Adobe: shoot crappy photos, fix them in post later

Here is something I never thought I’ll see, but sometimes the real world provide the most awesome nuggets. In their most recent newsletter, Adobe wanted to highlight some Lightroom features. Their way of doing so was to basically say that you don’t need to worry about anything camera related. Just fix it all with Lightroom later.

The title of the newsletter was “New benefits added to your Creative Cloud Photography plan“, so I reread the thing, really slowly now, here is the actual text from the newsletter:

Shoot now, fix later with Lightroom CC.
Don’t worry about perfect camera settings and lighting. With Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC, you can lighten, darken, sharpen, and more after you take the photo.

This got me thinking if adobe realized how offensive this text may be to the majority of the photographers who are using their software. I mean, we share countless advice here on the blog about setting the right exposure, composition, lighting. We do that because most photographers care.

Comments to this advert ranged from slightly entertained, like “does it matter if we keep the lens cap on” or “Adobe even apply this to their products now: ‘release them, fix later’” ; through educating: “nothing can retrieve clipped highlights“; to plainly offended “You know what! Don’t even take the photo. Google the scene and download right to your computer“.

If you click the Get Started button, you get a similar message, removing the importance of actually taking the photograph right:

Streamline your shooting style with Lightroom
Let Lightroom take the worry out of photography so you can focus more on capturing the moment and less on getting camera settings just right. (See how, 4 min)

I am not really sure who wrote the copy for this ad, but I think they should actually be writing copy for After Effects.

[Adobe newsletter | h/t Réjean]

P.S. if you don’t want to click the newsletter, we got a screenshot for you here.