Is this picture real?

[A-L-E-X]

Agreed. There's a fine line between photography and computer graphics. The above picture is stunning, but I'm hesitant to compare it to actual photos.

As the digital camera has become prevalent, it has become increasingly difficult to determine where to draw the line from the types of manipulation you could do with film in the darkroom, and the manipulations you can do with computers. At some point, at least in my mind, the finished product becomes more of a computer graphic than a photograph. That said, it's a blurry line (though I'm sure folks will use some sort of photoshop tool to sharpen it...).

Personally, I like "real" filters much better than digital "filters"..... I have a circular polarizer, a few different types of infrared filters, neutral density filters and a variety of color enhancement filters. I like the effects they create much more than I do any of the digital filters that come with photoshop and other software. And you don't need a cumbersome DSLR to use filters either-- most high end prosumer cameras have filter threads.

The aspects of photography where software manipulation is invaluable is for infrared and astrophotography, where you need to reverse the color channels or stack a bunch of pictures to get more detail out of your images. But in those cases, it doesn't matter if they match what you see with your eyes, because your eyes are deficient when it comes to other parts of the spectrum or astronomy lol.

[bobbutts]

I agree that the most stunning photos are very much like was captured by the camera, not the result of extreme post-processing. This is a cool image, but it goes in the CG category for me too, I don't really connect with it.