When Is It Okay To Use Photoshop?

Sarah Weingarten
sw464012@ohio.edu

Photoshopping has created limitless creativity when adjusting photos. But, sometimes photojournalists become too dependent on Photoshop to create the perfect picture. Like Allan Detrich, from the Toledo Blade got caught altering his photos. He would clean them up to be more appealing like take out a unnecessary person or add a tree. 

The use of Photoshop for appeal is unethical but also sometimes hurtful to the subjects that are being subjected to editing. Photoshop has a negative connotation because its correlated with editing body types, skin and clothes. So when is okay to Photoshop and when is it not?

Other Journalism Outlets

In magazines and advertising pictures of models and celebrities are constantly being airbrushed. The Huffington Post has a series of before and after photoshopped photos. That are quite unnerving mostly because girls and teenagers look up to these people and want to look like them, but what they’re looking at isn’t even a real person.

Photoshop is so submerged into advertising and celebrity culture that it’s natural to assume that photos in glossy magazines are always photoshopped. The reason that I believe why Photoshop is more acceptable and less frowned upon in magazines and PR is because these publications are selling a fantasy life. While newspapers are about real life and what is going on in the world. Photojournalism in newspapers is not supposed to be perfect, they’re real time in real life photos that have been captured.

Newspapers are held to a higher transparency than other publications (even though all publications should always be transparent and truthful) because it’s reporting real time issues that are occurring on a day-to-day basis. Consumers don’t want to be lied about the coverage about the world, politics and their communities and heavily editing photos is deceit.

Over The Top

In the past year a Utah school received a lot of criticism for photoshopping multiple female yearbook photos. They did this so the photos seemed more appropriate even though the original yearbook photos were far from scandalous. 

http://www.nydailynews.com/

The odd thing was that the school wasn't consistent in its editing and only selected a handful of yearbook photos to edit. This use of Photoshop is so unnecessary, because the girls were dressed appropriately. If anything this use of Photoshop sexualized the selected students when their clothes were not even promiscuous. But the editing of their clothes made it seem that way. 

Photoshop has its place in the photo world, but a newspaper isn’t one of them and neither are yearbooks. Magazines and advertisements have more leeway when it comes to editing but the heavy use of Photoshop has had negative affect because the consumer assumes all the photos are edited now. Consumers hold newspapers on a high pedestal of truthfulness that needs to be matched in its stories and photos and by utilizing Photoshop newspapers are deceiving its readers.