My Photoshop Confession

It takes skill... hahaha.

I once did an experiment in Photoshop to give me what I thought to be a good hourglass figure. It made me crack up like no other, and I realized that people in magazines are probably 50% fake.

Yeah, it's not really a secret that all the pictures you see in the magazines are edited somehow, even adjusting a little bit of levels can make a big difference, not to mention if you take healing brush and start to clear your face (say good-bye to the shadows under your eyes)... it's sometimes better than any real-life powder. :)

The more I learn about retouching/etc, the less troubled I am by it. I used to think it was the epitome of the superficiality of contemporary culture, but the truth of the matter is that people simply weren't designed to be photographed at that size, and that in real life, most people don't tend to scrutinise faces the same way that you can do to a print image. Not to mention the fact that people are dynamic and moving by nature. Still pictures frequently need a bit of help just to portray people accurately, let alone in a flattering manner.

I am off there to get some pics touched up as I get out this bath.

blink! Did I read that right. The laptop in the bath>...

I prefer to leave faces untouched, the idea is to capture the person as they are, not what someone would like them to be. Before photography, artists would spend many hours creating a "likeness" with photographic accuracy for that reason.

It's a bit double-edged sword... the camera can be sometimes quite cruel device that gives no mercy to it's target. If the lighting is harsh it can put a spotlight on persons wrinkles and skin-problems. So sometimes a bit of retouch is only a merciful thing to do and makes the person look more like her/himself. Of course if we start to retouch with a rough hand, we create a fantasy-character that doesn't exist. :)

Well, a good alternative for Photoshop is Gimp. You can download it for free from http://www.gimp.org/ .

Point taken with lighting and harsh shadows. It's best to do outdoor portraits on overcast days. Prior to digital imaging harsh shadows and other "detractions" would be controlled with a method known as dodging. When exposing the photographic paper under the enlarger the hands were used to shadow areas to maintain detail. I got quite good at it. Wedding dresses were always tricky. Now I use Photoshop (5.5) and about all I do with it is resize and crop. Sometimes I'll adjust contrast ratios and colour balance if I feel they are wrong.