By CAITLIN STEDGE-STROUD
The effects of photoshop/ Photo Credit/ Google Images
Photoshop has become the most powerful multimedia tool ever made, having made a huge impact in the world of the Web. This tool has given people the opportunity to completely change appearance, leaving a lot of questions and concerns about what beauty really is.
Images we see on the web are usually fabricated into tricking the consumer. It isn’t natural, and it isn’t real beauty, stated in Photoshop: Altering our Beauty and Minds.
“The more and more we use this editing, the higher and higher the bar goes.” Henry Farid, a professor at Dartmouth said. “They’re creating things that are physically impossible,”
Ever since they introduced Photoshop in 1990, or Instagram filters in 2010, changing the way users look online has rapidly changed.
As social media grew and celebrity photographers saw the power of the tool, it blossomed into a form of visual communication that people use every day.
Sure, everyone loves to look great in photos, but sometimes the change is so dramatic, it turns you into someone completely different. Magazines are no different.
Before and after pictures on instagram, using filters/ Photo Credit: Google Images
“Retouchers edit everything: They elongate necks. They tuck in arms. They take out veins.” Jennifer Lau said who is a senior graphic designer and photographer. “If someone is sitting and their stomach looks unflattering, they will remove the extra skin from the image to make it look more attractive.”
Photoshop has given someone the power to say your beauty isn’t good enough. Consumers are paying to look at photos that are fake.
Kids, teenagers and even adults look up to these women on magazines who are a size 0 and think they need to look like that.
“My entire life I wanted to look like the models I saw in magazines or on the web, it wasn’t until I got older, I realized, I could look like that too, with Photoshop,” said Katrin Santas, a freshman at Rockland Community College. ” Now I honestly feel that underneath all that make-up and Photoshop, I’m as pretty as they are.
Celebrities are calling out photographers on using Photoshop and putting a stop to it. For example, Colbie Caillat, a singer, recently made a music video expressing how she feels about constantly being retouched.
“It felt really cool to be on camera with zero on, like literally nothing on.” Caillat said in an interview to Elle Magazine.
Another article on buzz feed “Four Women React To Being Photoshopped Into Cover Models” made a video about four different types of women reacting to their own pictures being photographed.
Through all this Giaccio has learned two things: being perfect isn’t always great and learning to love yourself for who you are is more rewarding than being retouched.
“I’m still learning to appreciate my looks,” said Giaccio but seeing these women’s reactions really made me feel good about myself.”