Is technology killing art?

Things change as we all know.
And these days, anyone, if they have a minimum of skill in using photoshop, can make rather impressive looking works.
People who have never spent an hour practicing to learn music can make music by means of computer programs that "know" everything for you.

In a local gallery, one "painting" made in photoshop is hanging next to an oil painting that was painted by another, in the old way, using paints and brushes on canvas. Below each artwork is a pricetag, and the prices on the two works is almost the same.
One spent a few hours on photoshop, clicking buttons and chosing among presets. The other spent years and years training his skill, and days and weeks painting the picture.
I am not prepared to grant both of those works the same status as art.
It's the same with music. Someone who has spent years and years practicing their instruments and composing music and someone who just bought a pc can both make music. There are programs that allow you to input the sampled sounds of violins so that you can't tell the difference. Is it a computer or a violinist? Except that a trained musician can hear the difference.

Anyway, it has always seemed to me that the long process of advancing from novice to master in your craft is what grants the wisdom and skill art should express, be it music or painting.
The bottom line is that a computer is a tool. But the tools are so good now that soon we don't need knowledge and skill, only the tools and they do everything for us. But is it still art?

i don't much care how a piece of art is produced, if i like it, i like it

the technology used in music is one of my favourite things, i love a good mashup, creating a new song using bits of other songs, if it's done well it can be a truly unique experience, a favourite artist is eric kleptone, in one song he takes three tunes i have no interest in and blends the hooks from each into a wonderful chorus, using lines from the amy winehouse song rehab, the song disco inferno (by who, i don't know) and b. spears toxic, he crafted the chorus try to make me go to rehab, i say, burn baby burn, don't you know that i'm toxic

I suppose the same question was asked artists who ground their own minerals and made their own paint started seeing paint available in tubes.

Or cameras... don't forget how cameras were thought to kill art.

The battle between "high art" and "low art" has always kind of baffled me in that it seems more concerned with technique than creation.

Exactly, DJ. I often watch Jeph Jacques live stream his drawing sessions. He's the creator and artist of the famous webcomic Questionable Content. He uses a professional level of photoshop program and he's been doing it for years.

The process is quite intimidating to watch and he uses year's worth of experience and learned shortcuts to drawing a single page in about 2 or so hours.

Like Boomerang said, this issue is moot as it already has been made so with the example of the film camera and the subsequent digital camera.

The only valid complaints to be made in your stated original posting is not how they are made but are they good works of art as well as how do we evaluate original work from its subsequent forgeries. The issue of forgery in art has predated this latest round of technological advancements.

Egyptian pottery allegedly created thousands of years ago have been forged in the late 1800's/early 1900's. PreRussian Revolution modern paintings have been forged post Russian Revolution due to a particular artist's records being destroyed during the Revolution. Etc....