I dont care for the truth. i color correct the pictures that i take. if the technology is available, why settle for less quality?

i will fully admit to airbrushing zits out, and always wanting to be the person with the camera so that i have control of what images get out.

is that vain?

It's less color correction and more learning how to take a photo without looking like a turd.

Seriously, in one photo I will look all svelte and cute, and in the next I will look like Jaba the Hut.

I edit photographs of myself - what I don't do is give myself a giraffe neck, anime eyes, a foot of extra hair or photoshop pounds off of my legs.

We all love pretty photographs, but no one ever asked for the ridiculousness that we see gracing magazine covers these days.

I find my copy of Photoshop Elements collecting dust. I used to color correct and tidy up pictures, but I don't anymore. I want them to be as close to what they were as possible. Mind you, personal photos are different than photos intended for the covers of magazine which hope to sell issues based on the photos. There it should come as no great shock that the photos are retouched or Photoshopped.

Keeping a photo of yourself in a pretty dress with a nice smile and trashing the pic of your throwing up in the commode is not lying. It's putting your best foot forward. Now, reconfiguring your clavicle bone in a photo and passing it off as truth is manipulative. There's a difference.

I take the worst pictures. It's like the camera hates me. But I just delete the ones I hate and 200 pictures later I get one I like.

I use it as is, no touch ups.

i love photoshopping pictures, but I must admit it leaves me a little flat to see reality or to look in the mirror when comparing what i see in reality to what i see in fashion photography... you cant expect anyone to look like that.

i did my entire senior photo show on the concept of bad photography. i had a blast. i was so sick of producing images that are so beautiful as to create a hyper-reality that i went in the complete opposite direction. sort of suck it, sally mann, i want to hang out with nan goldin cuz she's probably more fun. i never trust an image. i know how easy it is to fake it and manipulate the viewer.

My husband calls me "jackieO" becasue I hate, hate, hate having my photo taken.
If I could get photo shop, I would definately be more cooperative.

I think there is a HUUUGE difference between deleting less-than-flattering digital pics, or even color correcting/cropping pics and the insane stuff we see in commercial images and magazine covers. I'd argue that the former is still basically "reality" whereas the latter has no connection to reality at all.

when i look in the mirror i think i look pretty. when i look at photos i look...like a frog. how does one relax one's face for the camera?! i think i have a phobia. i hate photos.

If I really wanted reality then more images and ads would look like Victoria Beckham for Marc Jacobs. I'll take the fake airbrushing any day.

When taking black and white portraits of my friends, I put the camera on a tripod, ask them to hold still, and take a 2-second shot (where the shutter is open for 2 full seconds, not the usual 1/250th of a second). Their slight movements (breathing, etc.) make them very slightly blurry.

Voila! Nature's Photoshop. Zits, pockmarks, and the like disappear. :)

I's disturbing that in an age when people should know all about how very manipulated photos are, so many people act like they are the truthful, attainable standards. I had a chat with my Dad once about photoshopping, injections into zits to make them go away fast, lasering for skin, etc. and he didn't believe me - he thought these people just really are perfect all the time, all of them, every star. I am an actress, so I asked him - what about me? You see me in real life and you support my goals of being in films - I don't look like that in real life, should I therefore fail because I am not "perfect" like they supposedly are? He didn't know what to say. I hope he knows now that it's all fake.

Oh, I always airbrush my oily skin before I put pics of myself online. I do not, however, strip other people's body parts in place of my own, or make my appendages disproportionate to my body.

You also choose to frame a particular part of the world when you snap a photo. Depending on your camera and skills, you may also have focused selectively. Or adjusted lighting. Or turned your model a particular way. Photography is an art and though it has the appearance of reality (verisimilitude), it is not, has not, and will not, be reality. PhotoShop makes life easy, but nothing it does is novel. Photographers have been altering images since Daguerre.

I put every picture that I take through the iPhoto treatment. And, yes, I prefer to take pics myself for the purpose of quality control. You almost have to in jour digital world, in order to keep horribly unflattering pictures from being all over the internet. Pictures aren't usually about reality. They're about capturing moments the way that we want to remember them. No one wants to remember that time that you got too drunk to stay on the barstool and your friends snapped a pic just as you tumbled to the ground, covering yourself in bourbon and Diet Coke (not that I, uh I mean one, could remember that moment anyway). And THEN have that less-than-graceful moment documented on Facebook. I don't think there is anything wrong with trying to control the way that your image is presented to the world.

@BrutallyHonestBabes: I'm not snarking on my Pa - he's lovely and wonderful :) Just easily manipulated about some things. He loves him some Bill O'Reilly...

For the most part, I find that other people aren't capable of taking pictures of me in the way that I find attractive. I mean that to say: My pictures of me are almost unrecognizable next to theirs, and that's without any retouching. They seem to find the most unflattering angles possible without even trying, while I'm able to take a much better shot. Surely I'm not the only one who has experienced this?

