That debate about editing versus raw photos from the Hubble got me thinking

I read a post where someone said stacking multiple exposures is just as artificial as adding color, but isn't that how our eyes work anyway? Do you think a single exposure is more 'real' than a composed image, or is the final photo the only thing that matters?

2 comments

2 Comments

rubyschmidt1mo ago

Doesn't anyone else remember when people used to argue about film versus digital, and now we're arguing about what's "real" in a telescope picture? I once spent a whole weekend stacking images of the moon from my backyard and my neighbor insisted it was cheating because I didn't just use one shot. At the end of the day, our brains are already putting together a million little pieces of light and color every second, so maybe the composed image is more like the truth than a single snapshot.

dylan_bell1mo ago

Man, that's exactly what I've been saying too, @rubyschmidt. I read somewhere that our eyes are basically doing the same thing with every glance, combining multiple signals into one coherent picture.