Essay #70: How much is too much?

One thing I'd forgotten about Photoshop is how easily time is frittered away tweaking tiny details that only I will probably ever notice. Yet I'm never entirely satisfied.

For example, I spent about an hour piecing together this photo from three different frames:

And I could have spent more by pulling the obscured bridesmaid from another shot. But at some point you just have to say enough is enough.

This is my love/hate relationship with Photoshop. I like playing with some of the special effects, and I like that I can make adjustments when the original shot wasn't as optimal as I'd like. But it's easy to get sucked into trying to make every shot "better" when my year-long hiatus from software showed me that I was more satisfied with the end product when shooting without the safety net of post-processing. When does it cross the line from optimization to obsession? Ten minutes? An hour? When does it turn from tool to crutch? When I'm too lazy to take a picture right the first time - or worse, forget how?

Oh, Photoshop. Blessing and bane wrapped up in a slick Adobe package.