"my gripe is with the people who look at Photoshop as part of the photographic routine - if that's the case, you are NOT a photographer - you are a GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATOR...perhaps fully capable of manipulating any image into whatever you want to create, but it takes a PHOTOGRAPHER to create it in the camera!" Even to mess about in Photoshop, you still have to have that decent photo to start with - it's bloody hard work and requires a LOT of skill to make a bad photo a good one just using Photoshop. You can't polish a turd. Oh, and I reckon a real graphic illustrator would consider me to be a photographer, seeing as how I start with photo's. "but it seems that Photoshop has become a tool to 'adjust' photos that should have been created in-camera to begin with. It's become a crutch and an excuse for poor technique and vision." Wow. I'd like to see the camera that produces the pictures that are in MY head.......everything I do to my images can be done in a darkroom. I haven't got the skill (or technique) to do it there, and I don't think 99% of the people who post here could reproduce my pics in the darkroom either. That doesn't mean the people posting here (inc me) aren't good. "Photoshop skills are an artform in itself - but, perhaps, Photoshop capabilities need top be posted in the Photoshop forum...?" Agreed - as per my comment above, if we did this the photography gallery wouldn't be as big or as interesting, and maybe the Photoshop gallery would be watered down a bit? Apart from that, you had some pretty valid points ;) (",)