Touch-ups

[lillibet]

officialgaiman pointed out this photo touch-up software site. It reminds me of the Dove ad and has some of the same sense of sick fascination for me. I found I was more bothered by some than by others. This made me curious--if someone you met online were using this software, at what point would you feel they had crossed the line from putting their best self forward to engaging in deception?

Comments

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

I tend to "clean up" photos of myself, but I usually see it as correcting the photo to look more like the real me (at least, on a good day). For instance, I'll work on the colors, particularly making my hair redder if the picture was taken at the most-faded point of my dye cycle (but that isn't necessary if it was taken not too long after a dye job). That kind of thing. Sometimes, though, I'm just lucky -- the icon I'm using wasn't touched up at all, beyond normal color/contrast/light balancing.

The face shape changing reminds me of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies -- excellent book.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I lied, I just remembered I made my lips pinker when I adjusted this photo. But that's just because I'd forgotten to put lip gloss on.