Photoshop ... or not?

Those two are inextricably linked! Or is not it?

I am in many photography groups on the facebook, and always there is the recurring discussion ... photoshop or not? You have to deal with two camps. One camp is absolutely PRO and the other camp is absolutely CON using photoshop.

And surely there are also a lot of people who do not talk about it. But there seems to be no way in between, either you love it, or you hate it it seems. It has even become a reason for me to leave facebook for the most part for what it is ... and just look around now and then. Sometimes when I need inspiration to photograph, or to blog, I MAY find something on facebook. But beyond? No, the hatred and envy among many people, and especially photographers and 'wanna-be-photographers', I want to let that go by.

Then back to where my post is about. Photoshop, or not?

Let me be very clear. I use photoshop! Certainly! The pictures as I want them do not come straight out of my camera. I also consciously shoot in RAW, (digitally negative), because I want to control as much as possible what my final photo will look like. And no, I'm not perfect ... but at least I try to be as perfect as I can be right now.

Because ... dear people, anyone who claims NOT to edit his photos, the camera has already done this for themselves. The people who do not shoot in RAW, photograph in Jpeg, more formats do not know most cameras ... (okay, sometimes TIFF, and the Pentax can also do it in DNG, but that is almost the same as RAW, only then a standardized RAW format) . And to get a Jpeg out of the camera, the camera itself has already adjusted the image ... which often means that a noise filter has already been used in the camera, the colors are slightly saturated, the sharpness is screwed up and the total picture is compressed to confiscate far fewer kb's on your memory card. But I want to keep all those things in my own hands. I want to take a photo with as much detail as possible from my camera, and then I do the adjustments myself as I want them ... then I save the photo in Jpeg.

For me this has the great advantage that I can decide for myself what I want to do for adjustments, that I can decide for myself what my end result will look like, and I can do all these adjustments locally where necessary for my feeling.

But this is not even really using photoshop, this is purely optimizing my photo. When I think of photoshop, then I think of making compositions that you have not even photographed at once. That's what I call photoshopping.

Nowadays when you say "Edit" on Facebook, a lot of people immediately react negatively. And why? It is ultimately about the total picture. When I say making a composite in photoshop people react like "oh, but that is not photography that is photoshop!". But they don't seem to understand, when I want to make that composite, I first have to make sure that the photo's with which I start my project are damned good! Because, I can not make a bad photo good with photoshop. And to make a great composite I need not one, but two, or maybe three or even four damn good photo's. What now, not photography? Of course it still is all about good photography. Photoshop is just the tool I need to create an image that never can be shot in one time.

And that can be because it is too dangerous to shoot it in once, or maybe because the background where I want to put my dogs in doesn't even exist, or maybe because my dogs totally can not do want I want them to do on a photo, or maybe because I think it's fun, but I don't want to let my dogs do what I want it to look like what they are doing. So many reasons why you could think of a composite

I'm understanding photoshop enough so I can edit photos to how I want it. Unfortunately, I am not yet so far that I can make beautiful composites. That is my goal, that is what I want to work towards.

Yes ... I am a photographer, and hope to become a good photoshopper.

For the real photoshop work I have a large number of examples, and some of them are for example Frans Heidenis and Adrian Sommeling and John Wilhelm. In my opinion these are real photoshop artists. That is what I would like to achieve. I already have the ideas, the implementation of which I still have to learn how to do ... That is still 'work in progress'.

How do you think about making compositions in photoshop in relation to photography?

Feel free to leave a reply in the comments!