So I thought it was a normal Thursday morning, until I was confronted with the fact that my blog post was weeks overdue.

So I turned to my team for help.

“What should I write about?”, I asked, “just give me a topic and I’ll write about it.”

“You’re only as good as your latest Photoshop filter”, said Charissa, “there you go, get to writing.”

I started thinking to myself, yeah right, as if I know anything to write about Photoshop, that Adobe guy is way smarter than I am. I gave it some time to sink in and started to realize maybe she had just given me a great topic. There seemed to be some inner meaning behind her advice. It was like an inside joke without the joke.

You’re only as good as your latest Photoshop filter, what exactly does that mean? Well, here’s what I think she meant:

You’re only as good as your creativity takes you. If your creativity stops at a Photoshop filter, well, you’ve succeeded in utilizing and learning the tools of the trade. Keep trying. Real creativity goes beyond the obvious tools right in front of you, it requires a significant amount of belief. Belief in yourself that you can not only utilize the tools at hand, but introduce a fresh and unique way to integrate those tools into your concept(s) and approach. That belief then takes you to finding ideal combinations of those tools introducing new techniques into your skill set.

This belief now starts taking you down an avenue of unlimited possibilities. It’s not until you find yourself going this direction that your designs really start to have their own voice and personality. Of course finding this dark, hidden avenue takes a number of years, but when you find it, the work you’ll start producing will blow you away. Now imagine executing your designs with a rock solid creative development team and you just might start considering a change of religion. To Adobeianity to be exact.

So what I really think she was trying to say is, don’t let a Photoshop filter drive your belief in yourself. Those are just tools and pieces of the bigger picture. It’s how you use those tools and then move beyond those tools that really define who you are as a creative.

Thank you Mr. Adobe, it’s now up to the rest of us to advance beyond your latest filters.