Kitty Corner – Some thoughts on Photoshop

by Kat

So, the issue of Photoshop has been hot in the news lately – the model with Demi’s head on the cover of a mag, the side-by-side of Faith Hill before and after – even a (hilarious) website devoted to the mistakes people make with this tool.

She’s part giraffe.

So, as someone who publishes lots of ‘fashion’ photos, where do I stand, and how much photoshop are you seeing here?

The answer is – some.

To be clear – the (awesome) photogs I work with are not stretching my body, or removing parts of my waist and thighs – though I wish sometimes that they would. They’re cropping, making adjustments to color, editing out distracting items in the frame – sometimes even taking out a flyaway hair or two.

These are adjustments that help achive an artistic objective, evoke emotion or better communicate the details in the photos. The goal is never to make me look like a supermodel (not that I could if I wanted to!) EDIT: the wonderful Khalid of Eat Pomegranate Photography was kind enough to share this before and after image from a yet-to-be-posted shoot. Here you can see how he’s lightened the image to make it more clear, but he didn’t elongate my legs or slim my ankles:

Why? Well, one – we don’t have the time for that. There’s usually a pretty tight turnaround from when we take the pics and when you see them on the site. I used to work at an ad agency with a (now defunct) department store client. I saw all the time it took the retoucher to painstakingly go over and over the image to make the model look “perfect” – we simply don’t have the time to do that.

Two – I wouldn’t really want them to. This blog is about showing an average woman and her take on style. It wouldn’t help either one of us to do that in a way that is anything but genuine.

So, what are your thoughts on Photoshop? I really do love the awesome things that can be done with it, but it can also be a dangerous tool if we go too far.

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Kat Cooper makes up the ginger half of Ginger and the Geek. You can follow her on Twitter, @katcooper, on Instagram as katcooperenglish and on Pinterest.