Photography and Photoshop are two different talents. These are often combined, and some people would refer to that as cheating. Almost all of the photographs in media are edited in some way. Manipulating a photo can be cropping, increasing or reducing light, or inserting and deducting actual objects in or out of the picture.
How often do we see terrible images from natural disasters, wars or other shocking events? Would you ever think the people in these photos were photoshopped to simply appeal to your emotions? Of course the events are tragic, but photoshopping them is untruthful.
People of the media can insert objects, people, or effects to a photograph to make it more dramatic. Their plan is to come up with a shocking news story that people will click, watch and share. Attention inspiring news stories are what people talk about the next day. People are now starting to understand these editing tricks. With this in mind, manipulated news content is used less and less due to the average computer user’s understanding of photo editing and Photoshop.
Not only does the news manipulate their photographs to get our attention, but everywhere around us we can find commercials that are altered in programs like Photoshop. People are most commonly fooled by cosmetic and skin care commercials. Advertisers edit away facial hair, they even out skin with airbrushing and they make average bodies unrealistic by making them look like Barbie.
We fall for the same tricks every time; eyelashes will not get an inch longer from wearing special mascaras, and your body will not look better from taking “magical” pills.
