So recently I’ve been going through a “professional existential crisis”. Well sort of… recently I have been returning to my roots so to speak. even though I’ve always wanted to be a photographer (actually I also wanted to be a designer or cartoonist), my “real” career in this business started as a retoucher or you could call me a digital artist or digital retoucher or…. you see …this is the problem. I’m not sure what to call what I do. I’m definitely a photographer but that doesn’t really cut it. I also never liked the term “retoucher”– too limiting. I’m also just old enough to remember the term referring to an analog process.We used to use the term “digital imaging” but that also describes several unrelated fields including medical and document imaging. Digital artist is okay but could mean an illustrator. The term “Graphic artist” works okay too but really doesn’t cover retouching per se.

To add some more confusion to the list is the changing of the word Photoshop into a verb much to the chagrin of Adobe. So is it possible to be a Photoshopper — one who Photoshops? How many times is the phrase “we can Photoshop it” uttered. Interestingly according to Google (yes I “Googled” it) the phrase “how to Photoshop” is searched on average over 300,000 times a month as compared to 27,100 times for “how to use photoshop”– see what I mean.  Yes we do have the occasional “Photoshop expert”, and even a few Photoshop “Gurus” floating around. Actually I  dislike the term “guru” used with Photoshop, I don’t know why, but I just do– it feels a bit “cultish”. Don’t get me wrong I know a few Photoshop gurus and they are really nice folks, but you might want to think twice if your offered Koolaid at the next Photoshop seminar you attend :) But I rant…

The fact is, Photoshop can be used for so many purposes it really doesn’t work well as a verb. In any case some of my best work has been done outside of Photoshop. Some folks would tell me my problem is I’m not focused enough – okay I’ll give you that – maybe what I do can’t be boiled down to one term. Maybe I should conentrate on one area. In the end I just want to create cool images that make people stop and think a minute. Does it matter what we call it? What do you think?

Philip Nealey is an Omaha Nebraska based Photographer, retoucher, Photoshop expert and graphic artist. He also publishes two blogs unsharpmasked.com  a site about Photoshop, photography and photo industry news, and Art Buyers News, a news aggregating site that gathers news from around the net of interest to creative buyers.

Filed under: Editorial, Photoshop