This is not so much a tutorial as an editorial. Despite (or maybe because of) its dominance as an image-editing tool for 20 years, there are a lot of photographers who question its validity. I’ve become aware of some people who think an image that has been edited with Photoshop is somehow “less pure” or perhaps ignoble in some way. This is my rebuttal:

Who is a better painter: Renoir or Matisse? Warhol or Hockney? Leonardo or Rockwell? What is better: Canvas or fresco? Oil or acrylic? Which is superior: Hard bop or cool jazz? Baroque or classical?

Would you build a house without a power tool? Without a hammer or screwdriver?

Why do we as photographers take seriously questions that would be considered absurd in any other medium? I refer here to the ongoing debate over whether or not photographers should use Photoshop. Specifically, to implications that images created without Photoshop are “purer” or “better” than those where Photoshop was used.

In the past, photographers who didn’t want to retouch images shot slides or Polaroids. Others, as Ansel Adams so famously quoted, used the negative as the score and the print as the performance. However, in a Playboy interview in 1983, Ansel Adams said:

PLAYBOY: What else do you see coming in photography?
ADAMS: There’s no end in sight. Electronic photography will soon be superior to anything we have now. The first advance will be the exploration of existing negatives. I believe the electronic processes will enhance them. I could get superior prints from my negatives using electronics. Then the time will come when you will be able to make the entire photograph electronically. With the extremely high resolution and the enormous control you can get from electronics, the results will be fantastic. I wish I were young again!

Film photographers (and I include cinema here) made creative choices based on the film, the lens and the camera itself, in addition to lighting and composition. Digital photographers, whose tools are limited at the outset by the remarkable sameness/consistency of the equipment, are forced to differentiate themselves via bolder composition and lighting (hence the OCF revolution), and “darkroom” techniques, or Photoshop, HDR, etc.

If you are a photographer who would never have shot negative film, then obviously you are the type of person who thinks Photoshop is not for you. If you would have been a darkroom guru, then the digital path is yours.

It is possible to “overdo” an image without ever touching Photoshop. (Some might consider Gregory Crewsdon’s 8×10 negatives to be completely overdone before he ever releases the shutter.)

It is possible to use Photoshop without ever coming close to revealing the hidden majesty of the seen image.

Art is about exploration. Some of my images are fine straight out of camera. Some need a little help. Some need a lot of help. Some need less help than I end up giving them.

It’s all up to my mood. My vision. My choice. To me, anyone who says they only do their images in one way, or worse, that I should only choose one way, is limiting exploration and hence the possibility of the result. That can be folly. (Though to be fair, there are a lot of artists who keep to a single path. More power to them.)

I’m more interested in chameleons.