raincoaster replied to your post:I think people are a little put off and bewildered…
But they’re only trying to make their own pictures look better; the correct response is not to say “this isn’t great Art” but to look and say whether or not the Whateverstamatic shots are better than the shots that photographer could take otherwise.
Well, this is a good time to clarify that if you use Whateverstamatic to take regular photos, you’re not on my list.
I don’t see an issue with anyone taking regular photos… sure, I’m going to think a lot of them are not very good, and it’s going to be difficult to watch groups of people praise those not-very-good photos, but overall it’s not very gracious of me to pick on anyone for that. But I can say, generally and almost universally, that the “camera apps” hurt almost all of the photos that they process. I have tried them with a wide range of photos and found they were almost always detrimental. There were a few exceptions where certain filters really enhanced a photo, but a discussion of these situations is beyond the scope of the photography knowledge of most individuals.
(Also keep in mind that the filters hardly allow for fine adjustment. The filters in Photoshop allow for precise intensity adjustments and can be applied to individual layers or selections in a photo. The lack of such control in the camera apps - the idiot-proof nature of the selections - is really what makes them clumsy. But things like fringing the corners with darkness… that doesn’t enhance photos. Real photographers spend thousands on highly engineered lenses to avoid that.)
I would strongly suggest that people take normal photos first, and add post-processing as they see fit. And for most people, here’s a good general rule of post-processing: don’t do anything. This will almost invariably yield more respectable photos than anything the camera app filters spit out.
