Think we're in the middle of a Photoshopping epidemic? You don't even know how bad it is (well, now you do). According to a recent survey, 68 percent of adults take to some kind of photo editing before they share any photo with another person or online. As desktop and mobile editing tools become easier to use — with some even serving the specific purpose of being easy to use for the less technically inclined — Photoshopping images is the latest trend... and it's still growing.
In the selfie-crazed madness we live in, it was only a matter of time before people began using tools to remove blemishes on their own, without the aid of a professional retoucher. And of course, natural photos just won't do anymore. Not when you're the only one in the world who suffers from what is now the rarest disease on the planet: uneven skin.
While this report is so far unnamed (it's indirectly referred to in an article on EPhotoZine), the numbers aren't impossible, as the number of adults who edited their photos before publishing them was already at 48 percent in 2014.
With so many people editing their images on such a mass scale (by some numbers, over a million selfies are taken every day), how can we be "real" anymore?
An interesting point to consider is something that was brought up in a recent article about Kate Winslet's anti-Photoshopping clause, who quoted some food for thought by Peter House:
Real life is fluid. When you and I interact, my brain is not micro-focusing on all the zits, lines, scars, hairs, etc. that might make a moment 'imperfect.' I am fluidly moving through the motions and focusing on the bigger picture.
However, when an image is taken, it freezes a moment in time and gives me the chance to analyze the entire scene down to the most minuscule detail. In that freeze frame, I might start noticing things about you that otherwise I may not have perceived. Maybe I'll catch that small birthmark. Maybe I'll notice the slight unibrow. Maybe I will catch a glimpse of thinning hair.
Retouching simply helps to remove all those distractions and brings the focus back on the beauty of the individual.
Are we just keeping our friends from staring at our faces long enough to notice our blemishes? Or are we doing more by making ourselves thinner (at least six percent of us are), among making other more drastic edits? And don't make the mistake of thinking "blemishes" are a "girl" problem. While 52 percent of women take selfies, an almost equivalent ratio of men do the same (50 percent). And — ready for this one? — 13 percent of women say they retouch every selfie. How many men say the same? Thirty-four percent! So much for the ladies being the vain ones.
[via EPhotoZine.com]
What i don't get is this "anti-photoshop" movement that its growing at a fast pace. My RAW files go ACR, my portraits go FS. As long as I don't make the person lose his/her traits, what gives? What's so moraly wrong on healing some skin blemishes and problems?
If 68% of people "Photoshop" their pictures, that only tells you that 68% of people like to see themselves retouched somehow, it tells me that 68% of the adults who do this want to see a better version of what they are.
(by retouching i don't mean waxing...)
I agree, as long as they look like the same, everything is fine. But often there is so much Photoshop done, that people look like aliens to me. An Austrian athlete told me once, that her mother didn't recognize here the other day in a newspaper, because there was so much retouching done.
Lots of customers like to get their head shot done by me, because I capture them as they are.
68% of adults don't know how to OPEN PS let alone know how to fix anything. Hell most of the newbie photographers are afraid of PS or any editing program. Dumb article.
68% of all so-called statistics are B.S.
Photoshop use isn't exploding suddenly. Retouching, editing, post processing has been prevalent for a long time. The technology that makes it happen is just getting dumbed down and therefore available to people who don't spend 3 hours watching a retouching video tutorial. And why not, doesn't everyone want to look their best? Why do we have makeup, wigs, etc?
FS articles are heading for the tank....the tutorials are banging though.
I'll confess. I crop everything.
I think it would be much more accurate to say 'people alter their images' as apposed to 'Photoshop' images. I don't know enough people capable of using Photoshop to cover a 65+% group.
Bullshit clickbait headline FS. No way 68% of people use Photoshop. Your article goes on to say it's just general retouching, which is far from the same. There is also no detail on what this means, if I use the built-in tools on my iPhone to crop my photo, is that "photoshopping" it?
I think 68% of most people use the processing tools in either their cellphones or web hosting apps. I see a lot of synthetically smoothed skin on facebook and Instagram.
68% of people, but only 35% of the time, said 45% of people interviewed.
Yeah, if this was the case I'm in favour that way people might only post one image at a time, rather than the 100s of the same thing.
Most do not know how to select certain images, they just dump the whole card into Facebook. Its like a real crap flick book of images lol