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Ten Things 2006: Pr...I was seven. It was Christmas, and a great opportunity to take family pictures. After our ritual of standing in front to the tree and posing, my dad called me upstairs to see some of our photos. I walked over to his desk, expecting to see our family portrait, but instead there was a picture of my favorite aunt. “Watch this,” my dad told me, and using the mouse, he changed her floral dress into a skin-tone brown color…in all the right places. The finished product? My conservative aunt’s dress had been transformed into a bikini. Of course, back then, the tools on Photoshop were not as advanced as they are today, but neither was the quality of our printer. Neither mattered much, as the main point of that transformation was the look of shock and confusion on my aunt’s face when she saw her photo. She didn’t recall ever owning a bikini like that, or ever posing for that picture. Finally, we spilled our secret: the picture wasn’t real. Well, it was a real picture, as we could touch it and see it, but it wasn’t a real situation. Photoshop had captured my attention with the idea of deception. As I covered my mouth and giggled at my confused aunt, the idea of manipulating reality fascinated me.
Before
After
This was my first interaction with Photoshop. We were both young, in our fist decade of life. Photoshop was a mere five years old, while I was only seven. Developed in 1990 by two brothers with a passion for photography and computers, Photoshop 1.0 entered a growing market of digital photography programs. The 90s was the start of a digital age. Technological developments in computers, scanners, printers, cameras, cell phones, TV, and the web were rapidly expanding. Photoshop joined the market of curious consumers, willing to buy up new advancements. When my dad let me use Photoshop on our computer, I would add purple mustaches to my sister’s face, or color her hair green. The pictures above are just examples of what Photoshop and I were capabale of creating ten years ago. Although I don't have any photos that I played with from ten years ago, these photos are what saved images would have looked like. Thinking about the "bigger picture" in this situation, the fact that I was a young child and alread could use the computer with ease and speed is remarkable. Our generation grew up with computer mouses instead of well...whatever our parents grew up with. My point is that adults still have trouble typing and understanding computers but I was born in a time when techonology was taking giant steps. Learning how to manipulate photos on a copmuter at the ripe age of seven instead of playing with Barbies and dolls is a pretty remarkable feat.
What the relationship has become
Photoshop and I have come a long way since our beginning stages of drawing mustaches and color hair. I’ve never read a book on Photoshop or taken any classes about it. My mom uses Photoshop for her work and so I had it installed on my computer at home. After my mustache drawing phase, I used Photoshop to correct red-eye in pictures, crop, reduce shine, remove dust and other basic functions. I started experimenting with different options in Photoshop. The “Filter” menu was amazing. With the touch of a button, a picture could be black and white, charcoal, and Xerox-copied onto lined paper. An image could become a watercolor painting or a sketch with no effort on my part at all. It wasn’t long before I discovered the clone too, the paint brush (and its hundreds of options), the dodge and burn tool, opacity, lighting effects, and much more. As I discovered more and more options, Photoshop became more and more advanced. Now, Photoshop CS is on the market for $650.00. Visit the webpage and have a whirl, the graphics are amazing, and they should be for that price tag. http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/main.html
Currently I use Photoshop for four types of projects. First, I use it to add people or things into images. My mom wasn’t home for Christmas this year and missed our family picture. This was a problem for us because we needed a picture to put in the Christmas letter. I took a picture of my mom later, and Photoshopped her into the family picture we took on Christmas. To the unsuspecting naked eye, no one reading that Christmas letter would ever know that she was not actually standing next to me that day. The second use I have for Photoshop is altering bodies in images. My friend Caitlin was looking at photos on my computer one day, and commented on how big she thought her butt looked. Of course, the angle that the picture was taken played a small role in the size of her butt in the picture, but that didn’t stop her from being discontent. After a few trial and error attempts, I used my limited Photoshop knowledge to reduce her butt and satisfy her desire to be model-skinny—in that picture, at least. My third use for Photoshop is creating art. I love taking pictures and Photoshop provides an easy way for me to paint without a canvas. I have very limited artistic ability when it comes to drawing, painting, sculpting and basically making anything with my hands. To remedy my artistic disability, Photoshop gave me the freedom to express my creative ideas without embarrassing myself in making tangible art. Can this type of art be compared to traditional and historical art? Lastly, I am in a photography class called “The Technical Aspects of Photography” where we combine medium format cameras, color slide film, and Photoshop CS to compose a perfect image.
The Uses and Users of Photoshop
My uses for Photoshop consist of: adding people to pictures, perfecting bodies, creating artwork, and correcting mistakes made in the field. These uses cover many of Photoshop’s capabilities. Photoshop replaces the need for different people to contribute to the publication of a photograph. Instead, Photoshop “erodes traditional boundaries between artist or photographer, editor, archivist, publisher, republisher and viewer,” (Mitchell). With Photoshop, the photographer has access to the programs necessary to edit the photo, and eventually publish.
The seemingly endless options available on Photoshop provide an array of uses for a variety of people ranging from photographers to artistically challenged, from professionals to amateurs. The tasks Photoshop can perform were once only available to professionals that met the money and skill required for its use. Now, Photoshop is a marketable item, designed for even the most unskilled user. “New media does not change the nature of the professional-amateur relationship. The gap becomes much smaller but it still exists. And it will always exist, because it is systematically maintained by professional producers themselves in order to survive.” Although the book, Cyberculture, believes that the gap between the professionals and amateurs still exist, I believe that Photoshop offers amateurs access to the same kind of programs and tools necessary to produce a professional-like image.
