zombie84 said:lordjedi said:C3PX said:If the use of film were to come to an end, it would be the loss of an art form.
I kind of see it the opposite way. Digital will get cheaper and cheaper while film will just get more expensive. So fewer people might end up using film, but it'll still be there as an art form.
Similarly, with digital photography you no longer have to worry about having enough film to get that "killer shot". As long as you have enough space on the memory card, you can take pictures to your hearts content. When you get home to your "digital darkroom" you can then pick out that one great shot out of the hundreds of photos you took. Maybe you didn't get the ISO right or maybe the exposure time was to long on one shot. As long as it was right on the one shot out of 20, then you still got your shot. And of course it's also possible to "make" that one great shot if one photo is close but not quite right. The difference is that instead of it costing you 80% of a roll of film (assuming 24 frames and math I don't feel like doing) it didn't cost you anything for the digital shot.
Of course, there are still people who would prefer to wait and try to get that perfect shot. To them I say good luck. It'll be a little more expensive for them, but if they enjoy it, then so be it.
In photoshop there is an acrylic paintbrush option. It looks the same as a real acrylic brush stroke, you can edit the parameters including strength and brush coarseness, and you have much more precise color mixing options. You can erase and re-paint at the stroke of a mouse click and more importantly you don't have to buy acrylic paints, which are expensive, spend time mixing palettes, use easels and canvases which are bulky, space consuming and cost money, and you dont have to buy fancy brushes with specially made hairs. Plus you have digital filters and plug-ins and the ability to have unlimited image manipulation in the digital realm.
But would you want all fine art made in photoshop?
If the emulation in Photoshop is as good as it sounds, I challenge anyone to tell the difference anyway.
With that said, Adobe must have had some kind of demand for a feature like that. Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense to implement it. Something tells me that the "purists" didn't want it, but the aspiring artists and others did (this is based on nothing more than the comments here). If it's indistinguishable from the real thing, why does it matter what tool (that's all Photoshop is, a tool) was used to make it?
Film is the exact same. Anyone who tries to argue differently either doesn't actually understand the art of photography or doesn't care in the first place. To those people, digital is an efficient trade off in speed and quality, but for people that care about the art its not a replacement. Audiophiles listen to vinyl records, cinematographers shoot n 35mm film, photographers use chemical emulsions in whatever format and painters use oil or water based pigments on a physical surface. Digital emulation is not a replacement for any of the above, not yet and not ever.
Audiophiles listen to vinyl not because it's an art form, but because it more accurately reproduces the sound (or so they say). Sure, you can reproduce pops and clicks in a digital file, but audiophiles don't listen to vinyl to hear the pops and clicks (those are a side effect of the media).
Cinematographers shoot in 35mm because it has a much higher resolution than digital (for the forseeable future). I'm sure they also choose their film based on how much grain is there too, but somehow I doubt they'd mind if they could get the same thing with no grain. If they can indeed choose film that has as little grain as possible, then why wouldn't they choose a medium that could reach the same resolution with no grain at all?
Photographers use chemical emulsions because that was the only way to do it for 100 years. Digital photography is nearly indistinguishable from film, so many photographers have switched to digital. They save money and they save time and they're getting the same results.
If a piece of art gets people talking and looks really good, why does it matter if it was done in Photoshop or with brush strokes? And if you can't tell the difference, why does it matter even more? Isn't the point of art to express yourself? If Photoshop lets someone do that for 1/10 the price, what's the problem? Why does the medium matter at all?
You guys are starting to sound like the people that didn't want sound in movies or didn't want to see color when it arrived. Both of those ushered in changes to the way movies were made and how things were done. Digital is no different. Just because there's no grain does not mean that film making becomes any less of an art. You'll still have plenty of shit movies, the only thing that will change is the medium.
I've yet to read a convincing argument why digital is somehow worse than film other than the available resolution. A shitty movie is going to be a shitty movie no matter what it's shot on. But a good movie, a really good movie, is going to be good whether it has grain or not. Lack of grain isn't somehow going to make an otherwise stellar movie into a piece of shit.