Is Good Photographer require Adobe Photoshop Knowledge

Status
Not open for further replies.
Hmm well these features allows photographers to make images more compelling

You can't make that kind of assumption without seeing the before and after photos. IMHO, the things that make an image more compelling are lighting, composition, story, and emotion.

Here's an image I took without cloning, dodging, burning, and liquify.

IMG_1039.JPG
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ido
The part of Photoshop I use most is Adobe Camera Raw. In fact, I don't even use it in Photoshop—I just use Lightroom.

Lightroom is a fantastic application for photo library management and organization, and it happens to have a very powerful raw converter (editor). While it may not be the best raw converter on the market—DxO Optics Pro definitely has better noise reduction, and I did like some of the editing features in Capture One Pro when I tried it—it strikes a good balance for me. I really like the digital asset management features and the workflow I have set up, as it lets me go through a large set of images and find the few I like best and want to work on.

I do most of my editing within Lightroom. That includes setting white balance, working with the tones (blacks, shadows, mid-tones, highlights, whites), controlling color, doing noise reduction and sharpening, etc. With the newer versions (CC / 6) I even merge images for panorama or HDR, something I had to do in Photoshop before Lightroom CC / 6 were released. For the vast majority of my photos, I don't even use Photoshop at all.

Lightroom's editing tools are fairly easy and straightforward. When I just started using it, all I did was fiddle around with the sliders to see what each slider does. I mostly learned how to use it myself, simply by experimenting, though I did watch some YouTube videos with tips and instructions as well. It isn't nearly as complicated as using Photoshop's different tools and options.

It's not that Photoshop doesn't have a place, though. I do use it, especially when I need to do some specific local adjustments, or manipulations that are hard or impossible to do in Lightroom (such as removing or moving an object). But I won't be surprised if what I use is hardly 1% of all that's available in Photoshop—it is a complex application, with a whole bunch of tools that I don't even know exist.
 
In my opinion it still is and always will be that the easiest and best way to make a high quality photograph is to to get the photograph as close to right in the camera as possible.

However, virtually every digital photograph will benefit for some amount of post production editing.
I too do my initial edits using ACR - Adobe Camera Raw (Ps Camera Raw/Lightroom Develop module), and like many others use a variety of other image editing applications for more specialized edit types.

These are some of the post-process edits I do on virtually every digital photo I 'finish':
• evaluate white balance, adjust if necessary
• capture, local, and output sharpen
• adjust mid-tone contrast
• adjust vibrance
• set white, gray, and black points
• crop for content
• dodge/burn
 
Replying to a three year and two-week-old thread, last commented on in mid-April of 2016.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Most reactions

New Topics

Back
Top