Photo Shop: a word of caution
A good friend recently discovered the amazing aesthetic....shall we say 'boost' that Photo Shop can provide to pictures. A few good, prudent words of caution are in order for those who are unaware of its dangers:
First, make a very CLEAR mental note for yourself about the date and time that you begin applying Photo Shop (PS hereafter) effects to your pictures. If you don't, you will begin to have exaggerated ideas of how ugly, aged, blotchy...etc. you have 'suddenly' become. This is a function of three natural and classic PS user phenomena: 1.) As novelty of employing the program wears off and 2.) You become an increasingly less discriminating digital photographer (read: take more and more crappy pictures (because it doesn't cost anything) which you never delete (because, 'hey, you never know when you might need a photo of someone's elbow for whatever reason) and 3.) Your life affords you less and less time for non-essential computer tasks; Suma sum arum: eventually, you will stop using PS and all your pictures will once again look like crap. Or, in more zen-like language: you will look like your 'natural' self once again.
Finally, be very, very careful when employing 'thinning' techniques to enhance your appearance in pictures, lest you become the laughing stock of all who know you. A former colleague 'doctored' her photo for a company Web site just ever-so-slightly and it was embarrassingly obvious because her dog (which she was holding in the picture) looked like Farrah Facet on Phen-phen. What's worse, unbeknown to her, this picture had become a mass email 'forward'. I have provided an example of the applied 'thinning' technique onto a picture of Audrey's (then) 9-month old leg below.
Monday, July 9, 2007
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2 comments:
HAHAHA! Oh my word, that shot of Audrey's skinny, shapely leg freaks me out. Also, your comments about photos once again "looking like crap" after the PS excitement fades and we get lazy again. I imagine that will be the case. But I'm still very happy to now have tools to fix common problems (like over/under exposure, color distortion, unattractive backgrounds, etc.) on the shots that I especially like and want to display or share with others. I definitely won't be PSing every shot I take--as you said, most of them just need to be deleted (but I hoard them anyway). I'm happy with the results of some of my recent tweaks on pictures of Elaine and Jacob, though (as posted on my blog). It's nice to be able to take an otherwise average photo and with a few subtle adjustments make it look like a much better photographer than I took the shot....
Hahaha! That pic of A's leg looks weirdly distorted!
For PS, t's all about making bad shots look better, as if you had both mad photographer skills and a $3000 camera to boot (a la PW).
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