Processed Cheese

What is the dividing line between art and craft? At what point does a tool or technique interfere with artistic vision instead of enhancing it?

Ordinarily I avoid using the canned Photoshop filters to alter my images out of a sense that the result is cheesy, but nonetheless I found myself experimenting with a few of them on the work from my recent couples shoot.

The images in this week's blog use the "accented edges" filter.

I like the result, or I wouldn't be posting the pictures, but is it photographic art or is it just artistic design? I'm not sure.

The total effect can't be fully appreciated without looking at the enlarged images, so I recommend that you click on the images to see the image in the size I created it.

The filter creates a kind of painterly effect on photographs, as though someone had created them with black and white paint, narrowing the tonality creating the suggestion of three dimensional form by juxtaposing slightly lighter and darker sections of flat color on canvas.

But if one wanted that effect, maybe one should have done it with oil and canvas instead of creating a faux paint effect in Photoshop from a perfectly fine photograph.