Podcast 2 Year Anniversary – Julianne Kost
so. Isn't that one of the challenges with Lightroom and Photoshop, that these pieces of software can land rockets on the moon, they're so powerful, yet people have to start with no knowledge to begin using them? Th- th- there's so, there's so much that they can do that there's a learning curve, but once they learn it, it can do anything. Isn't that one of the ongoing opportunities for Adobe? I think it is. I mean, we're always trying to make it easier to get into our products and become successful more quickly. But at the same time, I would say yes, and that's why they make a lot of automatic cars. Yeah. But if you really wanna be, like, a Formula One driver- Yeah. ... you're gonna need to know what's going on under the hood. Yeah. And I think that, I think that the more you can master your tools, then the less you have to think about them, right? Like, when you're a photographer and you're first learning, there's, like, this thing called aperture, you know? The, and then there's shutter speed, and then there's ISO. So there's this, like, same trifecta of Photoshop, which has, like, layers and maskings and, you know, like. Yeah. And it's hard to learn them all at once, but once you master them all and put them together, then some really beautiful things happen, where you're no longer thinking. Yeah. In those, like- Yeah ... okay, do I have to set, what's the ISO? What, okay, I want this depth of field. What should I set my camera to? It's the same in Photoshop and Lightroom. It's, I think it's the same with anything. Once you master those tools, you don't have to think about them, then all your brain can focus on being creative. Yeah, so it won't get in the way. So that's one thing I do cr- encourage people. Like, you don't have to know everything in Photoshop. You don't have to know everything in Lightroom. Just know what you, you want to know to do what you want to do, and master that so that you can be creative. Sounds like learning an instrument. When you learn the technology well enough that you're not really thinking about flipping the switches or sliding the sliders, you're more in your creative flow and creative zone. Yeah. It takes it to an entirely different level. Okay. I'm gonna subject you to my favorite question for an expert, okay? 'Cause I love, I'm fascinated with the way experts think. Okay. You see a picture. Since you're a Photoshop expert, do you see a picture in layers, like we do in Photoshop? Tell me how you see a picture, how you think about using Photoshop as you set up images. Is that how you see it? So, um, am I seeing the printed picture, or am I visualizing a photograph? Yeah, you're, like, visualize like you're gonna take a- Okay ... photo of our set here. Are you looking at the depth, the layers, and how it's all gonna come together in Photoshop? I think I do. Yeah. I, but here, here's, let me give you some reasoning behind that. So for one, I, I mentioned my mom, uh, was an artist, so she did silk screens. So from a very early age she would, um, if you're not familiar with the printing process, you, you do one color at a time and you overlap them. So first of all, my mom's breaking down all of her illustrations into shapes and colors, right? Yeah. And so then I would take, you know, she'd pull the screen, push the paint through it, pick up the piece of paper. I'd take the paper out into the hallway and let it dry. So I was, I was seeing, you know, year after year, you put down one thing, you put down something else, you put down another thing, and oh my gosh, it makes something completely different. So the whole building process, I think, came rather naturally to me. Now that I know what I can do in Photoshop, and I think that really helps, that mastering the tool, then when I look at a scene or when I'm thinking of a composite, then I can split it into those layers in order to build it And a lot of times, you know, a composite is gonna have the same kind of rules as, I guess you'd call it a straight photograph, where you still need a bunch of things to come together, right? So I'm just thinking of, okay, in my composite, I'm gonna set up a stage. Then I'm gonna put my primary, you know, actor on that stage, and maybe there'll be some secondary, you know, supporting characters. So I think in a lot of ways, we, we think in layers, maybe without even knowing it. Yeah. Because think about a photojournalist. He's gonna, he or she is gonna sit there and they're gonna create their background, and they're gonna wait for that person to walk through it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So they've set the scene, so they're thinking in layers as well. Or you're waiting for that action to happen on the football field or whatever sport you're photographing, and you're just, you're anticipating it, and so you're thinking about it, but you're also like, "Well, I wanna line up the background. I've gotta make sure what's in the foreground." And when all those things come together, that's when you get that great, successful photograph. And once you're competent in using Photoshop, and an expert or at least at a flow level like we just talked about- Yes ... if I want this image, I may take multiple images to then make the composite in Photoshop. Yes, absolutely. Fascinating. And, and I'll take them from different angles, too. Like, if I don't have... I'm not the kind of person that thinks of an idea and then goes out and photographs it. Like, if I see something outside that evokes some kind of emotional or a visceral reaction to me, I will photograph it, knowing that I might put it in a composite. Well, but I don't know what that, it's gonna look like. Will it be high? Will it be low? Will it... You know, so I'll photograph it from a few different angles. Yeah. And hopefully on a, um, on an overcast day so there isn't too much contrast. Yeah. Yeah. Right. W- I wanna talk about some of the new stuff that's in Lightroom and the new stuff that's in Photoshop, but the, this is the Creative Play series. So let's just spend a quick minute talking about, how would you coach someone to try new things, have some creative play inside the software? Does anything come to mind with Lightroom or Photoshop? Yeah. Just to fiddle around and be like, "Oh, I didn't know it could do that." Like, what would you recommend? Don't do it on deadline. Yeah, yeah, good point. Not on deadline. Do not, uh- Let me type that in, yeah ... do not, like, upgrade the, the day that some huge project is due. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I try to give myself little assignments or, um, personal projects that, where I can learn things. Yeah, so for example, like, I wasn't super keen when, you know- When Lightroom first came out on the mobile device, I was like, "Oh, please," like, "Who's gonna edit their photos on a mobile device? That's crazy." But that's the exact kind of thing where I'm like, "Okay, stop it, Julieanne. You don't know. You are totally judging before you've tried it." So I gave myself a little assignment of, you know, photograph, I had to come away with three pictures on a theme every day. So it could've been, you know, whatever I saw. Three flowers, um, three objects that are blue. It didn't matter, and I posted them to Instagram, and I, I, I got a kick out of it. Not only did I learn the technology, you know, and it was fun, it was, you know. And these were just things like I, when I do a project like that that it's gonna take some time, I limit it. So I'm like, "All right, I'm gonna limit this to 15 minutes a day," and I had to post them to Instagram, and this was like, this was back in the day where Instagram would still show you three images in a row. Right. And then people could kinda vote on them, right? Yeah. Like, they were kinda like, and I was like, "Oh, well I learned a lot from that," and I just learned a ton from picking up my camera every day.
