Should true photographers use photoshop?

The camera cannot capture what the eye sees, no matter how good the photographer. You need to 'photoshop' the image to recreate what you saw. This is no different than Ansel Adams or other famous photographers adjusting images during processing, just a different method.

Before digital photography there was film photography. A photographer would take a picture and then go into the dark room and process the photo. Depending on how they processed it the end photo could be vastly different than if they processed it a different way. This is no different than using Photoshop. As a matter of fact, many things in Photoshop were modeled after processes in a dark room. Your brother is not living in reality. Even the very best photographers do post processing. It is part of the photography process.

A competent photographer should not NEED to use Photoshop except to append their files by creating XMP files, process RAW, resizing or making black and white conversions. Everything else can be controlled by the photographer at the time they press the shutter release. Out of focus and blurred shots are the fault of poor technique. Under/overexposed images are the fault of an inexperienced camera user. Poor composition is the result of inexperience. So yes, your brother is right. He probably has had enough experience with images to have worked with photographers who used transparency film and did not have the luxury of being sloppy when shooting assignments. With transparency film, you get what you shoot and there is no latitude for badly composed shots or poorly exposed film. Photographers of that era, submitted perfect images which reduced the post production costs significantly I have mostly moved over to Adobe Lightroom in my digital workflow because Lightroom was designed specifically for photographers, not post production and pre-press professionals with a few tools as mentioned above that photographers can use When it came to removing blemishes on faces or redeye, again the pro uses makeup artists and rarely uses a camera mounted flash and if they do for shooting events, have the flash mounted on a bracket that places the flash far enough a way from the lens axis to eliminate redeye all together. As far as using a darkroom. The time you have to spend making a print falls back to exposure and development. The school I went to demanded we make contact prints (4x5 inch) on number 2 paper (medium contrast paper). If the negative we shot and processed was over or under exposed, or over or under developed, it showed up on the contact print. At NO time were we allowed to manipulate the image to get a "perfect" print. The perfect print came from a perfect negative. The only "manipulation" was done at the time of film development. The negative was always exposed for the shadow area and developed for the highlights. So if you shot on a foggy day with a light ratio of 1:1, the development of the film was longer than if you were shooting a normal 4:1 lighting ratio and a scene that had a 32:1 lighting ratio could be a very short development needing water bathes between each agitation.

Most of the time, I use it only to put on watermarks and clean up old damaged photos. I rarely do huge alteration to my images unless it's necessary. Photoshop is good, but just don't over do it.

Your brother is living in cloud cuckoo land. Yes, the aim should be for any photographer to "get it right" in the camera. But to say that true photographers don't or should not use photoshop is just patently ridiculous. What were filters for? what were darkrooms for if they were not tools to alter or enhance photographs. Photoshop is just a tool that when used properly should enhance an already good photograph. It is the equivalent of the film darkroom. It certainly can be (and should be in some instances) a lot more. After all there were people who spent many hours manipulating their work in the darkroom. With film there were (still are) expert darkroom workers, there were spotters and retouchers and working on films or prints was a skill in itself. Many photographers didn't have those skills themselves or didn't have the time themselves so sent the work out to the experts. They still do although many now, due to the advent of digital, can do this work themselves. Skytreader - looking at the work on the link you gave, well, some of the stuff on there is far from amazing and a lot of it is badly in need of a bit of a "tweak". He might be proud of the fact he does no editing - maybe before he brags about that he should actually learn how to take a properly composed and exposed shot.

Fhotoace is a good, experienced photographer - and old school. In a sense, so am I. I'm absolutely committed to 'getting it right' in the camera and I know how to do it. Studio, or location. However, I use Photoshop extensively without any apology. If I get it right in the camera, why would I use Photoshop? Because the technology can't deliver what I want all the time. In the studio, where I get to play God, Photoshop provides the touchup that digital needs because of the technology. There are makeup artists, hair stylists, etc., for the type of photography that Fhotoace does and I use them, too, when I wander into his turf. I have a full studio of lights to work with and I know how to use them. Still there is a use for photoshop. Sometimes what I want can't be achieved within the limitations of the sensor. Both Fhotoace and I and others that post here, like Perki88, Fishmeister, and others that I'm not recalling at the moment, but deserve mention, are all true photograpers, whatever that actually means. I've seen their work. For a variety of reasons, we don't necessarily see things the same way and take a variety of approaches to what we do. For myself, I take as much pride in what I can do with 'straight' photogaphy as anyone and when that is enough, that is where it stays. When it's not enough, it''s the necessary basis for hgih quality work. It's the call of the 'true' photographer what they do. I learned two things from Ansel Adams in person - what the Zone System really is and how to use it, and how to work an image in the darkroom. Having spent 3 days with the man at one of his workshops, my impression is that if there had been Photoshop and Digital when he was alive, he would have been all over it. Vance

Should true photographers not use darkroom techniques to improve the quality of their images? ... there's nothing in PS that's new. Good photographers see all their tools, and know how to properly use them, and will continue to use them.

