Tag Discussion: photorealistic

Previous discussion: forum #55676, forum #55682, forum #55683, forum #55695, forum #55696, forum #55701, forum #55704.

Long story short: People think pool #2269 - "Stupidly Good" should be a tag. Someone suggests a photorealistic tag. I say we have the realistic tag. Others point out that there's a difference between photorealistic and realistic.

Problem: Where exactly do we draw the line between the two? It's easy enough to tell the difference between stylized art and realistic art, but adding another tier to realistic makes the decision incredibly subjective. I think most of the current realistic posts would fall under photorealistic regardless, which ruins the utility of the tag. If we want to create photorealistic there needs to be hard guidelines.

Can anyone demonstrate more than those two posts that would qualify for this new tag?

Like half of pool #874, such as post #836283 post #836280 post #836269 post #436968 post #552843.

Personally I think the distinction is pretty simple, if can reasonably be mistaken for a photograph it's photorealistic. I could be missing out on some subtlety though.

ShadowbladeEdge said:
Personally I think the distinction is pretty simple, if can reasonably be mistaken for a photograph it's photorealistic.

Although I appreciate the distinction you're describing, I think it still leaves too much room for debate. Our perception of realism depends on a number of imponderables unrelated to strict accuracy.

If I were to compare paintings by de la Tour and Caravaggio, I would say that de la Tour was more photorealistic by virtue of his matte colors, but another viewer might favor Caravaggio for his superior grasp of human anatomy. It's not a question of who is more accurate; it's a question of which kind of accuracy is most important to the viewer.

I believe realistic ought to refer to art styles intended to evoke realism through the use of real-life body proportions and shading. Think of the sort of thing you'd see in a painted portrait from the Renaissance; nobody would mistake one for a photograph, but it's clear that they were intended to be a more-or-less accurate representation of the subject.

(On that topic, don't we have a tag or pool for anime characters drawn in a realistic style?)

photorealistic, by contrast, should be something with such a realistic (dictionary definition) appearance that the only way you'd know it wasn't a photograph is through either being told outright, or by very close scrutiny.

...and as an aside, damn you for making me hungry when I'm trying to relax enough to go to sleep.

sgcdonmai said:
(On that topic, don't we have a tag or pool for anime characters drawn in a realistic style?)

...realistic?

...and as an aside, damn you for making me hungry when I'm trying to relax enough to go to sleep.

As long as you don't think about warm, fluffy blueberry pancakes topped with light, sweet maple syrup, you'll be fine.

sgcdonmai said:
I believe realistic ought to refer to art styles intended to evoke realism through the use of real-life body proportions and shading.

[snip]

photorealistic, by contrast, should be something with such a realistic (dictionary definition) appearance that the only way you'd know it wasn't a photograph is through either being told outright, or by very close scrutiny.

Ah, okay, if we define the distinction in terms of naturalistic realism versus imagistic realism, that makes more sense to me.

May I alter the Wikis in order to clarify that distinction?

sgcdonmai said:
(On that topic, don't we have a tag or pool for anime characters drawn in a realistic style?)

Not to my knowledge, although we should.

Slow down, cowboy. Not everyone is awake yet.

Forgive me. I simply thought that sgcdonmai's descriptions were so admirably precise that they ought to be implemented as soon as possible.

+1 to sgc's distinction.
realistic doesn't really feature posts you could mistake for actual photos.

EDIT: ok that's what S1eth said 6 hours ago already.

Hillside_Moose said:
...realistic?

I could have sworn I'd seen an "Anime Characters in Non-Anime Style" pool around somewhere, but this was what I was considering as well. Thanks.

As long as you don't think about

You are evil.

Cyberia-Mix said:
EDIT: ok that's what S1eth said 6 hours ago already.

Possibly he is a time traveler.

+1 for sgcdonmai (and GrandAdmiral's one-word adjectives).

+1 to begin using photorealistic.

I just created the Wikis. I hope they meet with everyone's approval; I included post #845054 and post #537187 as prototypical examples.

T5J8F8 said:
+1 for sgcdonmai (and GrandAdmiral's one-word adjectives).

Thank you, I think. I afraid I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

GrandAdmiralSean8 said:
Thank you, I think. I afraid I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

"naturalistic realism" and "imagistic realism"* are just very concise words for those concepts.

*Though, apparently, Opera doesn't recognize "imagistic" as a word.

T5J8F8 said:
"naturalistic realism" and "imagistic realism"* are just very concise words for those concepts.

Ah. In that case, thank you both.

And thank you for the wiki-work.

On realistic, I would like to squeeze in a bit about proportions, rather than anatomy only, so that the page doesn't give the mistaken impression that the tag is only to be used for human characters. A realistic depiction of a McLaren Mercedes should get the tag just the same as a realistic depiction of, say, Akiyama Mio.

sgcdonmai said:
I could have sworn I'd seen an "Anime Characters in Non-Anime Style" pool around somewhere, but this was what I was considering as well. Thanks.

East meets West. Too tired to find the pool.

Log said:
East meets West. Too tired to find the pool.

That one's for crossovers.