Photoshop Rant

For the purposes of this rant, the term Photoshop refers to any image enhancement software program. 

I have to stop reading the comments after articles on the internet.  They rarely fail to take away any faith I may have had in the public (which wasn't much to begin with).  After reading a recent article, with photos, about the winning entry in a photography contest I was amazed at the amount of vitriol spewed at the artist for his use of photoshop (which for the record I did not find excessive).  The general consensus was that a real photographer doesn't need to use such programs.

My first thought upon reading these remarks was, "Do these people know anything about photography?"  I believe an image on a computer screen is the equivalent of a photographic print.  In the "olden days" the photographers equivalent to Photoshop was the printing and developing process where they could adjust color saturation or contrast by the use of exposure times and they could achieve other effects through development techniques.  A print never just happened.  It was a series of manipulations to the process to get the desired effect.  Photoshop is just the digital version of these processes.  It's still a process of trial and error.  One can certainly make too many adjustments leaving an image looking weird and alien (though sometimes that is the desired effect).  Besides, regardless of how much one might manipulate these aspects of  a photo, there are certain things that can't be "faked".  A photo either has that certain something or doesn't.  The rest is just gravy.

I guess the point is that photos have always been and will always be manipulated one way or another to achieve the desired result.