Photoshop is an amazing platform that gives photographers the ability to cut apart, piece together, adjust, fix, and manipulate photos. To illustrate, let's assume I just shot a portrait that looked great on set -- great smile, strong posture, balanced lighting. However, during processing I notice a few stray hairs strung across the face. Photoshop is great for fixing minor flaws like that. Here's another example of how the program is best used. When shooting photos of products, some clients want their images displayed against a pure white backdrop. To accomplish this, I would first shoot the product against a white backdrop. Unfortunately though, it's difficult to get a white background exposed to "pure white" without compromising the exposure of the subject. That's where Photoshop comes into play. In this case, a pure white background can be achieved using extractions -- essentially cutting the subject (product) out of the original photo and placing it against a false background. In fact, sometimes it's not even necessary to shoot against a white background. I know colleagues who shoot products and get great extraction results regardless of the background found in the original exposure. Those are just two examples of what Photoshop is commonly used for.
What Photoshop Is Not:
Let's be clear -- Photoshop is not a magician. While the algorithms used for some of Photoshop's tools have become amazingly sophisticated, they are not perfect. I'm not necessarily criticizing Photoshop's programmers. Obviously, they're geniuses. But as a photographer, I'm acutely aware Photoshop can't simply make something out of nothing -- the original image still has to be a quality photo. Photoshop has fantastic cloning capabilities, accurate healing brushes, color correction and plenty of other tools. But because of those tools I often hear things like, "You can just remove that. Just change it in Photoshop. You can just add that in later, right?" While a lot of replacements, additions and changes can be made with Photoshop, making those changes can become very complex and involved. There are so many variables that need to be taken into account, so it takes a lot of time and a lot of pixel pushing. Making drastic changes to images -- like removing objects and adding people -- requires a lot of time and skill in order to make sure the final photo still looks authentic.
Photoshop is an amazing tool, but it's not a wizard. While its capabilities extend far beyond the examples I've illustrated, keep in mind utilizing many of those capabilities is not as simple as you might think. It's still best to capture a great image and use Photoshop to make minor corrections.
