The God of the Gaps

“Get it right in camera,” the angel on your shoulder used to whisper. This is the photographer’s mantra, reinforcing keystone ideas of professionalism, attention to detail in one’s work, even truth. But as well as being best practice, it’s also solid advice. Stopping a mid-shoot flow to tweak a small adjustment to some minor detail is still often far, far less bother than dealing with it later in post-production, where it grows from detail, to niggle, to nuisance, to faff.

But the devil on your other shoulder says, “Fix it in post.” It’s a more convincing and reasonable temptation than ever, as his tools have got better and better.

To be clear, yes, I am talking about Photoshop in this holy metaphor, specifically in combination with AI. It is now the toolbox of the devil, making easy work for idle hands. Or something. Whatever. It allows me to shoehorn in the following statement: 

While the temptation (for fixing in post) is theological, the consequences are eschatological.

With every PS update, every new tool, there’s been finer and finer control, and fewer features lacking. Adobe has been filling in the gaps, and post-production has been getting easier, taking care of more and more.

But - and this is key - you still need to know why, how, and when to use which tools; as well as the principles underlying it.

Or at least you did. But in many ways it’s out of control now, and has been since the end of 2023, when Generative Fill (“Jen Phil” if you want to sound cool (like me)). For those of you who don’t know, it’s an AI tool, and you tell it what you want it to do to an image. You literally draw around the thing you want to change, and type your wildest dream into a box e.g. "make it sharp”, “fix the colours”, “remove the litter,” or, “add a cat.” 

Yes, it’s still a bit shit and unpredictable and stupid at times, but they solved the extra fingers, and the weird eyes are at least a bit less weird, so give them a year. Or a month?

Anyway, it’s not really a toolbox now, but more of a service. Editing / retouching is basically solved, and - this is again key - the need to understand any of it is approaching zero. Not for everything, but a lot.

You now don’t need to know that wrinkles are basically contrast. Or what “low” and “high” frequency mean. The sweet feel of a luminosity blend mode applied to a curves layer. That liquify is easily overdone. When to heal and when to clone.

An example: reflections in glasses. 

Getting it right in camera means shifting the person and/or the lights around. It’s GCSE physics: angles of incidence and reflection. But more than this, it means noticing it at the time, or, better, foreseeing it so it’s not even an issue.

Using (pre-AI) Photoshop - but, importantly, not “fixing in post” - might involve taking a photo of the person with their glasses, and one without, and then comping them together in PS using a variety of (slightly sketchy when I do it) methods. And to be clear: 20 years ago, this very idea would have irked the film purists, for similar reasons to my irkiness now.

And now we have AI reflection removal, where all you need to do is notice you messed up, type in, “remove reflections,” and boom, done. (Although already Jen Phil can usually figure out that’s what you wanted even if you don’t type anything in, and soon will notice it before you do.)

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Gen Fill feels more and more like a cheat. Which might sound great, but what if I actually enjoy the Photoshoppery problem-solving involved at the end of the planning-shooting-retouching sequence? The things I considered before the shoot (or at least noticed at the time) which I know how to, plan to, and would like to tackle at the end, at leisure. There’s *so* much less a sense of satisfaction now in relinquishing my judgement and creativity - even (some) of the tedious labour itself - for a result which is rarely quite what I wanted, nor how I’d do it, and which I didn’t actually “do”. Much of it for the sake of the new mantra, “You have to use AI.”

Honestly, lots of it is kind of ruined now. But why would I go back to the “old ways” when they’re slow, and unnecessary? My knowledge feels obsolete.

On the bright side, at least with all this extra time we now have we’re taking up tennis. Right?