The Click of the Safety Catch

Seek the strongest colour effect possible… the content is of no importance.       -Henri Matisse (1869-1954) 

Let’s talk about the reality of modern photography. Anyone who lives off what they do with a camera will always speak of themselves as a photographer but this does rather forget to mention the development of the images that the camera takes.

This obviously leads us to Photoshop, one of the most polarizing subjects I have ever heard discussed between photographers. Some see it a valuable tool, some as tantamount to lying as it creates something that was never there.  Personally, I see it a natural replacement for the old dark room techniques minus the nasty chemicals, a natural progression along with the move from film cameras to digital.

The major difference comes with quantum leap in the power digital development gives us. The pre digital methods were an art in themselves and Photoshop is no different. However, along with dodging, burning and cross processing we can now do so much more.

And here lies the problem, as the saying goes, “Power is nothing without control”.  The power of Photoshop can easily get out of control. The ease with which we can change the contrast or brightness or saturation leads to taking it for granted.

I noticed in my early days of using Photoshop was that it was all too easy to boost something like saturation far too far and ruin a shot. I thought about an addition like a safety catch, something that would make you pause when you are pushing something too far. 

This all came about because of a mistake I made while editing an image for a client. Being colour blind means I have a tendency to slightly over-saturate and I also happen to prefer it, its part of my style.

It wasn’t until after I had finished working on the clients set and was reviewing the shots that I noticed this one.

Being so involved with the processing of the shot meant that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees and clearly pushed the image well beyond a reasonable limit. 

At a time like this, something that made me stop moving the slider and have to click on it again to move it more would have given me the moment’s pause I needed to bring me out of my focus and see I was making a hash of it. This would be the safety catch.

But this is not where the thought ends; you have to push beyond the plainly ridiculous idea of having a piece of software dictate the creative process, even if it’s just as a warning. How does Photoshop know you are making a mistake, how could it ever? It can’t and it won’t and most important of all, it shouldn’t.

The safety catch we have isn’t in Photoshop, it’s within us. Something we develop and grow from our experience and the mistakes we make.

We learn the most when we cock up and realise it. This is where we get our safety catch from. Photoshop is a tool, nothing more. Just like the camera itself. Incredibly powerful but completely subservient to the creative impulse. 

This is how we improve ourselves; this is how we grow our safety catch.

Only by pushing things beyond the acceptable limits and seeing what happens can we see where the edges are and learn and understand the rules.

These experiences feed back into the catch and develops it further, understanding the rule give you ability to break it when you need for creative reasons. This post by is a great example Elizabeth Halford. 

Having seen the mistakes I made, I got the chance to go back and change them, thanks to Photoshop. I could adjust the saturation to a more suitable level. 

Although the shot itself isn’t that good, nothing I would give to the client, I have kept  it. I keep the oversaturated shot on a board near my desk, a proud failure, a horrendous success. A shot that will be in my private portfolio forever now, constantly reminding me to listen for the quite click in the back of my head as the safety catch engages.