Is it wrong to advise people to learn photography?

it can all be done in photoshop right?





a great camera and photoshop will make me a pro right?





its just luck isnt it?





those people who go and study the science and art of photography are all stupid dont they know photoshop?





only fools use lights and study photography now theres photoshop?





its about the eye?





i was born with the eye?





seven questions how many you agree with?





aIs it wrong to advise people to learn photography?
It does not make any difference how much lipstick you put on a pig, it is still just a pig. Or, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. If your original picture is bad, what ever you do with photoshop will not help it much.Is it wrong to advise people to learn photography?
Well, addressing the seven questions:





1) It cannot all be done in Photoshop鈥攜ou need to have a good photo to start with.





2) I think there is some degree of luck when you first start out, but going down to your question about the eye, the more practiced you become the more you understand where the great shot is and you take it. Naturally there are always lucky circumstances for some shots, but there is more to it than pure luck. Always.





3) A great camera and PS will not make anyone a pro. Sure, you could setup shop and sell pics, maybe folks will buy them?





4) I wouldn't say that. Remember, learning about photography rather than just learning abotu PS is what is needed. Moreover, the folks who learn to develop film and understand the artistic ways to develop, manipulate, and adjust photos are going to have even better ideas when it comes to using PS.





5) See my above answer. :)





6) Having a good eye for photography indeed helps. The more shots you take the more great shots you will take. I've gone to car racing weekends and taken 1000 shots a day. In them I've got fantastic shots, blurry shots, and ordinary shots. Continuing the autoracing thing, though, I have one great shot from a couple of years ago where I caught a driver locking up and smoking a tyre. I watched him do it every lap he went by, so I took a shot at him doing it again and have a nice one. Another time I saw a race where one car was producing a nice big flame out the exhaust everytime he downshifted for the Moss corner at Mosport. So, seeing this as a possibly good photo, I took aim and it turned out I have a shot with a nice blast of fire coming from the back of the car.





7) Maybe; maybe not? How can we know? You can know if you have a lot of great photos.





There are people who never get good at it. They take pics of everything and they're always off focus, always off centre, and so on. There is so much to taking great photos.





So, there should be some learning done. Even a photography appreciation course at a local college has its merits. I had the good fortune to have a course in CEGEP (in Canada) where not only was I taught a lot about taking the photos, I developed my own (B%26amp;W). Going digital in the last few years has afforded me the chance to play around and take thousands of shots per year. It has helped me become better at it, and it has stirred my passion for it.





RP
Personally I use Paintshop Pro but it uses the same filters as Photshop - I have run a successful Australian digital scrapbooking site in the past and everyone involved in this heavilly rely on mostly PS and PSP - they also try to perfect their photo taking skills - you can tell when a photo has been touched up as compared to a photo that is raw but perfect.





Im affraid I cant agree with you on myst of your pooints - I do believe you need to have an eye for good photography but I cant see that going off to learn an art properly can be called stupid.





I honestly believe there is a need for good photo taking skills - consider this you have a fairly average every day happy snap or you have a photo with the right lense and the right light etc etc and then you take them both to photoshop or painshop pro - the better photo - the one taken with care and love will still turn out to be the better photo in the end.
I have seen people perform music in public with one of those keyboards with a built in drum machine and pre-programmed accompaniment. My God, it is 99% rubbish, but some people who were born without ';ears'; think it's just wonderful. This is what happens when you count on a machine to do an artist's work.





The best use for Photoshop is to put the ink on the paper. The less work you have to do in Photoshop, the better the photography.





I'm not saying that it isn't fun to play with your results sometime, but obviously the better the input (the photography) is, the better the output (the print) will be.





~~~~~~~





Kazz and anyone else who does not know antoni, please read a few of his other questions before you conclude that he is just a hack who really thinks the way this question might seem. Most of the questions above are rhetorical.
You can advise, but that doesn't mean people will take your advice.
As a photography student i can say that it is definitely not a waste of time.





You learn the visual language of how to decide what you are trying to say and translate it into a visual form.





it's not so much the technique as it is what you do with it.





And no - photoshop can not replace good lighting, right angles %26amp; framing or a balanced composition.


it can improve it, and create a better image - but you need a good base to start with.
if it works for you that is great but some peopel need help to get the eye and shoot photography using rules


it is all about the end photo for me and how you get there is of no interest. but most good photos fall into the rules if you look at them


great debat.............. thanks
When I first took an interest in this accursed hobby, I went out and bought a boat load of the best pro gear that 1985 had to offer(I couldn't afford anything newer).





I ended up with 7 working cameras and 16 top-drawer prime lenses from 20mm through 400mm.





I also spent a lot of time learning way too many more technical details than any person needs to know. I learned the zone system, and as much of the chemistry behind the film as I could possibly learn.





Despite all this, I came to the realization one day that all I had to show were many thousands of frames of crap. Sure, I had thousands of frames of perfectly exposed, perfectly developed film, but that didn't change the fact that it was completely boring and mostly just taking up space on my shelf.





Since my epiphany, I've been trying my improve my photographs to the point where other people actually care to look at them. I still don't claim to be good, but I do at least feel like I've improved some.





If nothing else, though, I don't feel like my time spent learning technical details was wasted. I can, at least, in general, carry on even with meterless cameras without having to put too terribly much thought into it, thus leaving me free to improve my photographic composition.
People should learn, photography, no question.





Just like anything else, photoshop is a tool. You wouldn't tell someone using film that all they can do is expose the film in camera and then develop the negative based on the ISO of the film an that's the end of it.





I believe as other great photographers believe, that the final image is that which you have printed or displayed on screen as the final version. Now this can change over time.





Do some people abuse the power they have in photoshop? Sure they do, just like people could abuse the use of checmicals and techniques in the wet darkroom.





If a person is taking images for the sake of art and not documentary or journalistic purposes, then the image is up for interpretation and manipulation.





Even the societally etablished greats Like Ansel Adams %26amp; W. Eugene Smith did extensive work to their images in the darkroom. If you look at their original negatives and had prints made by what is considered ';proper'; techniques and exposure for the images they took, they would look nothing like the iconic images we have today.
Gooday Mate You Can't Photoshop Perfection.


Sure You Can Produce A Good Image But Without True Artistic Incite The Image Will Have No Soul And Be Just Like Any Other Mass Produced Picture!