OSXcellence – Introducing Mark Myerson, Mac App Maven

I love photography, and “Taking Pictures” is my middle name (I lied…); it has given me joy and grief, but it is now ingrained as an unshakeable habit.

When you can see the light streaming through the trees, there is some atmospheric mist, and the foreground interest is not a discarded packet of crisps – these are the moments photographers, like myself, live for. It seems such a shame that they rarely seem to happen!

I started with a Canon Powershot A85, and with it, I used to take loads of snaps of beautiful things. The combination of my lack of skill, and the massive 4 megapixels I had to play with meant the subject in most of these pictures very rarely turned out to be as beautiful as it started out. This didn’t deter me because I just enjoyed the taking of a photograph, that feeling of capturing something you like.

Since then, I have managed to get to the stage where I can (nearly) always capture the beauty of what I see, and this is what motivates me now to keep on taking pictures.

An aid to producing images that really capture the essence of the subject, or alternatively, may be used to add an artistic element to a picture, has been the advent of digital processing.

Whereas once photography was based almost entirely on the photographer’s skill with his or her camera, in modern digital photography, the camera is only half of the equation  – the finished image has, in many cases, been “polished” quite heavily whilst going through digital processing.

Personally, I have no problem with people doing what they like with their pictures in Photoshop or any other software, as in the end, it is the satisfaction of the photographer which should be the priority. In fact, many of the best images out there have been fiddled with endlessly until they are just right – when this is done well, most viewers will not even be aware that it has occurred. Even when digital manipulation of images is taken to obvious extremes, however, I simply refer to the old adage, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In essence, not everyone has to like the style of a picture for it to be a good image.

For those who wish to use digital means to enhance their pictures – even if this is just to restore a scene to how their eye saw it – there are now a huge number of apps available to aid with this process. I have tried, used, abused, cursed at, fumbled with, been confused by, and been delighted with many of these apps, and so I realise what a minefield a place like the Mac App Store can be. If you wish to follow in my footsteps, by downloading every app, before deleting 99.99% of them in striving for the perfect set-up, feel free. My quest when writing my reviews, however, is to clarify this selection process for those who don’t want this hard-drive filling hassle, and who want an app that “just works.”

For the love of OSX, and for the love of all CurrentPhotographer.com’s Mac-owning readers (you lovely people you), I hope I can both entertain and shed light on all things Mac and photography related.

If you would like to contact me about any of my reviews, any of the apps featured, about photography or OSX, please get in touch.

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