Does Every Photographer Need to Use Photoshop?

Does every photographer need to use Photoshop? Whether you need it or not may depend upon which genre of photography you enjoy. We discuss alternatives and reasons Photoshop may be right for your needs.

Let’s get into it.

Does Every Photographer Need to Use Photoshop?

I’ll be honest, I use Photoshop and truly enjoy it. However, I don’t always feel the need to use Photoshop to process every image. In some cases, and often most cases, I don’t need it. Using Adobe Lightroom to organize photos and perhaps some 3rd party tools (mentioned below) does a great job to help me finish my photos.

There are some tasks that just don’t work well without Photoshop, though. When you need to go beyond moving a few sliders to enhance a photo, nothing else comes close. Photoshop has post-processing tools that you won’t find in the other tools mentioned below.

Likewise, Lightroom Classic is a great tool to manage your photos and can do a great job to enhance your photos.

Check out my course on organizing your photos in Lightroom
Where’s My Photo?

Why Use Post-Processing Tools?

Photoshop is an extremely powerful tool for manipulating photos, graphics, and text. You’d think it was designed for photographers by the name, but it’s really a tool to help graphic designers. Photographers can definitely benefit from using Photoshop to enhance and finish their photos.

As much as some folks like to brag about their shots coming “straight out of the camera”, the truth is that all photos need some processing. JPEGS coming out of a camera get processed in-camera according to your profile.

Ever shot something on Vivid mode? That’s one of the settings on some cameras that process your photos after the shot to give it a particular look.

RAW photos don’t get this processing, and that’s a good thing. Instead, you get a rather flat looking image to use as a basis to start your post processing.

We have plenty of choices for RAW processors these days:

There are too many to mention, and most do the same thing as far as basic RAW processing. They’re all outstanding. These RAW processing engines allow you to create your own personal style for each photo. Many will let you save those styles as presets to use on other photos, or you can even buy presets developed by other photographers.

The Photoshop Difference

Adobe Camera RAW is part of Adobe Photoshop, but things change once you get inside Photoshop.

Now you have a lot of power and control to manipulate images. Not just by changing color profiles, but by actually warping the pixels to change their shape, remove elements you don’t want and add text & graphics.

If you look closely at cover photos of models on magazines, you’re looking at an image that went through Photoshop. It’s amazing how much gets processed.

The list can go on, but you get the idea. Photoshop lets you do almost anything you can imagine to a photograph. It enables your creativity.

The Problem with Photoshop

With all of that power comes a rather steep learning curve. Once you learn the basics, you may find that it’s still rather time-consuming to do things in Photoshop that are faster, easier, and sometimes less expensive than other tools.

Canva makes it easy to create graphics for social media and products. 3rd party plugins for Photoshop are now morphing into stand-alone tools that can do a great job of enhancing photos, and they do it very quickly.

I think Photoshop is an essential tool for portrait retouching, compositing and some very fine detail work. Combine it with Lightroom Classic and you have an essential powerhouse suite to organize and process your photos.

If you need help learning how to use Photoshop and Lightroom, I recommend KelbyOne.

We discussed several alternatives in this episode, and you can find links to those products and some trial or demo versions to use for a while.

Does every photographer need to use Photoshop?

Honestly, I don’t think so. There are many genres that I think can do excellent work with Lightroom, Luminar and other products. However, I’m glad that I took the time to learn how to use Photoshop. It gives me an opportunity to do what I want if needed, and sometimes that can be the difference between finishing a photo and creating your vision.

Products Mentioned in This Podcast Episode

I mentioned several products in this episode. These are products that I own and use for my photography and that’s why I can recommend them as great tools.

1: Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan

Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are standards in the photography and design industries. I use both programs, but there are plenty of folks who use the Creative Cloud Photography Plan just for Lightroom. If you ever decide you want to use Photoshop, it’s already there as part of your plan.

If you’re planning on working with Portraiture, Compositing, or anything that requires greater control and attention to detail, Photoshop is definitely something I recommend.

2: Skylum Luminar Neo

At the show’s start, I mentioned that you can save $10 on Skylum software using my coupon code.

The new version of Luminar Neo brings the same features to Windows as the Mac version. Take advantage of the free trial to see for yourself. My Luminar coupon code will save you money when you’re ready to buy.

When you check out, use my Skylum coupon code: BEEM

3: ON1 Photo RAW

ON1 Photo RAW does many things, but it’s one of the few tools that can help you with portrait retouching. You can get a free trial, and then save 20% using my ON1 coupon code: WBEEM20.

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