This week we run a poll across three Facebook groups, with the simple question:
“What are your thoughts on changing the background (full background, sky or anything but the original image) in images?”
Over 24 hours we had 135 responses to the three answers. Those three answers were:
1. It’s perfectly acceptable.
2. It all depends on the situation.
3. It should be avoided at all costs.
There is no right or wrong answer in the poll, so of course it all comes down to what your personal thoughts are on this subject. The three groups consist of 1.4k, 1.1k and 23k members from all over the world, so it was a diverse poll.
What do you think had the most votes? It will be interesting to know! For myself, I have nothing against changing sky’s, or backgrounds that were shot with a green screen or blank background with the purpose of being there for that reason.
In all honesty though, although I own software that can change a sky in a touch of a button, it is something I just never do, it’s not because I think it’s cheating or anything, it’s just I prefer my image to represent the scene that I took, no matter how bland the sky is.
Let us look at the results.
Coming in first, at 50% with 67 of the 135 votes is option 3 “It should be avoided at all costs”
Coming in second, at 39% with 53 of 135 votes is option 2 with “It all depends on the situation”
Coming in third, at 11% with 15 out of 135 is option 1 with “It’s perfectly acceptable”
And there we have it. I don’t think the results are particularly unexpected, and I’m sure if we run this again in 5 years it will be very different as editing software changes and becomes more and more AI driven.
One Camera One Lens Photography 
Nice poll Mark!
Personally, I find it acceptable if a certain photo has to serve for an advertising poster or a certain project or something like that – where a point has to be made, and so it is not actually about the photo itself.
But in all other cases I also think it is not done.
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