Photography before the Photoshop age

as many of you probably read or heard many times, there is a long lasting debate about what photography has become in the Photoshop era.

Many out there say that retouching a photograph is some sort

of a crime and point out that once, in the film times, photographs were made by the talent of the photographer and only his/her mastering of light and exposure made those marvelous iconic photos we all still admire.

Well, Magnum Photos Agency recently started disclosing it’s archives and made publicly available a few examples of how and how much those iconic pictures were indeed modified, edited…retouched in the end.

Nothing really surprising to those who are acquainted to the terms of dodging an burning and specially to those who realize that those terms and Photoshop tools come directly from the darkroom time and are in fact darkroom techniques transferred to the digital process.

Nevertheless I found interesting to post a link to an article in which anyone can see how, and more specifically, how much photos have always been retouched, adjusted, perfected if you wish.

So, to those of you who still abhor the idea of retouching a photos in Photoshop, are you really sure you weren’t already “fooled” by the illusion of perfection you grant to those wonderful prints that in the end were retouched purposely anyway?