For our very first Ask The Camera Chick question I decided to start with the most common question that I am asked:

Can you really do ANYTHING in Photoshop?

For me, as a Denver wedding photographer, Photoshop is a tool that I use to take good images and make them great images.

After a photography session you’ll find me zipping back to my computer to download all the images from the session. I then start the process of choosing which images have the most potential before starting my post processing work that makes my images ready for my clients to hang on their walls.

In this before and after example you’ll notice that the “before” image is a little dark. Don’t worry, this is done on purpose. When I photograph I prefer to shoot one stop under where I really want to be and I do this very carefully and purposefully. When I have someone looking through the photos with me before I have done the post processing work on the images I can see the look of fear on their faces as they think that I botched the entire session. I have to reassure them that the before images look EXACTLY how I intended them to look.

Which leads us to the first question:

Why do I shoot images one stop under?

One thing that you never want to do is to loose the details in your image. When you open your camera up too wide and let too much light in you risk “blowing out” certain things in the image that are lighter in color such as white clothing, skin, highlights and well lit backgrounds. Which is why I shoot one stop under where my eyes lead me to be. I do this because I know that during post processing I can bring the photo up several stops {meaning lighten the image} but once an image has been blown out you cannot recover the lost detail in the photograph.

And that brings us to the real question:

Can you really do ANYTHING in Photoshop?

No.

Sorry to burst the bubble but Photoshop is not magic. It does, however, allow me to make my photographs look awesome. I LOVE Photoshop!

With the help of Photoshop for my post processing work I was able to take the first image and turn it into better version which you will see in the second image.

I plan to go into more detail in further Ask The Camera Chick posts.

 Do you have a question you would like The Camera Chick to answer? Submit your questions to rachel@racheleng.com