Recently, Mike made his defense of “ugly” art. By and large, I agree with his point that unusual or highly stylized art should be valued rather than simply dismissed. But I do take issue with his defense of Photoshop. Not because Photoshop is inherently bad — I enjoy many of the Fate of the Jedi covers he cites, and there has been other good artwork produced using photo reference and photomanipulation — but because I don’t agree that “people are much too quick to dismiss Photoshop as ‘lazy’ just because it’s not necessarily time-consuming.” Generally, people are right to dismiss Photoshop as lazy.
In the realm of art, both interior illustration and cover art, Photoshop has become increasingly prominent. The use of photomanipulation to create art pieces is common — and almost uniformly lazy. Even when it isn’t flagrantly work-on-the-cheap, photomanipulation’s effect is harmful because of its insidious tendency to substitute for classic artistic talent. And from a purely subjective point of view, I must say that it just never seems to look quite as good as good old-fashioned art.