Adobe and Me
May 28, 2010
… AND FEATURED ON THE ADOBE PHOTOSHOP SITE
In 1989 I was trained traditionally as a photographer. I rolled my own 35mm film, mixed my own chemistry and still long for the “silver process” not to mention type 55 negative/ positive polaroids and 8×10 polaroids and mixing the positive with the negative in processing. These processes bring me to a state of nostalgia from which I will never fully divorce myself but I seriously can NOT imagine life w/o photoshop and if I have to embrace digital (which I do and have) then I am SO GLAD that I fully jumped on the Photoshop bandwagon 17 years ago. Even more, I am glad that I have revised and am keeping fresh my Photoshop knowledge through my graduate degree from the School of Visual Arts and a recent invitation to beta test for Adobe (thanks to Katrin Eismann), before the release of Photoshop CS5 a few weeks ago!
In the middle of april I downloaded CS5 and spent just 15-20 minutes on a scan from an old negative. In no time I cleaned up the image, added a breath of wind to the little girls back and gave the image the breeze that I felt when I captured the image in the first place (had I realized that they were going to want to publish it I would have taken a bit longer on the color).
before
after
… so i shared my experience with Adobe when they called and asked me how I liked Photoshop CS5. This linked profile resulted from that interview.
I say, “open up your film archive” and add that little something something that made you pass on an image when you first edited a particular shoot from your past. Start a digital archive of your film images, at least the ones that really speak to you. We all have them, the images that were ALMOST the “decisive moment,” but there is just one thing we’d remove if we did it again (and I’m not talking to the photojournalists who should stay “pure”). It is just that there are some pretty cool tools that are offered in CS5 that will save you time and give you the courage to address “problem” images that you once passed on (and NO, they are not paying me to say this, but they should!). I’ll consider the hours save that I don’t have to sit in front of my computer payment – which just means I have more time to conceptualize and shoot in the present, but still honor my past and where I came from. And that is what being a photographer is all about!
Very, very cool!