“Purist” is a word that I don’t think I’ve ever liked because it often is used to put down the creativity of others, creativity which the purist often couldn’t do or didn’t want to do. Now that doesn’t apply to all purists, just probably about 80% of them, which is a good supermajority.
Several decades ago when I was a Realtor, I used to compile a list of all the properties that were for sale in my farming area. I also had the addresses of all the properties, their most recent sale date, and the price they sold at. I got all the information from going down to the Courthouse and searching through the public records. I was told by the established Realtors that a “purist” wouldn’t work that way. Oh. (I lasted in the Texas oil-boom-to-bust longer than they did.)
When I opened a computer store in the mid-1980s, I sent flyers out to all the houses within a five-mile radius. I was told a purist would just have a grand opening and be done with it. Oh. (My competition eventually packed up and moved.)
I have many more examples, but you get the message.
Photography is the same way. Many older photographers, like me, grew up with film cameras and darkroom developing. Now that digital photography and digital photo editing programs like Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, Gimp, and others are here, some of the older photographers seem to be too proud to use them. They claim to be “photography purists.”
Some are even hanging on to the last vestiges of film cameras and developing in their own private darkrooms. Talk about expensive and time consuming. They are still using filters and filter stacking out in the field. Why? “To get the best I can out of the camera.” That’s all well and good, and it’s a lot of fun to be out and about taking pictures, but there is simply no way to get as many pictures out in the field as what Photoshop will give you back at the office.
I submit that if you want to have a lot of fun, learn a good digital photo editing program as well as your camera and your lenses. Once you know what all three can give you — their strengths and weaknesses — you can double or even triple your fun. The way I do this is to dedicate a minimum of 30 minutes each day to whatever new tasks I am seeking to learn. Right now it’s Photoshop CS6.
You don’t have to be a “purist” in order to accomplish what the “purists” accomplish. In fact, the beauty of technology is that, indeed, you don’t have to be a “purist” at all. If you have an interest in something, or see something that someone else did, don’t question whether or not it is “purist.” Just see if you can do the same thing! Explore. And if you accomplish the same thing using different tools, that’s okay! In fact, it just might give you a leg up on your competition.
I just finished reading Best Photoshop Filters, by Susannah Hall (ISBN 978-0-321-75422-6), 415 pages, retails for $49.99. It discusses all the filters in Photoshop CS6, and there are a slew of them.
Photoshop filters are basically presets that allow you to do one-click modifications to your pictures. Following are 26 examples, using Zoey the Cool Cat as our model. With all of the modifications one can make to the presets, there are probably tens of thousands of different things one can do to one’s pictures. I could have sat here all day playing with these filters but at some point, well, there is work to do and bills to be paid…. :(.
Hope you enjoy these. My favorites are 7, 12, 20, 22, and 26, with 20 being my #1. Let me know your favorites.
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