To Photoshop or Not?
Publishing the picture of myself made me thinking about edits of portraits in Photoshop. Is it a right think to do?
Why?
Imagine yourself as a kid. You are building a very sophisticated sand castle on a beach. It’s not easy and an older and more experienced friend is helping you. The friend leaves and then your parents arrive. They are so excited and proud what an amazing castle you built all by yourself - they don’t know about help of the friend.
Do you tell them that a friend has helped? Or do you stay silent and feel a bit dishonest in a corner of your heart?
And then your friends arrive to the beach. And your parents are showing them the castle and you can see in their eyes that they are thinking about how they could never do build such a castle by themselves. They feel ashamed and not good enough.
Would you admit having help now? Or perhaps not?
I hope that now you will be able to understand my point better: It’s OK to get help, things are better having help. And it’s important to be honest about the help.
Let’s get back to the Photoshopping of portraits now.
What Is Reality?
To Photoshop or not? Let’s talk about portraits only now. It’s a bit different for pictures of nature for example - that’s for another blog post.
When I look at myself in a mirror, on a happy day, when I’m not sick and tired, I see myself. My eyes, shape of my face, my lips, nose and hair. I see my personality. That’s me.
Now, do you know these “beauty” mirrors? They should be called “ugly” mirrors instead of “beauty” mirrors. They make each blemish look 10 times bigger (seriously, that’s their purpose). I put mine in trash many years ago. Every time I took a look, I saw giant pores and blemishes. What I saw was not fake. It was real. It just got much more attention that we normally give to it.
If it’s night and the indoor light is not flattering, I look like a zombie in the mirror. And again. Is it truth? Yes, it is. The light conditions put more attention to (or even create!) the dark circles under my eyes, my skin colour is blunt. BUT, it’s still me. It’s only the current view that brought my attention to things that we usually don’t notice or simple are not there at all.
When we look at someone, we notice what we see, it makes us feel some way. I actually usually remember rather a feeling from a person than a visual picture. We ignore so many things from what we see. If it’s not anything unusually strong, we ignore wrinkles, pores, spots, dark circles… We focus on the person himself/herself. Our attention goes to basic shapes and colours, behaviour, facial expression, voice, even smell maybe.
My point is that the reality is very complex and it depends where we put our attention - that determines what we perceive as reality.
Are Photoshopped Portraits Realistic?
That’s relative. It depends on the edits. When I take portraits of people, I edit them. Not to make them look like someone else. But to make them look how I actually percieve them.
Camera sometimes leads our attention to small details that we don’t normally notice when the person is moving around and we’re interacting. A picture from a camera is frozen and very detailed picture with limited dynamic range. That means that we have time to notice little things and they actually may be more visible than in real life.
Therefore, I usually do changes that a hairdresser and makeup artist could do - things that help us to keep the attention where I think that it should be. That’s after all why we all go to hairdresser and some of us use makeup… to direct attention. I never change how people look to me. I never remove what is integral part of them, what makes them who they are. I never change sizes or colours of eyes, legs, stomachs, remove birthmarks… you name it.
Pictures published in popular magazines are usually edited much more. Too much for my taste. Never believe a picture that you see! To see some examples, check this article.