Adobe's “Skip the photoshoot” is offensive. But it's not wrong
Adobe is forcing us to ask the question: What is the value of an idea, and what is the value of the delivery of that idea?
Programming note: For today’s issue, we’re both sounding off on the same topic—Adobe’s “Skip the photoshoot” Photoshop ad. James’ essay is below, followed by Ross’ reaction just after.
During last Friday’s Vergecast, Nilay Patel mentioned that his interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen had drawn the most “unhappy notes” for a Decoder podcast. Reading through the comments on the article it certainly looks that way: Creatives are mad at Adobe. But when it comes to photographers, they are apoplectic right now.
And here’s why: Adobe recently ran a programmatic ad showcasing Photoshop’s tool to generate a background and “skip the photoshoot.” The ad was shared by Clayton Cubitt on Twitter (still not calling it X, still not sorry) and the outrage grew, culminating in an open letter by the American Society of Media Photographer (ASMP) to Adobe and articles in PetaPixel and Fast Company. I suspect this push back is far from over.
I have a number of different takes on this story but let's start with the first and most obvious: "Skip the Photoshoot'' is mind bogglingly tone deaf on Adobe’s part. The photographic community, and indeed many people in the wider creative industry, are already experiencing less work, declining pay, and understandably feeling that AI is only going to make everything worse. To be blunt, “skip the photoshoot” is deeply insulting.
It’s hard not to see this ad as anything less than Adobe holding up two fingers (UK style) and saying “fuck you” to all the photographers who, like me, have been using Photoshop since the early 90s. Of all the products within the Adobe Creative Suite, I use Photoshop the most and know it best. And I am not alone; I know for a fact that Photoshop is by far the most popular and most widely used of all Adobe’s apps and of course, not only by photographers.
I suspect that Adobe aimed "skip the photoshoot" at everyone who uses Photoshop who is not a photographer or even a creative. But—and to be clear, this is in no way an excuse for the terrible copywriting and genuinely insulting messaging—as a former photographer, I also can't deny that I see the benefit in what Adobe is selling.
When it comes to using Photoshop, the AI tools, “generate background,” “generative fill” and in particular “remove background” are staggeringly useful, especially AI cutout. I first used Remove Background (before Photoshop had one of its own) when working at Polygon; it saved days of my life. Prior to that I was cutting out the good ol’ fashioned way: using “select color range” and masks. Complex collage illustrations like the lead art for the Avengers: Endgame review took me almost 10 hours to complete. Much of that time was spent cutting out the characters.
Once I began using AI, I could create complex final artwork in a quarter of the time it took before. It was like using a food processor in the kitchen: Why chop, shred, or puree by hand when you can do the same work in a fraction of the time?
AI will fundamentally change significantly the “craft” of being a photographer and the associated business model. There will undoubtedly be casualties. We’ve been down this road before and I remember it well.
And therein lies the rub: For a photographer or any professional creative, using any of Adobe’s AI tools is, I would argue, all upside; why do the work “by hand” when the “machine” can do it for you. It’s win-win.
But this is where the food metaphor breaks down: Nobody thinks less of a good chef because they use a food mixer, not least the people paying to eat at the restaurant. But Adobe is implying that you, the customer, can cut out the chef entirely and still make a Michelin-grade meal all by yourself. No culinary school, mentorship, or long-term experience required.
And I fear they may be right. This all feels inevitable. AI will fundamentally change significantly the “craft” of being a photographer and the associated business model. There will undoubtedly be casualties. We’ve been down this road before and I remember it well.
Back in the late 90s/early 00s when I was still living in London (I am British by birth) and working as a photographer, I switched from shooting with film to using a digital camera and Photoshop to process all of my photos. As a result, I went from paying roughly $130,000 annually on film processing and printing at the best lab in London (Metro Photographic in Clerkenwell) to spending under $200 the year after I switched to digital. I wasn’t alone; lots of photographers made that same pivot to digital and within a few years, Metro Photographic had gone under. All of the people who worked in the labs and darkrooms, many of whom became friends and drinking mates over the years, lost their jobs. It was brutal. It was the same story with every other lab I had ever used in London.
With the labs gone, the transition to digital only accelerated further. I moved to the US in 2005 and by the time the first iPhone launched in 2007, the steady rise of social media (in particular, Instagram) meant that now most of the photographs that people saw were taken by “amateurs:” people they knew rather than professional photographers. As a result, more photographers saw their careers decline dramatically and come to a rather sad end. Including me.
One can argue that the release of Photoshop in 1990 set in motion a disruptive chain reaction that would encompass the switch from film to digital cameras to smartphones and the rise of social media for sharing to change the entire photographic industry as many had known it. I know in some small way my own shift to digital played a small part of the upheaval. Now AI threatens to close the circle completely by cutting out the whole photography part of the taking pictures process completely. Just type in the photograph you want to see and AI will provide it for you.
“Skip the photoshoot” was a massive misstep from a marketing perspective and offensive to Adobe’s enormous creative community. But insensitive though it is, it isn’t wrong; Adobe is simply saying the quiet part out loud: They’re all in on AI—Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said as much on Decoder.
