F. H. Tong's Digital Photo Memo

Digital Photography or Digital PhotoShop-graphy? by F.H.Tong May 8, 2005

After reading the "A New PhotoShop Makes Retouching Reality (Somewhat) Easier" by DAVID POGUE (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/technology/circuits/05pogue.html), it seems that there is something for us to consider.

We can refer to http://www.adobe.com/products/PhotoShop/newfeatures.html for the complete list of new features of the PhotoShop CS2.

If we remember the Live Picture, then the background processing and distort function has been fascinating at that time, about ten years ago.

Check the "Live Picture 2.0 v. PhotoShop 3.0" (http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/live-picture-v-PhotoShop.html), where we can find: "...I have a friend that works with 400-600MB files and he thinks he needs Live Picture because PhotoShop is just too slow....".

Although I have watched the digital photography development many years ago, it was until that year when Epson's true 720 dpi ink printer that I realized that digital photography would mean something for the future. During a seminar at that year, I met the marketing director of Live Picture and had discussed with him about the technical difference with PhotoShop. He told me the French look of Live Picture was the most difficult part to persuade buyers in America. Unfortunately, he was right and Live Picture had long been bankrupted.

We all know that PhotoShop has dominated the digital photography for the past fifteen years. Now or even in the coming future, we shall be lead into whatever Adobe want us to be because all images have to rely on PhotoShop to edit, convert and output. This reminds me about my worries in the 80's. At that time, only graphic artists welcomed the digital photography. Photographers refused to involve with digital technology. As a supplier, the only goal is the market and customers. What customers need should be satisfied; otherwise it would not be any success in business at all. When the majority of customers were graphic artists, the development might be inclined to meet their application. One thing was missed, PhotoShop had not been renamed to GraphicShop. Anyone who could find the way to use the functions of PhotoShop for the first creative advertisement had grasped honor and money too.


Only the first one with color subject on B/W background can have visual impact, not now.	Special effect like this one can get attention if it is the first of its kind.

Certainly, we need not be bound by the functions of PhotoShop. We select those functions that are good for photography and avoid using those that are harmful to the truth of imaging. Argument about what is truth in photography has never been universally solved. Photographic image has been accepted as next to truth because we could not change the images before. I use to remind that it is not the digital photography technology to harm the truth. In fact, Gustave Le Grey had presented to the world the very first manipulated photo, a calm sky above a rough sea in 1865. There were and there are and there will be people trying to cheat because they could not take good photos or too smart and lazy.

The only guilt of digital photography is that trickery has been simplified from a few days' work in the darkroom to a few clicks on the PC with software like PhotoShop. Remember a gun will not kill, it is the users take it to kill.

The Great Wave - Cette 1865 by Gustave Le Gray

Why there is no campaign to save the truth of photographic image? Perhaps many of us have done something traditionally or digitally to fine-tune or produce our final photos. Perhaps there has never been a clear definition for what is true image.

I use PhotoShop and Irfanview for all my works. Editing with PhotoShop seems to be the only choice. I have tested with other software but failed to convince myself to consider giving up PhotoShop.

Will Adobe's PhotoShop become the only editing software for digital photography? Will the quality of our digital images rely on PhotoShop? If so, we may have to find what is photography for Adobe.

F. H. Tong
May 8, 2005.