Picture perfect
Of all the modern mindbenders, the monthly magazine game is our favourite. Just guessing the identity of the actress, who is usually photoshopped beyond recognition on the cover page of most magazines leaves us so puzzled and exhausted, that we wouldn’t dare touch scrabble again.
But it’s not just Liz Hurley, who photoshops her holiday pictures to hide that binge bulge, but a lot of image conscious youngsters too, who don’t mind picking up the tool to mirror their soul to the Facebook world.
When you can get hired, fired, hooked up or divorced on the behest of your Facebook pictures alone, then why wouldn’t you modify your mug to make it look prettier? Radhika Sharma, an advertising professional, points out that Facebook is all about showcasing your lifestyle and no one would want a slice of their life to look bad. “I do colour correction, tone changing and lightening/darkening of the picture mostly, but on occasions when I have felt that a picture is being spoilt by just one unruly strand of hair or someone’s hand sticking out, then obviously I get it corrected,” she tells us.
So does fashion photographer Aman Sood, who gets almost all his pictures polished before they are put anywhere online. “The camera clicks raw pictures and usually the result is not so great. So, I have to get them worked upon using photoshop, whether they are my shoot pictures or personal ones,” he says.
Photoshop though, unlike piercings or make-up doesn’t require an age certificate. So, doting parents don’t mind treated pictures of their cuddly toddlers for everyone to ooh and aah. Megha Nainwal tells us about a friend who had displayed her baby girl’s pictures. “She was made to look like a painting, sitting and collecting apples in a really frilly dress. It looked photoshopped,” she says.
Vanity, however, is not the only precursor to photoshop. Humour often plays a very important role too. Cursor happy technocrats usually like playing around with the picture of a common friend and an (in) famous movie poster and tagging all their friends to generate comments.
Sahil Ghosh, an architecture student often tags his friends after having superimposed a friend’s picture over another embarrassing one. “It’s a great way to keep things interesting and have everyone comment on the picture. The posters from some movies in the past are so hilarious that they call out to be photoshopped and it becomes a good conversational topic when we meet otherwise as well,” he says.
Post new comment