It’s crazy how PhotoShop can alter a person’s appearance.
Photo from sideshowsito.com
Photoshop is digital’s gift of enhancement. Photos are now easier to save. Got a bad lighting then adjust brightness. Restore your grandma’s pictures and prolong the memory. Even pose with Egypt’s pyramids, Africa’s cats or Palau’s sea of jellyfish without crossing any border. All possible, believable, thanks to Adobe.
It’s an aide to enticing posters, invitations and all. Remember seeing a puffy burger from the menu, but the actual one you’ve got was half its size? The photoshopped burger made you buy it, but really deceptive. It served most, if not all businesses and individuals too.
It’s a fun and fulfilling software to peruse. It’s magical how pimples disappear within seconds, graying hair re-colored, and fat trimmed. A few of that enhancements are acceptable, but to render you to look a different person isn’t neat. It’s not you anymore.
What’s the most editing you did in a photo?
Moment Matters 
I do love the fact that I can get rid of red-eye and reflections with my camera’s pea-brained fix it up program, but that photo is amazing!
*smile … for what good is this really – to make us more beautiful on photo – when we are the way we are – but I’m sure the program has more advantages then change grandma’s look. Can see people’s photos – not portrait now .. nature or what ever it’s and they have been enhanced to max. Everybody is happy in their believes even when it’s about our photo’s.
Photoshop has been a miracle to the people, but the deceitful use of the software isn’t really a good thing. It destroys the real you. And I really liked the part where you related the burger in the photo with the actual burger; (: it badgers me with it’s not what I expected. Quite a few days ago, a lady ordered Garlic bread after looking at the menu; garlic bread was put on plate with cheese dip in the photo, when the order finally arrived, it was in cartoon box. She started arguing with the Dominos’ manager that she wants garlic bread. The manager tried to make her understand that it’s same thing, but in the end she got pissed and threw the garlic bread in garbage. I don’t know whether her level of abyss was less or she was just acting crazy. Well, this story kind of relates itself by deceiving the audience or customers.
I am always amazed to see people get up in arms about Photoshop being used and how “artificial” it is to retouch images, when these same folks slather themselves with soaps, creams and gels to mask their natural odor, shave all sorts of places on their body where it grows naturally, paint themselves with dozens of cosmetics and pour chemicals on their hair, and spend thousands of dollars every year on ever-changing styles of clothing that serve little purpose other than to try to make themselves look better.
The hard truth is that NO ONE can achieve the perfection of art. As grandpa used to say, take everything you see and read with a grain of salt and never assume. Words to live by!
Besides, what is going on digitally today with images has been done for thousands of years by hand through illustration and painting, and even 100 years ago photographs were manipulated and later airbrushed. Making “enhancements” is nothing remarkable, only the process used to achieve them has changed. I’m really kind of amazed that some people still think that if they see a photograph it MUST be “absolutely real”, or if they read a “news report” it MUST be true. People need to grow up!
All of the brouhaha just makes me laugh. I am a professional graphic designer and use Photoshop every single day of my life to touch up professional headshots, take flaws out of images and color correct photographs. Making a product look (and with my associates through copywriting, sound) a little better than it actually is has been going on since the caveman first started producing and selling the wheel to his neighbors. 😀
I think Debbie said it all. But here is my penneth.
I think that most of the complainers don’t really understand what PS is all about. Plus the term ‘Photoshop’ has now entered the everyday language of the common man and represents everything that is bad about the software. For example, making models on front-covers of Glossie’s look better than they really are etc. But hold on a second…there is nothing BAD about the software, how can there be, it a bit of computerised code. If there is a valid argument for knocking PS (and I personally can’t bring one to mind) it is what the person using the software does with it. Listen folks it’s a tool! Just like a hammer and chisel, it’s used for shaping things.
I am a Music Industry Veteran, but all during this time I have also been a photographer, amateur, Semi-Pro and Pro. Like most my first SLR was a Russian Zenit. I had my first wet darkroom in 1974 and my first digital darkroom in 1999.
