Mission Impossible: Photoshop Protocol
Photoshop has a reputation as a sort of magic mirror. Give a designer five minutes and a copy of Photoshop and he can turn the photo you took into the photo you wish you’d taken!
I think it has a lot to do with TV programmes like CSI, which show people “enhancing” blurry CCTV images to reveal pin-sharp faces or number plates. The popularity of these programmes has been an incredible stroke of luck for Adobe: an example of huge positive word of mouth improving public perception of the product, and without any intervention (or spend) by the brand.
Of course, you can also see Photoshop’s reputation as a negative, because it sets up sky-high expectations of the product and the people who use it. These are just few of challenges we’ve faced over the years:
1. Turning someone to face the camera. Photoshop does have a Rotate tool, but it can’t derive a person’s face from the back of their head.
2. Eyes wide shut. Flash photography causes red-eye and blinking. We can correct red-eye fairly easily; de-blinking is a bit more of a tall order. If nothing else, the subject might have something to say if the fix ends up changing their eye colour.
3. Fixing people’s dress sense. Say the subject wasn’t wearing the appropriate branding or safety gear. Photoshop might be able to fix the image, but will that improve the attitude that made the fix necessary?
4. Solving absenteeism. Someone missing from a group shot? Photoshop to the rescue! Though we’d prefer more than a head and shoulders shot to work with; despite its name, regrowing missing limbs is a bit beyond the Clone tool’s powers. The flipside to this one is removing people who shouldn’t have been in the shot to start with. And if editing entire people in and out of photos doesn’t sound like enough of a challenge to you, let me just say: shadows and reflections.
5. Relocation, relocation. This can include switching out entire backgrounds so the photo appears to have been taken somewhere completely different, and subtler adjustments like adding more sky / sea / floorboards to extend the dimensions of the shot (so there’s more room for the caption, for example).
Now, don’t get me wrong. We’ve accepted all these challenges and more, and we’ve found ways to deliver on them all.
But the danger of relying on our Photoshop wizardry is that it can reduce the incentive to get the image right first time. Why wait until the CEO’s free to take the whole company photo for the website? We can Photoshop her in later. Why waste time composing the shot nicely? Photoshop has an Apply Rule Of Thirds filter, right?
The moral of the story? Photoshop can do amazing things in skilled hands, but it’s not magic. And doctoring an image in Photoshop is rarely as efficient as sourcing the right image in the first place.
