Has anyone ever told you that you’re cheating when you apply any post-processing to your image after the initial capture of that image? Well, the reality is that what you were told is completely true. You see, for decades, cameras have had the innate ability to perceive what the scene should look like. In fact, all cameras have always been built with special recognition and reproduction capabilities that quite literally take all the hard work away from the photographer. This leaves you, the photographer, with a much easier job. The advent of the Edit Photo button within Photoshop is simply another way that technology has made our job, as photographers, much easier.

I remember the first time that I had the chance to press the shutter, and to experience what it was like watching my camera start creating the perfect picture. I have no idea how it works, but I am so glad that I don’t have to do any of those calculations on my own. The camera knows! Call it intuition, maybe instinct, but every camera in existence has the ability to pre-determine what every picture should look like. I guess you could say that this first part of the article is really about how you should trust your camera. The camera’s instincts are never wrong. But, what we’re really here to talk about is the incredible post-production tool inside Photoshop called the “Edit Photo” button. It’s seriously amazing.

The premise behind the Edit Photo button is pretty simple. See, way back in time, when Photoshop was still relatively young, Adobe realized that it was silly for anyone to actually want to change how an image looks once it leaves the camera. But, they were also considerate enough to realize that even though that is the case for most of us, that there will always be a few people here and there that will want to change the image anyway. Knowing that these sorts of people will never stop taking pictures and they will certainly never stop modifying those pictures afterwards, Adobe was gracious enough to give us the all-powerful Edit Photo button. This mechanics of the button are still unknown. What is known about it is that it has the ability to take any image, any photograph, any drawing, anything really, and transform that image instantly into a masterpiece. All you have to do is open up the image that requires modification, press the button, and then your entire post-processing job is complete!

I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty embarrassing to admit how long it took me to figure out how to harness this awesome power, but over the years I have come to rely 100% on this simple tool to process all my images. But then, I am one of those weirdos who initially thought that it was important to modify the photographs even after the initial camera exposure, so naturally automated processes like an Edit Photo button eventually made sense to me. I’m pretty excited to see where this technology goes! Who knows, maybe it’ll even get to the point where the camera can exchange ideas with the computer via cellular data, and we won’t even have to process the images anymore (this is not to say that the images needed to be processed in the first place, just that it would be an option).

But, it’s like lots of really smart people have said across the ages; “It’s better to work smarter than it is to work harder.” The Edit Photo button just seems like one of those smart things that will save us all a lot of time in the long run!