For what it’s worth, I think the guys at Adobe are the equivalent to the late great Steve Jobs at Apple.
I also use PS everyday, but these days only for touching up my pics before posting to my clients or agents. PS along with the other Adobe products were designed to assist business, to help all areas of commerce increase sales and become more profitable, that’s what makes the world go round. So what if the hamburger doesn’t look like the photo above the counter, does it taste any good? Have you been here before, will you come again? Or will the fact that when you see the hamburger you will complain and say this is not what I ordered, I ordered the one up there! I doubt it, I know I don’t because I understand that the food has to be made to look appetising. However, if that is the case, you had better start looking at everything else you buy from the clothes on your back to the car that you drive to the photos of the models in the mail order catalogues.
Lastly, how about the music you listen to and love and buy? Do you really think that the performer sounds like that in real life….NO they have been digitally enhanced in the recording studio using software that is not unlike PS but is used for audio. Software like Logic and Autotune-this one will ensure that no matter how bad a singer you may be, the software will correct the wrong notes – and make you sound like you are a singer! And like photography enhancement, audio enhancement has been going on for decades, with Double Tracking, Reverb, Echo, Drum Machines, Electric guitar tuners and the list goes on.
BTW smashing blog this!
As a copywriter and editor, I have to chime in here and say this is absolute truth! I’m not sure what the bloody fuss is all about!
If only there was a way to stay photo shopped in real life! I wonder how much that program would cost?!!!!
what an odd,…but,…funny post!!!!,….the “gift” of photoshop,…i think “gift” is what you called it???…….imagine seeing the ladies portrait on a blind date site???,….then meeting her in person!!!! lol,….but not lol, actually,……..if that was to happen, i would not judge the lady harshly,…or be rude to her,…but the simple fact is,…….i would not desire to be “close” to a person such as this in any way, shape, or form,…..due to their obvious desire and practice of “self deceit”……..this individual would simply appear to me to be very unstable in everything that they did or do,…….when we “seek” shallow,…we shall “find” shallow……and that’s so sad,…..our world today,…uugggghhhh….
“to thine own self,….be photo-shopped”………nnnnnawwww,….that’s not it………..
I’m not even sure I would have recognized that as George Clooney in the “depois” picture!! That’s when you KNOW it must be somewhat fake!
Boy, looks like you opened a can of worms here! 🙂 I love photoshop, but I mostly use it to touch up photos that were a little blurry or crop and fix them differently, or I take them and make something entirely different from them, in the form of abstracts.
I don’t see anything wrong with touching up photos…but it does in fact bother me that there are so many people who think the celebs actually look that flawless! And it bothers me greatly that we live in a society where so many people think that they HAVE to be flawless…a nip and tuck here and there…boob jobs…butt jobs, etc.
I like what your point was in this…we’re given what we’ve gotten and we’re beautiful just exactly as we are…and if we taught our kids that instead of that they had to fit the image of these photoshopped, nipped and tucked, ‘beautiful people’, we’d all be better off. Just my opinion, of course. 🙂
Anne
Wow, I wonder what da Vinci could have done with this tool XD
Umm… I think these photos should be accompanied by a warning label with some info about their retouching.
Best form of anti-aging in hollywood… and the falacy is that so many ppl think it is an attainable reality, with enough surgery & procedures. not great for young generations (heidi montag!) who strive to make it “real” –a very good lesson not taught in school: the beauty is in what you see with your own eyes. great post : )
Photoshop really is great at doing what it does, but some ethical reasons would be against it as it removes a persons identity. It alters the perspective of the real person in the eyes of those who have only seen the edited image, but what it can do is amazing.
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I once had a PS in my old desktop. But I didn’t use it to drastically alter my pictures. I would use it to lighten an otherwise underexposed picture just to save it. Other than that I don’t have time to do more technical stuff, not to mention I am not that good with softwares.