[Reader-list] On why Singh, Shourie and Sangh should learn Photoshop?

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear All

Jaswant Singh calls Jinnah a great man. They expel him. Arun Shourie
calls Rajnath Singh, a humpty-dumpty then a calls him a Tarzan and as
if it was not enough, calls him Alice in blunder land. He is waiting
to be expelled. Or will he be withdrawn or suspended? That only time
will tell. Yashwant Sinha has gone long back. Sudheerendra Kulkarni
has left citing 'ideological differences'. Ya right!! What 'ideology'
are we talking about here?

The image of BJP has taken a beating. Once a party 'with a difference'
has now become a 'party with differences'. Some people are genuinely
worried by all this. They say we need a strong opposition for a strong
government to function. I agree. Akhir kaun sa khuda bina Iblis ke,
upne khuda hone par garoor kar sakta hai?

My suggestion to BJP is this- why not employ photo-shop experts to
restore its image. I think if public life of any kind is supposed to
be a game of perception management then wouldn't photo-shopping be a
good idea to restore a damaged image. Who knows the lotus may bloom
sooner than we think, it is withering away.

Rather than taking all this trouble of calling the Knicker-brigade
from Pune to 'bomb the head-quarters' in Delhi and introduce change
why not alter a bit here and a bit there and there you go! zip, zap,
zoom!!

Please read the story below for more on the subtle art of image management.

Warm regards

Taha



http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-ig-photoshop2-2009aug02,0,194591,full.story

Photoshopped images: the good, the bad and the ugly
The graphics editing tool is praised for making people look their best
and dissed for setting the bar too high.

By Jeannine Stein >>>

August 2, 2009

Kim Kardashian has practically made a living off her curvaceous
figure. But the E! network celeb was looking a little less shapely in
Complex magazine in April, her body reduced about a dress size, her
legs smoothed to near-perfection.

How did readers know? Complex accidentally posted a pre-Photoshopped
image of Kardashian on its website -- before her thighs, arms and
waist had been digitally sculpted. In a matter of hours the photo was
gone. But in that brief time span, those who spotted it got a little
reminder that we should think twice about taking photographs at face
value.

"My belief," says Scott Kelby, president of the Florida-based National
Assn. of Photoshop Professionals, "is that every single major magazine
cover is retouched. I don't know how they couldn't be." But don't stop
there. Aside from U.S. newspapers, most of which do not permit photos
to be manipulated, it's quite possible that the vast majority of
images seen in the public arena have been altered.

Photoshop, the go-to graphics editing program that got a foothold in
the 1990s, has become so ubiquitous that most of us gaze at faces,
bodies and landscapes, not even registering that wrinkles have been
diminished, legs lengthened and the sky honed to a dream-like shade of
blue. And, unlike its predecessor, airbrushing, anyone can use it.

But Photoshop's popularity has proven to be divisive. While some laud
it for its ability to allow people -- and things -- to look their best
in a photograph, others see it as a vehicle for feeding our culture's
desire for uber-perfection.

"I think the perfect bodies we're seeing in magazines that are
Photoshopped have a terrible effect on how women feel about their own
bodies," says Montana Miller, assistant professor in the department of
popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

One theory about retouching in advertisements is that it's done to
create an aspirational concept of beauty that inspires women to buy
more products. Miller's heard another: that the goal of showing
perfect images is to make women feel bad about themselves -- also
making them buy more beauty products.

Kelby, who also writes a blog on Photoshop, doesn't believe it's a
malevolent force; in fact, he sees it as practical and cites the
example of singer Faith Hill.

In 2007, the fashion website Jezebel posted unaltered images of Hill
that were shot for a Redbook magazine cover. In comparing them to the
finished product, it appeared that Hill got a makeover, including
erased crow's-feet, excised back fat and a slimmer arm.

The fallout was huge -- the Jezebel post generated more than 1.3
million views, and was picked up by ABCNews.com, VH1.com, TMZ.com and
a number of blogs. Many commenters were angry that an already
attractive woman had her image altered to appear on the cover of a
national magazine. (Redbook declined to comment for this story.)

"If you met Faith Hill in person," Kelby says, "you would think she's
absolutely beautiful. And when you take her picture, you will see
every flaw that you never saw in person. Those flaws not only become
visible, but magnified. . . .

"If I were talking to someone, I'd look at their eyes, not at the
blemish on the side of their face. But as soon as you open up that
photo on a 30-inch monitor, you'd say, 'Oh my gosh, where did that
come from?' "

What the brain perceives in a still photo is vastly different from
what it perceives in real life, according to Dr. Dale Purves, director
of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University in Durham,
N.C. Up close and personal, "every second you're getting a series of
images of a person that you're kind of blending together, and that
would be a little more forgiving." What we're taking in, he adds, is a
load of stuff, including clothing, personality and smells -- elements
that can evaporate in two dimensions.

