The Line

As someone who started altering photos at the age 12, I've always been aware of the possibilities and dangers of photo retouching. Of course, as a 12 year old, I had no idea the extent that some people took the technology.

I think my dad sent me the Dove Evolution video back when it was first making its rounds on the internet, because it was definitely not new to me. The first time I watched it, I remembered being simultaneously impressed and disgusted. On the one hand- isn't technology insane?? You can make someone look like an entirely different person with just a computer. As an added bonus- it looks totally natural. As someone who spent three years trying to Photoshop herself into pictures with Liam Aiken and make them look real, I can appreciate that skill.

Cough.

 

On the other hand, that skill is obviously being abused. As a woman (young lady? girl? female person?) the idea that those insane standards of beauty that I'm held to aren't even real is incredibly frustrating. Dove put it well- "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." Just from a female perspective, this power of Photoshop is dangerous when men are in charge of how they think women should look- realistically or not. I don't think you'll ever find someone who doesn't find this as our modern age's version of gender marginalization.

But of course, technology has now progressed to the point that if it won't right its wrongs, it can at least recognize them.

I didn't realize that we were at the point where we can actually quantify how much retouching has been done to a particular picture- and as a tech fangirl, I am, again, impressed. But what impressed me even more was the idea that someone out there is trying to make "photo alteration standards" a thing.

In my head, like with tobacco products, every photograph that uses significant photoshopping would be labeled. "This photo has been photoshopped." Even better- it would tell you where exactly the photo was retouched. "Warning: the ears in this photo have been made smaller."

This isn't just important on the basic human decency level- altered perceptions of beauty have real consequences. According to the Daily Mail and the American Medical Association, "a large body of literature links exposure to media-propagated images of unrealistic body image to eating disorders and other child and adolescent health problems." Yeah, no kidding. And even when you don't count all of the cases of physical health problems caused by these altered images, just imaging what it's doing to the young psyche. For every girl with anorexia there are ten with horribly low self esteem. There is no good that comes from this kind of advertising.

I tried to keep all these things in mind when I did my own photo retouching for this assignment. Below is the before and after versions of a photo I took of my friend Ellen during a game night.

 I tried to just focus on the normal stuff for this retouching- minor skin imperfections, brighter eyeshadow, better color contrast, the kind of things you would try to cover up with makeup on a regular day.

There was a weird gray tint to the whole original picture, so I tried to even that out with some more red and blue. I used both the healing spot tool and the healing brush to remove some various acne and moles, then I used the clone stamp tool to make her bangs cover all of her forehead, instead of having two weird bald spots. Little things, perhaps, but I think it gives her hair a fuller look overall.

I also whitened her teeth a bit and retouched her eye shadow (I know what colors she uses so that was pretty easy- plus matching the shade I knew she was already wearing made it look more natural) with just the paintbrush tool set to a low opacity.

I used liquify mostly for the sake of using liquify, and the only things I did were make her smile a little wider and make her ear a little bigger (doesn't her ear look weirdly tiny in that first shot?). I didn't think she needed much more than that, though. She's a pretty good looking lass on her own.


The only other think I did was use the burn tool to darken the background so that you could focus on her face more, but that was just sort of random and last minute.

Overall I think this retouching was successful, because she still looks like herself, just with freshened up makeup and maybe a bit of skin clearing lotion. And that's the direction I think photo altering should be going- enhancing someone's best qualities instead of replacing their lesser ones.