I have not trotted out these stock answers for a while, so thank you for asking. Photoshop - Is it cheating? Do you think it's cheating to do any post-production work on a musical recording? Do you agree with the people who say that George Martin was the sixth Beatle or do you agree with the people who say that Billy Preston deserved that title? I think that the MOST IMPORTANT PART of photography is getting it right in the camera in the first place, but I quickly add that using Photoshop to fine-tune an image is not cheating. If Photoshop existed when Ansel Adams was doing his "landmark" darkroom manipulations, you can bet he'd be the first in line to buy a copy. In the olden days, when film purists were all that there were (no digital = film purist), there were probably more books sold about darkroom technique than photographic technique. Did anyone ever wonder where those tools in Photoshop with weird names like "Burn" and "Dodge" got their names from in the first place? These are basic darkroom techniques that I learned before I was ten years old. EVERYONE DID IT. Everyone still does. It's just that some do it with Photoshop and some still do it in the darkroom. Photoshop to fine tune an otherwise acceptable image is not cheating. Even the best of our photographer friends remark frequently that they create the images and then pay someone to do the post-processing in Photoshop. Putting your head on Carmen Electra's body and then posting that on MySpace is cheating. See this question and read the answers: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AipFhtLP23rUF4TcXiQxAgJIzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20071023172700AAeF8Qx ~~~~~~ Photoshop - Is it necessary? [See "Sharpening"] I could be [whatever] and say that – by definition – "photographers" do not clean up images. They use the camera to capture images. A LOT of "legitimate" photographers do accomplish what you are seeing in the camera. I'd be foolish to say that nobody does any work in Photoshop or it's kind to enhance the final image, as many do. Even "legitimate" photographers may make some small adjustments to compensate for the inability to capture exactly what they want. Even the best sensors with the cleanest pixels can benefit from some sharpening. DSLR's are softer than they could be and allow in-camera sharpening. Some photographers increase that setting and leave it as their default. I'm just as happy to do the final tweak on the computer, when I think it is a desirable improvement. This leaves the option of not having a sharpened image. Viewing an image on a monitor is somewhat like viewing a transparency, also. The monitor is a light source so things will appear brighter. A print uses reflected light, so it might not be as bright. This is one reason why the prints you have seen in photo books don't "pop" quite as much as those that you view on a monitor. When I want to get a print of a slide, I do NOT view the slide on a light box or projected. I hold it over a piece of white paper and view it with light reflected off of that paper. This gives you a better idea of how it will looked when printed. There may be some debate about whether "real" photographers alter images or not and I'd rather not go there. I'd rather just see someone admit when they couldn't get what they wanted and let the world accept that. Check this out. http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/1254710884/ This is actually two "untouched" images merged into one. You just can't get the leaves, which are about 8-10 feet away, and the moon in sharp focus at the same time. I took two shots from almost the same spot, using a tripod, and combined what I needed from each image to come up with the final product. I dropped the sharp image of the moon right where the blurry one was in the shot of the leaves. In fact, here you go. I just went through and added a "NoPhotoshop" tag to the appropriate images on my Flickr site. http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/tags/nophotoshop/ When I say, "NoPhotoshop," I admit that up to 50% sharpening has been allowed for this tag, but I have done no sharpening in the camera. If I altered levels, contrast or saturation, that disqualified the image from this tag. If I cropped an image, or if I cloned out dust or fingerprints from a scan, I did not consider that to be "alteration" in Photoshop and left it in the group. Some are very boring snapshots, but some are images that I am proud to show. ~~~~~~~~~~ Sharpening I used to think I could "get it right" in the camera, too, and I do think I can do a pretty good job, but even the best digital sensors are inherently a bit softer than the best film and so they can benefit from some sharpening, even if it's only very slight. For instance, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/2051332385/ which was made by someone else with a full-format Canon 5D, which is one of the kings for image quality. I sharpened the

To your question: point blank no. Your brother is right. Photography is capturing art. Photomanipulation is creating new art using photographs as raw materials. Most cameras nowadays give you the option to shoot in black and white--use that instead of Photoshop, because when you save your work from Photoshop something DOES get altered (this is due to the compressing algorithms used by Photoshop--too technical for your question so I won't delve on it). Unsharp mask and blurs can be avoided if you are a good photographer. As a photographer, it is your job to get well acquainted with your camera, not with some software.