Is there a difference between creating a Digital Photograph and a Digitally Enhanced Painting? If so what is it? Are simple adjustments one makes in Photoshop to curves, saturation and sharpness all it takes to have your work classified as digitally enhanced, even though those are the same kinds of adjustments you had to learn to do in a darkroom just a few years ago? Here are my thoughts on the subject.  The modern darkroom is now a computer using an image processing program.

A photograph, whether produced on film or on a digital sensor, starts its life as light rays that have created an image recorded in a camera which is reproduced on paper. A digitally enhanced painting starts its life in the mind and is rendered via strokes seen on a monitor, via drawing tools. They are entirely separate creations. One did not call the photos touched up by photographers "pen enhanced photos", nor did one call a photo of a painting a "camera enhanced painting".

All of my creations have started their life as light rays that struck film or sensor (mostly film). None of my work has been created solely through brush strokes. I do use brush strokes to create masks that hide parts of the layers used to modify my images or blend in the images used for a multiple exposure. Since those are the same kinds of strokes used in photo retouching, I do not consider them as creating a digitally enhanced painting out of my photographic images. My psychedelic images are created via curves manipulation in Photoshop now, but I started doing them via solarization and cross processing in a chemical darkroom a very long time ago. 

I have watched friends create digitally enhanced paintings.  They start off using an image or a blank canvas (the term for an area an image will be appearing in Photoshop is also canvas) that they then apply brush strokes with colors within layers to add their own elements to the scene.  The end result may resemble some of my work, but the method used to create it is entirely different.  I would consider the difference to be similar to the difference between mixed media, acrylic, water color, and oil painting.

Photography is an overall subtractive process that adds realism to an image.  We reduce information to create an image that most people would swear is truthful.  In this manner we are like a sculptor chiseling marble to release the spirit of the rock so all may enjoy its beauty.  Digital painting is more like a person working with clay and wire to build an image that fits their vision.  Both techniques may produce a very similar end product, but the method used is entirely different.

Do not try to call my work a digitally enhanced painting.  I am not a digital painter!  I am a photographer that uses the tools of my trade to create artistic visions to suit my fancy.