Photoshop and Beauty Standards
Rather than using a photo to talk about the affects of what Photoshop can do to people, I decided to use a video that showcases four women who volunteered to have their bodies photoshopped to fit the beauty standard of the culture that they’re a part of (the video itself was six years ago but can still be applied to how beauty standards still affect people to this day). In the video, everyone is talking about how their photoshopped selves, which have all been altered in some way, looked very strange—one of them (Kristen, who was photoshopped to represent Italian beauty standards) even said, “This is like me, with all of the me sucked out of it.” The way that every single person who volunteered was altered in some way tells us that beauty standards are unrealistic, and that not every single person is going to “fit” the standard. It can affect people negatively, thinking that if they don’t fit the standard, then that means that they are not pretty enough for someone; this can make some people develop body image issues, which affects you mentally and physically.
Photoshop and Art
The advancement of technology to create art has brought in a whole new type of art style in art that, while hard to replicate physically on a canvas, is just as creative and amazing as the artworks created on canvas. The creation of Photoshop by John Knoll, who is known for working behind the scenes as a visual effects expertise in many films (Star Wars and Avatar, to name a few), helps with creating, and advancing, the art that we can do and create.1 Practical effects are still a practice within the industry—and still required to use since it’s difficult to accurately put visual effects on every single moving object—but with the digital applications that have been created to create something as illustrative as the things you see on screen, we wouldn’t be able to expand our creativity in the way that we do now.
- Mark Telfer. Fantha Tracks. “Star Wars: A Photoshop Story.” 1 Mar. 2018. https://www.fanthatracks.com/news/film-music-tv/star-wars-photoshop-story/ Accessed 29 Oct. 2023 ↩︎