Photoshop Disasters

A break from my own photography into some Photoshop magic. Or not so magic, as it turns out, if you don't know what you are doing. I came across this blog via some obscure route this morning (probably started in Brighton Flickr pool). There are some hilarious blunders there, and quite surprising ones, too. I bet you never noticed what was wrong with the sky in 20th Century Fox logo (widescreen version, presumably "stretched" from a 4:3 aspect image). I hadn't. And what about that Photoshop book "How To Cheat in Photoshop CS3"... looks like it's a testament to crap editing. I mean, don't they see the irony in the image on the cover and the slogan "The art of creating photorealistic montages" over it? Seems to me like the book endorses cheap and nasty shortcut editing. The examples inside the book are as horrendous as the cover.

Now, I have to admit that this subject is my pet peeve at the moment. It makes me angry when I see an impressive image in thumbnail size, then click on it and see that it's been created with bad, sloppy editing. Honestly. I should have some aspirin next to my computer in case a poorly edited photo attacks me through my monitor. What angers me most is Betterphoto.com daily e-mails. (And bear with me here, as most of the time I love seeing the daily photo.) I subscribed to these e-mails a year or two ago, and get one photo sent to my inbox every day. Most of the time the "Photo of the Day" is great, and sometimes simply stunning. But sometimes... well... for example, exactly how realistic did the creator of this image think it would look when you combine a dark, after sunset image of the sky and a harshly side lit daylight image of giraffes? And this is by no means one of the worst examples of bad editing amongst the Betterphoto.com "Photo of the Day" picks. (BTW, just clicking through the giraffe image guy's portfolio on Betterphoto reminded of another editing faux-pas: that awful, completely unrealistic "Photoshop water reflection" that some people seem to adore.) But like I said, most of the time the "Photo of the Day" picks are absolutely stunning images - have a look!

I'm not by any means saying that my own editing skills are great, but at least I strive for - well, if not 'perfection', then at least 'very good'. And when I can't achieve that, I prefer to hide the evidence and go away and practise more before showing the image in public.