When it comes to editorial photos for magazines, it's common for
several different people -- photographers, professional retouchers,
photo editors, art directors, publishers -- to have a say about an
image. Although some editors insist celebrities don't have final say
on how images will be altered, "If they're big enough, they do get
[final approval]" says Howard Bragman, chairman of the Fifteen Minutes
publicity and media company and author of "Where's My Fifteen
Minutes?"

Retoucher Amy Dresser sits at a computer monitor in her home office
scanning a portrait of an auburn-haired model to demonstrate how she
uses Photoshop. She deftly zaps a few small moles and then peers at a
small white patch just below the model's eye before obliterating that
too.

"I think one of my main objectives," she says, "is to erase
distractions. When you look at an image, sometimes people can't focus
on what they're supposed to focus on because there's something going
on in the background."

She adds, "I don't have a rule that a mole near her armpit equals bad.
It's really case by case. I don't think anything is universally bad."

Dresser is considered one of the top freelance retouchers in Los
Angeles. Her portfolio includes work on celebrity, advertising and
model photos (Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Kat Von D, Lil Wayne, Dita
Von Teese) for editorial work, and promotion, as well as big-budget ad
campaigns.

For editorial portraits, Dresser says she doesn't take liberties, such
as over-softening facial features and turning subjects into
plastic-like dolls, a look often seen in rookie Photoshop work. She
abhors that style, leaving in freckles and moles and sometimes drawing
in stray hairs to retain a person's humanness.

"When it comes to notable people," she says, "I feel like embracing
the details of that person's face is what I'm supposed to do.
Obviously a person wants to have a nice picture of themselves, and the
photographer doesn't want to look bad, and I don't want to look like a
lazy retoucher, and the magazine wants an appealing image, so you have
to find that middle ground."

People may not think too much about Photoshop when scanning the
magazine stand, but they do notice immediately when altered images of
notable people go awry. Comedian and actor Dane Cook went off on his
blog about his Photoshopped image for the movie poster for "My Best
Friend's Girl." "Whoever photoshopped our poster must have done so at
taser point with 3 minutes to fulfill their hostage takers deranged
obligations. . . ." Tennis player Andy Roddick was digitally enhanced
for a cover of Men's Fitness in 2007, and posted this on his blog:
"Little did I know I have 22-inch guns and a disappearing birth mark
on my right arm. . . . I walked by the newsstand in the airport and
did a total double take. I can barely figure out how to work the
red-eye tool on my digital camera. Whoever did this has mad skills."

Kardashian blogged that Complex's slip-up didn't faze her: "So what,"
she wrote, "I have a little cellulite. What curvy girl doesn't!? How
many people do you think are photoshopped? It happens all the time!
I'm proud of my body and my curves and this picture coming out is
probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the
cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect."

At Complex magazine, editor-in-chief Noah Callahan-Bever says he tries
to sit in on every cover shoot to ensure what's seen on set is
accurately translated into a two-dimensional image.

"I want to make sure that person is represented in a fair way," he
says. "If their flesh tone ends up looking flat and dead, and it
doesn't look true to who they are, then it goes back for more
retouching."

Ask Ladies' Home Journal creative director Jeffrey Saks if magazines
are consciously manipulating images to foster readers' poor
self-images and he firmly denies it.

"We're not trying to make women feel bad," he says. "We're trying to
show women looking like real people, and whatever cleaning up we do is
basically about the quality of the photograph more than trying to do
plastic surgery."

Gigi Durham, associated professor of media studies at the University
of Iowa, doesn't buy into the argument that Photoshop helps people
regain what they lose when going from real life to a flat page.

"We do see who people are in real life," Durham says. "We can actually
see blemishes and weight and body shape, and most of the time we love
them anyway. I think manipulated images are far from that, and have
impacts that are more negative because they're subject to far more
scrutiny than we'd give them in real life." She's referring to the
fact that young women, especially, pore over magazine photos,
comparing themselves to the images.

"When I've talked to young adolescents about this," she says, "they're
not aware of the extent of the manipulation."

Even those who are more savvy, she adds, are still affected. "They
know that no one really looks like that, but they still say, 'I wish
my waist were that small.' "

With technology always evolving, no doubt graphics programs like
Photoshop will become more sophisticated and easier to use, possibly
making it even more widespread. If "to Photoshop or not to Photoshop"
is the question, the answer lies in what retouching will ultimately
achieve.

These days, purposely being seen au naturel is almost a political
statement. Last April's edition of French Elle featured eight European
women, including Monica Bellucci and Charlotte Rampling, sans makeup
and retouching. To many, it was as refreshing as it was eye-grabbing.

In the course of making adjustments on the auburn-haired model,
Dresser mentions that she recently joined an online dating site, and
posted a photo of herself. Was she tempted to Photoshop it?

"I just adjust color -- that's my personal rule. Obviously I can
retouch myself to look different, and I'm aware of how a person can
look different in two different photos. So I try to find a photo of me
being me."

jeannine.stein at latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times