I haven’t earned my living working as a photographer for years. But that doesn’t mean I stopped taking photographs. In reality I probably took more photos in my three years at The Verge than I did in the previous ten. But I also wrote words, designed graphics, made illustrations and even appeared in a video or two. I describe my career pivot as the following: I used to be a plumber; now I am an architect who can do his own plumbing, and I am much happier for it.
But none of this means that I don’t sympathize or understand the very real and legitimate concerns that photographers and the wider creative community have for the rapid deployment of AI. Adobe and their somewhat sanctimonious words of concern and support for the creative industry are straight out of the Sheryl Sandberg “we hear you and must do better” Silicon Valley lexicon of bullshit. “Skip the photoshoot” is offensive but at least we now know what Adobe are really thinking and we have to change our thinking as a result.
The technical “craft” side of creativity, be it photography, design, illustration, music video is an intrinsic part of the process. But it is also one that has been in constant change for decades, centuries even—from the camera obscura to the iPhone. The issue we’re facing with AI is not the extent of change, but the pace of that change: AI is ushering a frenetic period of disruption that is happening so fast that very few of us have little time to react and adapt, especially when coupled with a rapidly changing media landscape.
Yet, despite the Godzilla-sized threat AI poses to the creative industry, it will also create opportunities for something new. This isn’t just mindless optimism on my part; it’s more a practical reaction.
Because technological evolution has stripped away so much of the craft of creativity, we, as creatives, need to focus more on our ideas and less on technical execution. I know that sounds easy, but I know it’s not. But that doesn’t make it wrong. As much as many of us want AI to be the villain, it’s simply not true; it is neither good nor bad, or maybe it’s both.
MBH4H exists to ask the question, what is human creativity in the era of AI? But Adobe’s headlong rush into AI brings another question to the fore: What is the value of an idea compared to the value of the delivery of that idea?
I don’t know the answer to that. But it’s something that I think we’re going to be thinking and writing about a lot more over the coming weeks. —James
Another Take: The future of Photoshop has always been to leave photographers behind
For the first five years I used Photoshop, I don’t think I ever used it for actual photography. I realize for some this sounds counterintuitive, but to be honest the thought never crossed my mind. To me, “photoshopping” was a genericized trademark for image manipulation—for taking screenshots from other media like video games and reconstructing them into cruddy memes.
I started my career writing about gaming and gadgets, which meant a large chunk of what I wrote about relied on press kits and stock imagery to accompany the text. When every outlet is writing about the same topics with the same small set of JPGs, how do you stand out? Simple, you “photoshop it”—you create a different framing, apply filters to change the mood, crop to draw focus to other elements. Learning to carefully select and cut elements from one image to another became a superpower for times when a digital collage made sense.
Ever since then, if ever I have an idea for something creative, even something where I’m drawing from scratch, my go-to app remains Photoshop. It’s both the first step and the endpoint, an app where I know my way around the tool well enough to quickly draft and refine an idea.
So on the one hand, Adobe’s “Skip the photoshoot” makes sense to me, as someone who has professionally published Photoshopped pictures without ever picking up a camera. But even if I am in a position to be very sympathetic to the idea behind Adobe’s messaging, I still find the line to be shockingly blunt albeit unsurprising. The shift has been clear and has been happening for some time now. The magic of Photoshop has long been what happens after you import an image; it cares very little what you did to get the image in the first place.
After all, why should it care? Cleaning up photos is no longer a unique selling point, and it hasn’t been for some time. Every smartphone camera has some level of post-processing software that does a pretty good job, as do the major social media platforms where people share these captured moments. A Google Pixel owner can remove unwanted items and turn a crowded beach shot into a more intimate couples’ photo using just in-built Android camera tools, then upload it to Instagram with a Clarendon filter.
The magic of Photoshop has long been what happens after you import an image; it cares very little what you did to get the image in the first place.
So what makes Photoshop unique, and how can it stay ahead of the competition? Even before AI was the buzzword, the answer has been clear: image manipulation and ideation. The ability to put your wildest ideas to pixel.
That’s what makes Photoshop special, and it’s also what makes this push into AI inevitable. For virtually every other app in my daily routine, I’ve been able to jump between variations on a whim. If I’m editing video, for example, there are so many great alternatives to Premiere Pro that compete not just on price but functionality and user experience as well. (I’m partial to DaVinci Resolve, but even iMovie works well in a pinch.) But I have yet to find any suitable Photoshop alternative, or at least, one that does enough things easily and intuitively enough that I could fathom switching. I know inertia is partially to blame—years of memorized workflows and hotkeys make using even established competitors like GIMP a nonstarter, even though I’ve tried several times.
Ironically, I have found plenty of alternatives when it comes to processing photos, both for my iPhone camera and the rare moments I get to use a Nikon. But for even the dumbest of quick memes where time is of the essence (an instinct I still can’t let go of), there’s no substitute. That’s quite a stranglehold, but the only way Adobe can keep this advantage is by continuing to push the boundary that, whatever the creator’s input is, it can make the output a reality. Sometimes it's a simple cleanup job. Sometimes it’s removing elements of the background. More and more, it’s becoming something far more severed from reality. “Skip the photoshoot” has long been Photoshop’s future, now they’re just being honest. —Ross