As we gear up to purchase the next version of Photoshop. I can't help but wonder, is Photoshop really worth teaching?
From where I sit, education is about helping people to develop into free thinking and creative individuals. Photoshop is one of the areas I teach.
I've wondered about this before.
Photoshop has been around for 10 plus years. In the interim it, Photoshop, has become the dominant photo editing application. Dominant but not necessarily the best, fastest or cheapest.
This places me as an educator, between a rock and a hard place. While Photoshop is a powerful tool, any professional photographer knows that up to 80% of it's functions are not of any real studio/commercial use. Look at Lightroom and Aperture for example. The breadth and depth of photo editing tools and raw processing tools out there, is astounding, and probably ever growing.
Do I teach the students how to use photoshop, well, a time consuming task and skill, and risk them being curious about to how to do the job cheaper, faster and easier, or show them how to use and evaluate software that may give them more options at some point in the future, but only give them a fleeting understanding of photoshop?
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yeah brenda, we already do this, some students enjoy and explore this area of photography, others don't
Or 3) teach them to use a conventional darkroom.
Presumably you already do that though? I've not been reading you long enough to know.
Retouching is a whole new business area here, kids leaving college might never take another photo but many of them would make brilliant retouchers and will go on to have great careers in this niche, I'm sure.
So what does a retoucher need to learn in today's fast-moving commercial world? Certainly not the likes of um, HDR. Definitely cloning and lots of other layery-type apps.
It's a great question though, and digs at my own innate resistance to the thing. ;)
Yes cos, but the techniques sometimes vary from app to app. Even the approach to basic principles may be different.
how to teach the techniques rather than the product?