WHERE would we be without Photoshop?
The iconic image doctoring app celebrated its 25th anniversary last month – that’s a whole quarter of a century of suspiciously smooth skin and big dinosaurs chasing people about at weddings.
As with so much computer-generated trickery (see every CGI film ever made), what is most apparent with Photoshopped imagery is how blatantly obvious it is to spot. Regardless of how familiar you are with the featured celeb (it’s inevitably a celeb), it’s almost always eye-wateringly apparent exactly how an image has been manipulated.
Far more fun is when Photoshop is used to poke fun at, rather than flatter, the great and good (and David Cameron). Or better yet, when it’s just used to do something really, really silly.
Here are some highlights…
MOTTO WINS LOTTO
Conveniently-surnamed Jerseyman Sam Motto handed local news-writers a ready-made headline last year after releasing a photo of himself and his friends clasping a winning Channel Islands Lottery ticket. Unfortunately (for Sam), it was all a hoax – the mischievous youngster had doctored the ticket numbers via Photoshop, thus winning nothing other than a round of applause for an impressive display of chutzpah.
KING ARTHUR
This 2004 Jerry Bruckheimer-produced celluloid disaster offered a strange reinterpretation of the King Arthur legend, bizarrely reimagining the medieval knight as a Roman officer. Alas, the film’s plot wasn’t the only factually dubious aspect of the production, as anyone who clapped eyes on the film’s notorious poster can attest. For while in reality Kiera Knightley may have a chest akin to two aspirins on an ironing board, here, the flat-chested film star was suddenly in possession of an eye-catchingly implausible pair of frost detectors, much to the actress’ condemnation. (Thankfully, this being Knightley, the Photoshoppers were spared the trouble of making her lips look all pouty.)
NICOLAS CAGE
Let’s face it, there aren’t many things as unequivocally great as a) cats and b) Nicolas Cage. Combining the two then was only ever going to prove a winner and thus it has proved. A classic example of the pointlessly brilliant possibilities of Photoshop.
BEYONCE
Beyoncé caused uproar following the release of publicity images for her fourth album, the imaginatively titled 4.
Sporting a blonde wig and a ‘skimpy black crochet monokini’ (thanks Daily Mail Online), the mixed race singer appeared 50 shades of beige lighter than usual. Ridiculously, the pop star’s publicists blamed the studio lighting (you know, that racist lighting that you get).
Alas, this wasn’t the first time Beyoncé had found herself at the centre of a skin-lightening controversy. Appearing in adverts for L’Oreal cosmetics, the Texas-born celeb looked decidedly magnolia-honed, leading to writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to accuse her of ‘betraying all black and Asian women’. Ouch.
KATE WINSLET
The English actress has been vocal about her disapproval of image manipulation. After appearing on the cover of GQ looking decidedly un-Winslet-like, she fumed: ‘the retouching is excessive. I do not look like that and more importantly, I don’t desire to look like that’. That was 2003, since when the actress has repeatedly posed for – and been blatantly Photoshopped by – the likes of Vogue, Bazaar and Glamour. So… not that disapproving then.
POLITICS
Politicians of all stripes have found themselves the butt of Photoshop prankery, be it Ed Miliband/a bacon sarnie being inserted into various iconic film stills or Tony Blair taking inappropriate selfies. David Cameron’s 2010 election campaign poster takes the biscuit, however. The wrinkle-free image of the then-future PM had already been airbrushed to unintentionally hilarious effect, even before the nation’s renegade Photoshoppers set to work.
The JEP design team spent an afternoon transforming their colleagues, reporter Tom Ogg, internet editor Ramsay Cudlipp, editorial assistant Andy Noble and commercial features writer Charlotte Huish.
Here are the results:
