What I do to my pictures

I think it was elizabeth who asked, "why do you edit your pictures?"  I just answered, "er... because they look better," or something, but obviously, that answer didn't answer any questions.  I actually get this question asked quite often in various forms (how do you photoshop your pictures? what do you do when you edit your pictures?), and I think it would be better to explain with pictures rather than words.

First of all, let's see what professional photographers, or er... graphic designers do:



(Kiera Knightly poster for the movie King Arthur)

this is actually a quite infamous picture of kiera knightly, whom I think is stunningly gorgeous.  can you tell the differences between the two pictures?  Okay, the right picture has much more vibrant color, they added stuff on the background, they drew in some stuff on her face and arms to maker her look more "barbaric," and of course... they made her boobs bigger and her lips thicker.

There are about gazillion other edits, but I don't want to dive into ethics of photoshopping commercial photographs.  Let me just say I feel sorry for modern teenage girls. Even if you know the image has been digitally edited, you can't help but to want it - like those pictures on fast food menues - you know it's not gonna be as good when you buy it but you still want it anyway.

Moving on, do I or have I made anyone's boobs bigger?  sorry(?), no.  I pretty much do two things to all of my pictures, and that is adjusting the tone curve, and touching up color.  Adjusting the tone curve in plain English means I'm making certain parts of a picture either brighter or darker. And I only play around with color may be 15% of the time.

this is the original picture





the bottom picture is the final edit



See how the sky is slightly darker on the edited one?  The original looked too fake, so i decided to darken the sky.

Here's a case of a picture that was HEAVILY edited, by my standards:






The final products look quite different right?  Especially the color.  This is as bad as it gets.  I screwed up a bit the first time - I made the picture look too cold when it should've been warm.  So I fixed my mistake and added some contrast to make the picture more clear. 

And a lot of the times, I don't edit the pictures at all.  Sometimes because I don't need to, other times because I'm lazy:







(They don't look too bad right?  Honestly, I don't see the need to photoshop any of these images)


I'd just like to say that I don't think there's anything wrong with adjusting the brightness/darkness of a picture or playing around with the colors a bit, unless you change red into green or something.  But making someone's breasts bigger and legs longer?  In my opinion, that is when the image becomes a graphic design, and no longer a photograph.