it happened.

*And how do I know that the other guy's version was better? Because everyone in the class, including me, agreed on the point. That color correction really is a skill, almost an art form, was confirmed again by the voting on the results of the exercises. In both regular and advanced ACT, eight or nine versions of the same image are compared, and the class selects the best of the bunch. Since color is supposed to be so subjective, students are surprised to find that the vote is usually unanimous. Around a third of the time, there's a disagreement as to which of two is the best. Less than ten percent of the time does the disagreement involve more than two versions.

One might think this would not hold over into the advanced courses. In the basic course, a lot of people knock themselves out of the competition with outright errors, such as failing to set proper endpoints or leaving impossible colors in critical places. So, realistically there may only be four or five versions that the voters would even consider. In the advanced courses, such errors are rarer, so there is a bigger field of contenders to choose from.

Nevertheless, in advanced courses the pattern is the same: narrowing down the field takes longer, but the final determination is unanimous more often than not. In this field, quality *does* count--as we found out in the second (Washington) class. The Washout Skintone exercise (light, overly yellow professional model with various complexion problems, easy to make the hair too colorful) has been around since 1999 and rates #3 on the votes-per-class scale of approval. We've had, therefore, around 200 different corrected versions of this image submitted over the years. It's a tough technical exercise, and the 2008 classes didn't do expecially well with it, with a couple of exceptions. One of these, stunningly, was better not just than the rest of the class, but than any of the 200 previous versions, including three or four I'd done myself. Again, this qualitative difference is not just my opinion, but that of everyone who looked. Even having seen the version and knowing his basic approach (it depended on a couple of Man from Mars moves with some interesting masking) I couldn't do as well in the third class.

But next year I will, for sure. That's the lasting allure of getting groups as talented as this together, it forces us to keep learning. All good things, however, must end, so I reiterate that the plan is that the November 2009 advanced classes will be the last ones. If you have taken ACT (or have reserved a spot in a 2009 ACT course) and would like the advanced class invitation next month, let me know offline.

Meanwhile, thanks to all who attended for a stimulating experience.

Dan Margulis

Note:About a month after this was written (i.e. January 2009) it was decided not to offer advanced courses in 2009 because of the economic circumstances. The final advanced courses will be held in 2010--DM