Doogie Howser Did It, So Why Not Me?

ala-kazam

I ran across this video while on MacRumors.com, (my daily site for all things mac).

The short of it is that Photoshop is testing a new feature to be implemented in a future version of the software.

Click through to see the video and read some of my thoughts.

Here’s the video (5 min long)

This brings up some things to think about in the digital editing world.

Photo taking as an art and a craft is already something that is becoming more and more common. As people now have pro level equipment available at lower and lower prices. Yes, there will still always be the innate ability of having an “eye” for taking pictures. But the line is getting thinner and thinner.

Then along came Photoshop. This changed the game completely. You could alter photos. Perfection was no longer subjugated to the skill of taking the perfect picture or a once in a lifetime moment. Perfection is now only a few mouse clicks away.

I am a self taught Photoshop user and my skills amount to about the ability of a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, to borrow a well used phrase. If you want to see real talent of a Photoshop pro, check people like Bert Monry out. If anyone has come close to mastering Photoshop it is him.

With a new innovation such as featured in the video above we will be entering into a new age of digital photography. The ease and technical capabilities of this software may in many ways dilute what we recognize as great pictures and altered ones.

Granted if I worked in a business where I was required to touch up photos for a living, this one feature would be a lifesaver. It now compresses hours worth of work, literally into seconds. This is not a bad thing. We’ll definitely have less Photoshop Disasters (a hilarious blog of rightly named photos).

Yet I have to wonder what the overall outcome will be on the state of photography, both the professional level and your everyday user who uploads photos to Flickr and Facebook.

Will we be able to take someone’s word that what we are looking at was naturally taken and not altered, even just a little? Will people come to expect that having someone who knows what they are doing behind the lens doesn’t matter as much because they can fall back on their computer skills? Will professional photographers lose jobs to people with lesser experience, because they now have the ability to compensate for their lesser skill set and experience?

These will be interesting questions to think about once this technology / software becomes readily available.

For now, I’m going to go back to not knowing the difference between the magic wand tool and casting a magic missile.