Adobe Photoshop: Digital Cosmetic Surgery?

There are lots of arguments of Adobe Photoshop rise in these past few years. Recently, there are also some voices talking about Photoshop as a digital cosmetic surgery in this digital driven century. Most of these voices are against Photoshop retouching models in media nowadays such as magazines, billboards and websites. There is even an Anti-Photoshop campaign done by a 14 years old teen, Julia Bluhm which asked the magazine not to Photoshop its models. However, are these arguments really having their points?

There are some people who think that an image should be composed fully from the camera without using any other medium such as Photoshop because they think that digital manipulation is cheating. However, in my opinion, once you alter the setting in your camera before taking a photo, you are already digital manipulated your image taken. It is very hard to define what really the digital manipulated image is because whatever you have change in the camera such as different setting and exposure when you take the photograph already part of digital manipulation of image editing.

In addition, as an editorial publication, its objective is to make the images reach its standard of perfection before it is published to the public. Many people think that digital altering the images is against the reality and trying to cheat the public visual perception. However, if you think in another way, what is the difference of digital retouching the model with every girls wake up in the morning and try to make up and style themselves? There is no difference. The objective is same, to present to the public the best version of themselves.

In Alice Chen article, there is a very humorous fact which I think it is very true. In her article, she stated that what Julia Bluhm forgets is that asking magazine to stop “Photoshopping” the model just as same as asking every girls stop make up and style themselves. It is our own responsibilities to present to the public the best of ourselves, so what Julia asking for is just trying to grab away the ability of magazine to “make up” their image, which indirectly asking the purpose of existing of digital manipulation software such as Photoshop.

In my opinion, Photoshop is just another great invention in this technology advancing century. We should try to explore our creativity with these wonderful software, but not limit ourselves because of rumours about Photoshop is a bad invention.

References:

• Divine, R. (2010) Photoshop: Art or Artifice?. Available at: http://www.smashandpeas.com/photoshop-art-or-artifice/. [Accessed 1 August 2013] Annotation: This website talk about Photoshop as the digital cosmetic surgery in advertising industry. It state quite a lot of information about Photoshop image editing ability and how to use them correctly.

• Chen, A. (2012) Op-Ed: In Defense of Photoshop: Why Magazines Should Photoshop Their Models. Available at: http://www.hercampus.com/style/catwalk-campus/op-ed-defense-photoshop-why-magazines-should-photoshop-their-models. [Accessed 1 August 2013] Annotation: This is a interesting website that the author support the magazine to Photoshop their models. It is has quick a solid reasons for magazine to Photoshop their models. In some part of these website, the author also humorously bring out her views against Julia Bluhm anti-Photoshop campaign which I find very interesting to read about.