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Five Lies You’ve Been Told About Photoshop - 6/8/09

You can do anything with Photoshop. But should you?

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Photographers new to digital imaging may have the misconception that Photoshop can do anything. You can’t blame the newbies, though. Their heads have been filled with misconceptions, half-truths and outright lies since version 1.0 first hit the shelves. While it’s true that the program is amazingly powerful, it does have its limits—most of them pertaining to decisions made by the operator. To ensure that you don’t butt heads with this powerful tool, here are five lies you should put out of your head immediately.

A.    “Just fix it in post.” Photoshop is full of amazing features, and in the right hands it can do mind-blowing things. But in most cases, there’s one thing no amount of post-production can do: make a bad photo good. It can make pictures better, but it can also make them worse. Don’t use Photoshop as a crutch that makes you lazy with the camera. Work hard to get your pictures right when you’re making the exposures, and then use post-processing to make them even better. (In fairness to the folks at Adobe, it should probably be said that in the right skilled hands, Photoshop can practically make bad photos good—but only if the right elements are there to begin with.)

B.    “Defy physics.” There’s a whole web site dedicated to the things people do with digital imaging that defies all reason. It’s called “Photoshop Disasters” (http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/) and it highlights shoddy workmanship—not so much in the crafting of a seamless digital image, but usually in the thinking that goes into an edit. If the subject’s standing in front of a mirror, it’s probably going to look a little funny if you remove their reflection. If the subject’s six feet tall, their arms probably shouldn’t be five feet long. Whatever decisions you make to make your photos look better in Photoshop, use your head before you start. No matter how “real” an effect may look, if it defies the laws of the universe, it probably won’t ever feel quite right.

C.    “Use a filter.” Ask yourself which came first, the idea or the effect? If you’re not quite sure what will help achieve the effect you’re after, so you experiment with Photoshop until you get it just right, that’s one thing. (Something perfectly permissible—maybe even ideal.) But if you don’t know what to do with an image, and you’re sure that if you muck it up in Photoshop a bit you’re bound to stumble on something that works and turns it into the neatest picture you’ve ever seen… Allow me to save you some time: It won’t work. Applying Photoshop filters randomly until you come across something interesting is a recipe for disaster. Ansel Adams liked the idea of previsualization. That means knowing what you’d like the end result to be before you start working to improve the technical aspects of a picture. He was a pretty sharp cookie, and his suggestion is equally applicable to the digital world.

D.    “Make it wild.” Photoshop’s amazing features make special effects a cinch. But not every image that’s run through Photoshop needs to look as if it’s been run through the ringer. So many tools and techniques can be used to refine an image, rather than to overwhelmingly transform it. Subtle adjustments to color balance, sharpness, contrast and all the basic elements that make up every image are just as important—if not more so—than the fancy and elaborate special effects. Dodging and burning and contrast control worked in the darkroom for more than a century. No reason to feel like you have to do crazy computer changes just because you can. Embrace the regular results. They often make for the best photos.

E.    “It’s too hard.” Photoshop may be daunting to the novice, but that’s no reason to avoid giving it a spin. Sure, there are a million tools that may be hard to wrap your brain around on first glance, but don’t let that scare you away. You can start with the stripped down version, Photoshop Elements, to get a sense of the tools and terminologies in the full version, as well as the effects they achieve. Or start with the full-fledged version, and utilize the many tutorials available to get a head start. Or just move through menus choosing effects as you go to see exactly how they work until one day you know them all. The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, and that’s never been more true in photography than when it comes to learning Photoshop. Jump right in.

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