I set up Life after Photoshop to offer ideas and inspiration for digital photographers, to showcase software other than Photoshop and to show some fresh new ways of organising, editing and looking at photographs. I was hoping that photographers would use the comments to talk about photography, their own techniques and the whole area of creative expression.
Unfortunately, lots of less interesting things have got in the way. So here is a list of comment types and behaviours to avoid:
Bad comments
Insults: You don’t win a debate with insults. If you want to make a point or correct something I’ve said, be polite. Otherwise, you’ve typed all those words for nothing. All comments are moderated.
Vendettas: This is where you have a quarrel, typically with a company, that you want to spread to as many online platforms as you can. This can be very tedious for everyone else and often borderline libellous. Because the comments are moderated, I am legally liable for defamatory statements.
Spam comments: Generic paragraphs of praise which are simply cut and paste text that makes no direct reference to the subject of the article and sent by a company looking for cheeky clicks.
Technical support requests: If it’s a simple usage question, that’s fine, but more complex issues should be dealt with by the relevant company’s tech support.
Good comments
Your favorite techniques: My supply of photo editing ideas is finite (as you may have noticed)
Software tips: Features, options and ideas that other people may not know about
Inspiration: What drives you to take pictures, what you get from them, people whose work we should look at
Do we need comments?
If everything you want to say is in the top section, then probably not. I would like to think, however, that people are also interested in photography. Yes, actual photography.