Drinking. Dancing. Rock-n-Roll. Women wearing pants. Photoshop?
The latest hate-craze seems to be regarding Photoshop.
This, in itself, drives me nuts. "Photoshop" is a design program, a computer software program, one of many put out by Adobe. It is not a verb. It's an incredibly versatile and exciting software that I spend hours of my daily life on, spent thousands of dollars to become educated in and have my future career and passions surrounded by. Adobe Photoshop is what your entire world is made up of, so how can you say you 'hate' anything that's been "Photoshopped?" How can an entire country 'ban' "photoshopped" images? This blog is has tons of "Photoshop" in it. Websites, book covers, advertisements, media, illustrations, drawings, furniture, labels, vehicles, homes, gardens, cities, every single thing in this entire world has some sort of design element to it. Regardless if it is the preliminary drawing or the final product, Adobe Photoshop, or another computer design program, most likely played a key part in it. In Everything!
So, I'm going to cry foul today.
The Photoshop-hating philosophy appears to be one of the major hypocritical arguments out there today. Let's take a quick look...
The first argument is the software is evil because it makes women appear un-naturally beautiful.
Do women wear make-up? Do they wear earrings or jewelry? Do they dye their hair? Paint their nails? Wear high-heels? Go to the gym? Diet? Wear the latest fashion trends? Go to the spa? If you do even one of these things, then I cannot respect your Photoshop-hatred regarding the enhancement of images. Is it not such a double-standard to be offended because a magazine enhanced the cover image of a model, yet that same person refuses to leave the house without make-up on? Isn't this image enhancement? Isn't this a 'lie' as to the true portrayal of what you look like?
The second argument is the software is evil because it lowers self-esteem due to un-achievable looks.
How can one blame a computer design software for the low self-esteem that people face today because they are so incredibly self-absorbed they can't fathom a world where they don't look like a Super Model, real or fake. Are their lawsuits for Mattel because Barbie is un-realistic? What about Disney and their beautiful princesses? Should we be afraid of anything looking different than the 'norm' because it might hurt someone's feelings? Should we all wear the same outfit, have the same skin-colour, be the same gender in hopes of having everyone feel equally special? Who is defining beauty? Why aren't these haters going after the media and hollywood...what about the writers who ask for an actress to be sexy for a role, they wrote the part, why does it have to look a certain way? Why is the anger focused directly on the artist?
Is the artist the one who defined beauty? Or did someone ask the artist to create what they decide beauty is?
The third argument I would like to scoff at is the idea that all images in magazines should be real and not enhanced. That's fine. Let's all do that then. Let us strip our culture of the God-given creativity and imagination of our children in order for everything to appear exactly as it is in reality. No more vibrant colors. No more fantasy. No poems or fiction. No more markers/crayons/paints as those aren't realistic. No more lighting in photo studios in order to bring out shadows and highlights. We should probably only take photos in the day, at the same exact time, as to not have one photo look different than another for fear one photographer might get their feelings hurt if their image doesn't look as good as someone else's. No more art degrees at all, ever, as that invites interpretation of what things are, rather than realistic ideas.
Photoshop is an art tool, a design requirement. Does one fault Van Gogh because his brush-strokes aren't realistic? Do we burn Monet's work because pastel colours aren't always visible in certain light? Do we discredit Ansel Adams because he used filters on his camera? Do we threaten lawsuits on Michelangelo because his realistic paintings of women showed them voluptuous and made the skinny, poor women feel bad about themselves?
Alright, that's my rant for this evening. It's not a mountain I'm willing to battle, it's just something I felt like saying. A need to defend the very passion I have and use daily because of all the nay-sayers out there. I love Photoshop. ;)
The latest hate-craze seems to be regarding Photoshop.
This, in itself, drives me nuts. "Photoshop" is a design program, a computer software program, one of many put out by Adobe. It is not a verb. It's an incredibly versatile and exciting software that I spend hours of my daily life on, spent thousands of dollars to become educated in and have my future career and passions surrounded by. Adobe Photoshop is what your entire world is made up of, so how can you say you 'hate' anything that's been "Photoshopped?" How can an entire country 'ban' "photoshopped" images? This blog is has tons of "Photoshop" in it. Websites, book covers, advertisements, media, illustrations, drawings, furniture, labels, vehicles, homes, gardens, cities, every single thing in this entire world has some sort of design element to it. Regardless if it is the preliminary drawing or the final product, Adobe Photoshop, or another computer design program, most likely played a key part in it. In Everything!
So, I'm going to cry foul today.
The Photoshop-hating philosophy appears to be one of the major hypocritical arguments out there today. Let's take a quick look...
The first argument is the software is evil because it makes women appear un-naturally beautiful.
Do women wear make-up? Do they wear earrings or jewelry? Do they dye their hair? Paint their nails? Wear high-heels? Go to the gym? Diet? Wear the latest fashion trends? Go to the spa? If you do even one of these things, then I cannot respect your Photoshop-hatred regarding the enhancement of images. Is it not such a double-standard to be offended because a magazine enhanced the cover image of a model, yet that same person refuses to leave the house without make-up on? Isn't this image enhancement? Isn't this a 'lie' as to the true portrayal of what you look like?
The second argument is the software is evil because it lowers self-esteem due to un-achievable looks.
How can one blame a computer design software for the low self-esteem that people face today because they are so incredibly self-absorbed they can't fathom a world where they don't look like a Super Model, real or fake. Are their lawsuits for Mattel because Barbie is un-realistic? What about Disney and their beautiful princesses? Should we be afraid of anything looking different than the 'norm' because it might hurt someone's feelings? Should we all wear the same outfit, have the same skin-colour, be the same gender in hopes of having everyone feel equally special? Who is defining beauty? Why aren't these haters going after the media and hollywood...what about the writers who ask for an actress to be sexy for a role, they wrote the part, why does it have to look a certain way? Why is the anger focused directly on the artist?
Is the artist the one who defined beauty? Or did someone ask the artist to create what they decide beauty is?
The third argument I would like to scoff at is the idea that all images in magazines should be real and not enhanced. That's fine. Let's all do that then. Let us strip our culture of the God-given creativity and imagination of our children in order for everything to appear exactly as it is in reality. No more vibrant colors. No more fantasy. No poems or fiction. No more markers/crayons/paints as those aren't realistic. No more lighting in photo studios in order to bring out shadows and highlights. We should probably only take photos in the day, at the same exact time, as to not have one photo look different than another for fear one photographer might get their feelings hurt if their image doesn't look as good as someone else's. No more art degrees at all, ever, as that invites interpretation of what things are, rather than realistic ideas.
Photoshop is an art tool, a design requirement. Does one fault Van Gogh because his brush-strokes aren't realistic? Do we burn Monet's work because pastel colours aren't always visible in certain light? Do we discredit Ansel Adams because he used filters on his camera? Do we threaten lawsuits on Michelangelo because his realistic paintings of women showed them voluptuous and made the skinny, poor women feel bad about themselves?
Alright, that's my rant for this evening. It's not a mountain I'm willing to battle, it's just something I felt like saying. A need to defend the very passion I have and use daily because of all the nay-sayers out there. I love Photoshop. ;)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
jot a note!