Photoshop Goggles!

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I’ve been teaching myself how to edit photos professionally, with Photoshop CS5.  It is amazing how you can manipulate and transform a picture or person with this software.  I’ve been Googling pictures of girls with no makeup, and applying makeup with Photoshop, contouring the face, smoothing skin, changing hair color, adding hair, applying eyelashes, whitening teeth, widening eyes, and plumping lips.  It’s like photo plastic surgery.

These girls look beautiful and natural without the Photoshop, but you will never find unretouched photos in magazines today.   Every page of a magazine is Photoshopped!  The models, the jewelry, the clothing, even the food!  It makes it more visually appealing to the reader.

It’s not wonder I could never make the mascara look as perfect on my eyelashes as it did in the magazine, or my face as smooth, flawless, and glowing as a Cover Girl’s! (Or maybe I’m just not good at doing my makeup!)

The biggest misconceptions are the supermodels, the fitness models, swimsuit models, all models in general.  I know that they are all professionally retouched, but for some reason I still think this image of “perfection” exists.  Something I want to, and expect to see in the mirror.

So just to prove to myself that you can take a woman and Photoshop her to almost “perfect,” (through the eyes of a Photoshop photo editor) I took one of the first few images from Google of an unretouched woman in her bikini.  This one happens to be Joslyn James on the beach.  Truthfully speaking she already had a nice body, but I wanted to see how far I could go with it. 

I smoothed her skin, removed some tattoos, widened her eyes, removed wrinkles, contoured her face, arms, legs, hips, waist, and bellybutton, and added a warming hue to her skin.  And tada!!! There it is – a Photoshop makeover.

Even Heidi Klum once said, “Hook me up with a great photographer, a clever stylist, and an expert retoucher, and together we create a beautiful illusion.”

Illusion is the key word here!