WWAD?

What Would Ansel Do? (stealing a question from the Evangelists). I've often wondered how Ansel Adams would be responding to Photoshop, megapixels and dpi. Would he be using Photoshop to manipulate the Hurter and Driffield curve he helped to define in practical terms? In his day, he had to adjust the slope and shape of the curve through careful and exhaustive testing of many film, developer and development time combinations. This was the only way to adjust image contrast and hold the Zone III shadows and the Zone VI highlights within the printable range of the paper.



Today, a few mouse clicks offer many times more flexibility with the results immediately viewable on the screen in front of you. Colour balance problems? Split your RGB image into its channels and adjust the curve of each to get just the right balance. Want to create a negative to print on platinum? Download one of the many available ready-made curves designed especially for platinum. It's almost too easy.

Ansel Adams was a keen experimenter and early adopter of new technology. If the result was a print which captured his artistic intention more precisely, he used it. Would he use Photoshop?