I know that there are a lot of purists out there who say that photoshop is the devil, or that if you need photoshop to make a good photo then you aren’t a true artists or maybe just weak at your craft. This is a quick touch on the subject and why I disagree with the above theory.

Recently I had the opportunity to go to Hawaii to hang out and be a part of my brother’s wedding party. In the time we were there snapped a bunch of photos and then would sit down at night to process them through Adobe Lightroom (which I got harped on a couple of times for not being social). This program I have found to be so powerful because I can import all my images, process the raw files with more fine tuned tools that the Photoshop Raw importer allows, and then I can export straight to iPhoto/Flickr/Facebook with specific sizing/sharpening/watermark settings. I can even create web galleries using Lightroom if I want to show them to clients! It is a core part of my workflow when I am dealing with large quantities of photos like weddings, events, or just random pictures that I take on vacation. Below is an image that I show you what can be done just using Adobe Lightroom.

In school I was told “You can use photoshop to make a bad photograph OK, but if you take take a great photo you can make it exceptional.” The entire commercial industry has gone to using digital retouching in their workflow whether it be catalogue images, wedding photography, and definitely the advertising industry. As professional photographer I feel that it is my duty to make sure that I am current on trends like this and consider it a “continued education” as a teacher may take a class or two every other year on new standards or teaching techniques in the classroom.

Now I am not saying that everyone should be spending hours upon hours learning photoshop but simple editing and how to use RAW formats (if your camera supports it), you can produce awesome images with very little time.

Here are some websites of retouch artists that I have found if you want to see some heavy photoshop work:

Conrad Digital
Jeffrey Scott Fogarty

Those are both examples of heavy handed digital retouching on large production/budget photo shoots. Now if you just have pictures from your recent vacation you don’t necessarily need to spend this amount of time nor would want to, but if you want to blow people out of the water with your “point-and-shoot” images that turn out stunning take a stab at using something like Adobe Lightroom to spice up your photos.

Below is a quick example of what you can accomplish using just Lightroom. Enjoy, and good luck in processing your own images!