Teaching an Old Doodah New Tricks

Wie die Forelle, das Photoshop hängt von meinen Daumen

Now, now. We know that it’s just an expression and that my dad, a.k.a. Doodah, is NOT old. He is, however, older than me, which means that I should be surpassing him in terms of my overall technological prowess, right? Not so! In fact, most of the time, he’s showing me how to work the proverbial VCR. So it should come as no surprise that, even though I work in the industry of digital imagery and photofinishing, he has quickly surpassed me in ninja Photoshop skills. While I’m still playing with color variations on safe and suburban Elements, he is boldly working with layers and white balance, an urban pioneer of digital imaging. It’s not fair!

I present the following as evidence of this unbalance of power:


Who are these strange, shadowy people who emerge from the swamp bearing dead animals?


I don't know, but I think they have hepatitis!


Oh- hey! It's Kathleen and Thomas. Does that Elmer Fudd hat make her look fat?

So we have the original shot, followed by my bilirubinal interpretation courtesy of Elements, followed by my father's severely superior final version courtesy of Full Blown Photoshop (I forget what version he is using).

Is it perfect? Probably not. But he's only been using a full version of Photoshop for a few weeks. I'm holding out for that whole "same genetic material" thing to imbue me with sudden imaging powers. I have hope that colleagues will someday be coming to me for bits of wisdom like "remove some cyan from the midtones and then check your RGB levels." Someday . . .