I don't retouch. I just delete.

i've gone back and forth on this: on the one hand, i decided to never de-tag any pictures of myself on facebook, for example, because i figured it's all me no matter what, why hide the bad when all my friends see it in real life?

but then i kind of came around and i think that (especially on the internet) it's up to you how you want to represent yourself and if you don't actually have three chins and half-closed drunk eyes all the time, or an upper arm that is the size of your thigh if photographed at the right moment, then i don't think it is a bad thing to not want others to see it.

self-esteem can be quite fragile any ways, and if what you see in pictures isn't what you see in the mirror then get rid of it.

I do a lot of photography, and between the basic tools on Google's Picasa, the free, online version of Photoshop, and the free image editors available (GIMP, Paint.NET), there are plenty of resources for touching up photos for the average folk.

I have full mega super deluxe happy time Photoshop, but rarely use it since I'm not shooting for Vanity Fair; mostly just for fair vanity.

If I throw away pictures where I look weird, I'm not doing it with the intent of making someone else feel bad about themselves and go out to buy a bunch of slave-made clothes and lead-filled makeup.

On a different note: a friend of mine's actress sister took a class on how to look good in photos, and one of the tips is "look through to the film."

In my recent Photoshop class, they definitely addressed the ethics of retouching. They said the main goal should be "to make the subject look as good as they do in real life". Their point was, IRL when a person is moving and animated, you don't necessarily notice zits, double chins, etc. Esp. when you know a person, things like that tend to get zoned out. But in a still photo, you notice and can analyze those small things like zits, weird shadows and bulges, etc. So just remove what's distracting and try to make it so you can't even tell that enhancement was done- that's always the best Photoshoppery.

Of course, it's a slippery, slippery slope- what's "noticable" to one person may not be to another... we have to keep each other in check and not overdo it. :P

I'm the queen of throwing away terrible photos of myself. But even the flattering photos are still me, and I don't think you can equate the Photoshopped images on magazines with the flattering picture you choose to frame and display on your mantel. Photoshop has been taken to such an extreme that people don't look human any more. The images we see every day are of appearances that are completely unattainable. I remember when I was younger and played with Barbies, and saw a thing on TV that explained what a real woman's measurements would have to be for her to look like Barbie. I realised that those numbers were literally impossible to attain. The difference is, that was a doll, and I knew I could never be like her. To see real people made unattainable does a detriment to girls who don't realise that those images are impossible.

@Archetype: Yes, exactly!

I am guilty of teeth whitening my own photos. I hate my fucking teeth. They were destroyed by antibiotics in my childhood. So sue me. I don't give a fuck.

When I was fifteen I figured out that rolling my tongue inside my closed mouth tightens up potential under-jowliness and makes me look less chin-flabby in photos (it works for you, too). I have no qualms about doing this while taking pictures where I'm trying to look cute/pretty, even if it is a little vain--and trust me, I let people take completely heinous pictures of me in all kinds of not cute/not pretty states. I have under-jowliness and always have... you just don't see it in those pictures. Does my willingness to look heinous when I'm not trying negate my propensity to cheat when I am?

@zombie.sweetheart: a quick tip for looking good in photos - many people tense their faces because they want to look like a model, and they end up looking like a reject from the Creature Cantina. The easiest thing to do is say "Issac Hayes" in a slightly-slow voice as the picture is being taken. The face relaxes, and makes a natural smile the whole way through. Plus, because Issac's cool (sans Scientology), it gives a cooler aura to the subject.

@foodbaby: @Gingerlime:
I need to learn how to do this, can you tell me what you use? (have mac, if that helps)

Personally if I had the power to go back and correct images of myself you bet I would. I have wayy too many unflattering poses floating around out there.

i take horrible photos most of the time, and my friends are all snap-happy, so unless they all wanted to spend forEVER photoshopping, i settle for detagging. the rest of the time i try to dodge the camera

I'll keep an unflattering picture if it's also got a very flattering picture of a friend. But otherwise, I toss 'em. I don't see why I should keep photos that don't really show what I look like. The "truth" is that I don't normally have a double chin, red pupils, or a giant zit on my forehead.

@jaywo: ooh... neat trick! I just tried it. I may have to walk around like that, picture or no picture.

People "airbrush" themselves to begin with: it's called makeup. We've gotten to the point where it's "shocking" to see a woman without makeup on. That doesn't seem right to me.

While there is a huge difference between photoshopping a person a size slimmer and editing out a zit or the pictures we don't look good in - the point is to a certain extent we are all guilty of manipulating our own image. If we already hold ourselves to a standard that is slightly different from reality just for our friends and family - is it any that people hold up this celeb images seen by millions to an unreasonable standard?

@telecomic the scary red panda: We need more photo tips like this!!

I think the battle cry for Gen X was to be "real."

For Gen Y? To manipulate reality.

@zombie.sweetheart: Apparently, the trick to a good photo is chin down, eyes up. But don't take it too far, or else it looks a little creepy.

@missmam: is it any WONDER that people hold up THESE celeb images.

damn my typos.

There was an interesting article about Pascal Dangin, a master retoucher/photo manipulator in the New Yorker recently.

