Andrew,
With all do respect zero's and one's has as much to do with good images as an ink has to do with good book. You right, without an ink there is no book.
I shot analog for almost 20 years. I shoot strictly MF digital for last 8 years. I operate PS since the PS2.
I consider Photoshop an artistic tool and know it as good as the other guy who spends 6-8 hours a day post processing. When working in darkroom I never cared to know chemical composition of my developers but sure knew how to use them and get the best of each one combo. I knew it because I looked at the results - the prints. Knowing how many atoms of sulphur it takes was left to others, others who look at beautiful fully commercially marketable image and check for signs of banning in the shadows.
Andre
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I shot analog for over 20 years as well, probably more like 25. I understood very well how to get a few particular films to perform in a various ways. I owned a decent size wholesale lab operation which started from purchasing my own Kreonite processor and enlarger, and learning how to make good prints because I didn't like what my lab was giving me. This prompted colleagues to ask me to make prints for them which got me into that business. I feel I was (emphasize was) decently skilled in printing.
I don't understand all the 1's and 0's either, and I also consider Photoshop a creative tool, much like various techniques I used in the darkroom. Common to both technologies is the simple fact that the better the capture/negative/transparency, the better the resulting image.
However, the workflow and model have changed so dramatically, yet the technology still lags behind. Metering systems are still based on analog film concepts, and gone are the days where making an image was exactly that ... making images. Other than a preliminary guide from a video analyzer, custom printing was an exercise in test after test after test, and often multiple prints before everything was just right.
Now we have photoshop and a computer monitor, and the challenge is to get it all done so we can print it right the first time. But we have cameras that determine exposures as though they had film inside, which as many try to point out, isn't the best way to get an optimum raw capture from a linear device.
So those that do understand the 1's and 0's, such as Andrew, Thomas Knoll etc, explain to us why certain techniques will result in a better raw capture before we go into photoshop, but we still seem be stuck in a world where we think we should expose our digital cameras just like we did our film cameras. We can't seem to trust them, and when they try and explain the science so we will trust them, we throw up the shields and excuses about just being an artist and just wanting good images. What they're telling us helps make better images.
ETTR is about capturing more levels and detail in the RAW capture, taking advantage of the inherit nature of the chip and linear capture. It is about exposing in a way that is best for linear digital data to get the most levels/gradations/detail out of every capture. An image using ETTR in most cases will yield a better starting point when you bring it into the raw converter ... the simple fact is it contains a lot more information. This is especially important if you are doing a lot of work with photoshop, as it sounds like you do, because most steps in photoshop to improve some aspect of the image can have a negative impact on the data in other ways.
This really isn't theory, and certainly you can choose to ignore it. But if you are trying to create optimum captures so you can get the very best prints, ETTR isn't that complicated or hard to do. You just have to believe what these guys are saying and quit believing the image you are seeing on the back of your camera when evaluating exposure.