Art -

I've seen some discussion of "what would Ansel have done?" and while nobody can be sure, the consensus was he'd probably have done about the same things he did, but some of it might have been a little easier. His major achievement, if one must be singled out, was in developing exposure factors to adjust the picture taking not just to the brightness of the scene, but to the variations in brightness within the scene. His purpose, as he described it, was to have sufficient "information" in all parts of the negative, so that he could have something to work with in the lab when he created the print.

Since he did a lot of "new developing" of methods, it's likely he'd have taken a look at anything new that might appear helpful.

With the films and cameras he had, getting the information onto the negative was really the hard "blood sweat and tears" part of it, but it was largely done to formulas and calculations once he picked a subject - and once he'd figured out his formulas. The "artist" came out in the lab, but I don't think we really know how many "scratch copies" he burned. He might have used Photoshop, if he'd had it. If he declined to use Photoshop, he'd probably have appreciated a modern office shredder.

It has to be noted too that although Photoshop allows you to do some things easily and with great versatility, it only works because we also have large format high resolution printers (and scanners) to allow us to use what Photoshop produces. Without the peripherals, Photoshop alone wouldn't have been much use.

John