Link: [www.newyorker.com]

"On our way down, a young woman approached Dangin, her arm outstretched to support a proof of an ad for a men's cologne. 'There's no hair there,' Dangin told her, pointing to a raw, shiny spot on the model's forearm. 'Either add hair or burn it in.' ("Burning" refers to deepening the color and texture of a picture by exposing the paper to more light.) 'Let's get rid of the black spots on his chest"-freckles, as they're known in nature-"and add a little to the jaw.'"

@ForeverBlueGirl: or to be "the best real you can be"

;)

This may be the very nature of written communication - and I think that in this day and age, we can apply that to ANY form of communication that can be captured and recalled for later use, whether it's on paper or it's on a screen or if it's a book or a jpeg or a Flash file. Non-ephemeral communication tends to take shortcuts to encapsulate meaning in more efficient ways, but some of the message can be lost, misinterpreted, or wildly altered. And that may be an inherent part of those media.

I remember learning once that some of the world's most ancient alphabets - that is, when there was a move away from logograms (think hieroglyphics) to phonograms (think the alphabet), originally scribes would write down speeches and lectures exactly as they were given via the spoken word. In other words, everything was a transcription of speech. Today, obviously, things aren't like that. Some written communication is very colloquial, of course, and some images are perfectly candid and unedited.

But we throw away bad pictures of ourselves just like Aristotle's scribes probably threw away botched clay tablets. When we write, we may use the colloquial "voices in our heads" to synthesize ideas, but if you've ever had any kind of writing assignment, you've probably done some editing, corrected spelling mistakes, etc. You probably added clarity and improved your message for those who would ultimately consume it. I think there is a fundamental desire to put forth the best, clearest, most purposeful encapsulation of ideas whenever we can - whether it's a jpeg or a term paper or a text message.

We have a convenient little invention called "literacy", and it allows us to encapsulate complicated ideas in brief, compact ways for later consumption. That's awesome, because it means we don't have to remember everything through oral tradition anymore. We can draw on the wealth of knowledge of the thousands and thousands of people who have gone before us.

Unfortunately, however, some feel that the "best, clearest, and most purposeful encapsulation of ideas" is something that's Photoshopped beyond recognition. I know this is really dorky and long, tl;dr, but I wanted to take a step back and look at the very nature of communication that makes us do these things.

@Kilotwat: No kidding! Or more importantly, women afraid to to be seen without it.

One of my best buds & I discuss this incessantly. She won't be seen out without makeup. While I just don't bother. I don't have the time or effort or whatever to do it. At the same time, the nights we go out & I look like a zombiefied bum and she looks pretty & put together, I curse my grooming habits.

@zombie.sweetheart: Me too. I hate being photographed and don't feel relaxed in front of a camera. But I think I'm nice-looking in person and look better.

It also doesn't help that I have big knockers, so in photos I feel like I look fatter than I am.

@telecomic the scary red panda: I'm totally mouthing "Issac Hayes" at myself in the mirror. You know I actually find this whole topic really depressing. Imagine how fabulous it would be to just walk down the street knowing you look like Angelina Jolie...

Nothing is so black and white. It's shades of grey. Some of us wear makeup to even out skin tone or a belt over a shirt to define a waist. Some of us airbrush zits or color correct our photos. These do not essentially change the image of who we are.

When you decrease the width of an arm or a leg, erase eye lines, add hair, lengthen a torso, make a belly taut, or otherwise seriously alter the physical appearance of someone to conform to a subjective ideal, and then put it out for mass consumption where it influences the public's perception, you're responsible for answering as to why such drastic measures were taken in order to sell your magazine.

It has never occurred to me to photoshop a photo of myself. A good friend of mine recently told me how she needed to get some photos of herself photoshopped for her online profile, and I was shocked. (I know, I'm naive.) But honestly, it made me really sad she felt the need to photoshop herself. She's beautiful in real life and she's beautiful in photos. She doesn't need retouching. I'm sure most of you who are photoshopping yourselves don't either. And if you're doing it for to look better when guys see your photos (as my friend is) - do you really want the kind of guy who wants you to look like a photoshopped magazine cover? Or even one who doesn't understand that you have cellulite or that you get zits once in a while?

@HoneyLush: iPhoto is good for simple color correction, redeye reduction, and zit re-touching. The zit retouching (it's a tool that looks like a little paintbrush) and redeye reduction don't always work though- sometimes trying several times in slightly different spots helps. But sometimes it doesn't work at all.

Go to Lifehacker.com and search for free photo retouching software, they recommend some good ones. And they also have a couple posts with tutorials on how to do specific things in Photoshop.

Getting rid of oily shiny patches is tougher. In Photoshop I like to use the Healing Brush or the Patch tool to get rid of it. Some people recommend the Burn tool to darken the shiny spots, but I find it makes it too grayish and I have a hard time blending the edges.

My biggest retouching thing I do is eliminate undereye circles (because as soon as I take one drink I get instant wasted eyes). I also like to whiten bloodshot eyes. :)

@telecomic the scary red panda: Sweet tip! I'm totally going to say Isaac Hayes from now on, lol.

I don't want reality in beauty magazines, tabloid gossip or my own home movies...c'mon, people, look happy!