Always. Take a formula 1 race car..if you don't know the specifics
about how to race it, you will crash and die. Heck...ever notice
that a manual transmission car is slightly harder to drive than an
automatic, but it's always faster given the same other specs.
Power=complexity.
There is always a constant trade off between power and convenience.
The thing is: people who use photoshop want to be able to control
every aspect of the image. Given the unbelievable power that
Photoshop contains, it is incredibly easy to use. You do have to
learn what you're doing, though, like anything. The Curves tool
alone takes weeks to really, really get used to tweaking
everything, but I made a determined effort because I've seen what
it can do. Now, I can go into Curves, because of the easy to
understand interface, make the tweaks I need to in usually less
than a minute and drastically improve / correct the contrast, color
balance and such.
One thing to realize is that nearly every photograph relies on some
sort of processing. In film, it's the darkroom. I shoot straight
digital, which, due to the anti-aliasing filter on the camera,
requires a bit of sharpening in nearly every image. Also, tweaking
the contrast and color can let you create your vision of the image.
Now, definitely, the better the original photo (proper exposure,
tack sharp, etc) the better it will be to work with in Photoshop.
It's not a cure all, but it can make great photos truly stunning.
I've been using Photoshop since v4, about 8 years total, and I'm
still learning things on a regular basis. I'd actually only say I
know about 75% of the tools well, and probably less than half of
what can really be done with them, and I know a LOT. There's just
that much power. Even so, when I first started, I was able to use
the levels tool and basic layers very easily. As I grew more
experienced, I started to unlock the more powerful features of the
program...I'm still learning. Lots of times I will find easier and
better ways to do things I was really a slave to, but I learn and
get that much better. But I can do things now that I never would
have been able to do 3 years ago. In another 5 years, I'll be that
much better.
Personally, the dumbed-down interface on something like Elements is
exceedingly frustrating. I don't want the stuff completely
automated, since every image is different, and I know a lot better
than the program what I want the final image to look like. Sure,
there are some things that could be a little better, but that's
every program. I'm also not saying that you can't have easy to use
things that do powerful things...just that if you want the control
over the details, it means more complexity, more options, and more
ways to do things.
Photoshop also has many different levels of the complexity. Curves
can do everything that Levels can do...but levels is easier to
understand. It also doesn't do the rest of what curves can do.
Curves can effectively replace levels, hue/saturation, color
balance, and contrast/brightness. However, you really need to know
what you're doing in some respects on that. If you just want to
increase contrast without delving into curves, you can just use the
easier contrast adjustment. Usually the results won't be as good,
but you can use it.
Also, there are about 15 different methods to sharpen an image, and
they all have strengths and weaknesses. You can use the simple
"sharpen" or "sharpen more" if you want, or you can take more
control and use Unsharp Mask. You can also use the sharpen tool,
layers with unsharp mask to create selective sharpening, high pass
sharpening, luminance channel sharpening, etc, etc, all with
slightly different results. You don't HAVE to know those things to
sharpen an image, but they're there if you need them to get the
effect you can't get with just the 'sharpen' command. Power =
complexity.
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