Photo Essay: How Editing Can Alter Your Appearance In Photos
Sometimes edits are easy to spot. Sometimes they aren’t. These before-and-afters compare “subtle” edits and dramatic edits that alter the face and body.
If you flip through magazines, scroll through Instagram, or even glance at an advertisement in a window, you’ll encounter edited images. These images are rarely labelled as edited, and that’s the issue.
Photoshop can be a great tool for creative expression. However, removing acne, scars, hair, stretch marks, and wrinkles – features everyone has at some point in their life – from images that circulate the mainstream without disclosing that they’ve been edited creates harmful, dangerous, and unrealistic beauty standards.
Not everyone realizes how much editing affects the media they consume, and it can be difficult to spot an edit unless you know exactly what to look for. As a result, we often compare ourselves to how other people look “naturally” in photos and wonder why we don’t look the same. If this sounds like you, you are NOT the problem – the problem is a lack of transparency regarding edits.
To make matters worse, trends and industries today favor “subtle” editing to create the illusion of unedited images. Below are three examples of “subtle” edits using my own face and body. Farther down, we’ll take a look at more extreme edits.
“Subtle” Edits
Above: This is an example of a subtle edit that doesn’t attempt to overtly alter my appearance. You can see the edits particularly on my lips and the right side (your right) of my face, where my mole and pimples have been removed. Photo/R. Writes.
Above: I removed the stretch marks, hair, and bug bites from the skin on my arm in a matter of seconds using the spot-healing brush in Adobe Photoshop. Photo/R. Writes.
Above: This is another, more overt example of a “subtle” edit. The increased gamma correction makes my skin appear smoother and lighter, but my appearance still looks somewhat natural. Photo/R. Writes.
Dramatic Edits
Whether it’s thinning, enlarging, smoothing, or outright removing certain parts of the body, dramatic edits present depictions of the human body that do not represent reality.
Below are three examples of edits that drastically alter the appearance of the individual in question. All of these edits were published or nearly published either digitally or in print.
Above: This viral, infamous demonstration of the dramatic effects of photoshop comes from a time lapse video showing the progression of the editing process from start to finish. To watch the video, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17j5QzF3kqEPhoto/M. Annese. Above: Photoshop is not the only way to alter your appearance. Apps such as Facetune have many of the same dramatic editing capabilities. In the edited version of this photo, not only was the man’s skin smoothed, but his eyebrow piercing was also completely removed. Photo/Facetune.Above: The photo on the left is an edited version of the photo on the right picturing actress Zendaya. In the edited photo, Zendaya’s hips and torso were thinned, her complexion was altered, and her baby hairs were removed from her forehead. Photo/@zendaya on Instagram.
By 
Ris Writes 