Who likes to Photoshop?

Rogier said:
Hate Photoshop.
Aperture does all I need.
If I need to do more I should have done a better job taking the shot and delete it.
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So, you never do any dodging and burning? I'm pretty sure Aperture cannot do a lot of essential things for serious photographers. Like Lightroom, its a good raw converter and cataloguer but it really only does the starting stages to producing a fully finished photograph.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
So, you never do any dodging and burning? I'm pretty sure Aperture cannot do a lot of essential things for serious photographers. Like Lightroom, its a good raw converter and cataloguer but it really only does the starting stages to producing a fully finished photograph.
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You can do reasonably effective dodging and burning in Lightroom nowadays. But it's silly to suggest that a 'finished photograph' requires dodging and burning, or anything photoshop has that the raw converters don't. Sure there are images where the more fine grained control of photoshop is necessary, and maybe for some people that's every image, but it's definitely not every image for everyone.
 
smile said:
any tips on a good dodging&burning techniques?
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I'm going to add something on that to my website soon. Here's the basics:

1) Draw around the area you want to dodge or burn using the lasso tool, or use another selection tool like the magic wand or marque if appropriate. Use a feathering amount of zero.

2) Hit the letter Q on the keyboard to go into quickmask mode. Everything will turn red except the area you selected. Notice the edges of the selection are hard-edged. You want to soften them so the dodge or burn doesn't look hard edged. you want it to blend in smoothly.

3) Use Gaussian Blur to soften the selection edges. The amount depends on the thing you selected. If its a small thing, like an eye in a portrait, use a small amount like 5-10 pixel blur. For something that is a very soft-edged area, like a bright area in the sky, use a lot of blur, like 100 pixels. For scans from film, I use 20-40 pixels blur for most average sized selections. Do it visually. With practice you'll see how much is needed for different things.

4) Hit Q again to return to normal mode. Now make a curves adjustment layer while the selection is still there. The selection border display will go away and you will have the curves box to adjust. Lighten, darken, change color, or contrast with the curves and see it affect the area you selected.

Its easier and faster in practice than my explanation makes it seem and the quality is FAR better and more controllable than you get using the crude dodge and burn tools that are in the Photoshop toolbox.
 
I enjoy working in Photoshop and Lightroom and gladly work on other people's pictures (for a fee). These programs do everything I ever needed from my wet darkroom and more, and much more easily.
 
I use Photoshop, I get Photoshop, and I feel like I am proficient at Photoshop.

One of the best things about Photoshop is that it is a very complex and interconnected piece of software. I am always learning new tricks with it, and as it upgrades, so does Photoshop!

----- HOWEVER -----

I also feel like Photoshop is the antithesis of 'straight' photography, which I dearly love. So in addition to digital and/or scanned images, I also directly print much of my work in the darkroom, without a computer ever seeing the image at all.
 
"Have you tried leaving the pictures for a month or three, or longer, then coming back to them? Gives you a different perspective."

Good tip, I'll try that.
 
peterm1 said:
I do actually enjoy doing the work. Perhaps its the end result I enjoy most of all. I know that by "photoshopping" (in the same sense that the English "hoover" their carpet) I can produce much better images than I can ever get straight from my camera.
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We use Dysons to vacuum our carpets now. Some people even call their dog Dyson 🙂
 
I personally do not like 'Photoshop' and its unnecessary complex method of adjustments. Its Lightroom and Capture NX2 for Nikon NEF files. I own Elements for adding text, layers and any drop shadows etc....
What I love about NX2 is the adjustment methods using control points. I believe there are Viveza plug-ins for LR and Photoshop. All the lasso etc drove me nuts.
I don't see it as dodge & burn when using LR, I use the adjustment brush for localised 'tweaks'. Wonderful.

Steve.
 
Hi Chris, thank you for the links...but i have a question. Is it possible to do the inversion from negative to positive using Lightroom? I would rather not have to invest a lot on Photoshop since I am not using much of its features. Thank you.
 
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