What is Photoshop Doing to Our Society?
We live in a world nowadays where most things around us are not what they seem. Popular culture has grossly distorted the media we’re exposed to. Executives of clear skin cream companies should thank Adobe Photoshop for making them rich. No one’s face you see on a magazine is anywhere close to being that perfect. But what is it doing to everyone?
Sometimes I can’t help but feel I’m only fueling the fire because I work at a magazine and I photoshop every single picture we print. Of course, it’s a home and design magazine and I’m not photoshopping people to make them look better. I’m taking pictures of interiors and exteriors of homes and mostly cropping, adjusting color or levels, and cloning out needless parts of the picture. But I believe there is a standard we must all be held to, especially when it comes to journalistic photography in which you use a picture to make a point. What is an acceptable alteration of a photo and what is not? I’ve made photos look much cooler than they really are, and then printed the pictures. And those pictures made someone money. When does faking it to sway opinion change from OK to not OK? Obviously, it depends on the subject matter at hand. Case in point is the Reuters photographer who came into some serious trouble for altering pictures of war.
Here’s where it gets interesting: some geniuses at Binghamton University have created a program that exposes parts of manipulated images. Complex algorithms rule after all! It highlights areas that have been cloned and covered up.
My own photo site is filled with elements of images that aren’t really there. It’s all in the fun, and I go overboard with effects because it’s part of the interest. For example, I obviously did a lot of work to this picture on my site:
To show how much I did, here are the main original images.
They are terrible pictures! I sat a tripod on a car, I didn’t even know where it was pointing! But no worries, I know I’ll be able to sit my butt in front of Photoshop later and fix everything. Not only did I add another couch and people, but I fixed the entire top of the picture (and did a crappy job at that) to not take away interest from what I wanted the focal point to be. Then did several other random things to give the photo some kick.
I’ve gotten off topic here a bit, but my main point is that Photoshop is one driving force of a bigger problem spawned by pop culture: no one thinks they look good enough. Television, the Internet, and magazines have affected you and they’ve affected me. It’s a big problem that I look around and see every day when I walk down the street. Everyone acts like they don’t care, but they are terrified of what everyone else is thinking.
More than anything, I hate that girls see pictures of beauty and it makes them feel ugly. This video from Dove says a lot. It is disturbing to me. I wish everyone could see it and understand what goes into a simple picture on a magazine or billboard.
