It’s the end of the year and as you’re finishing the last of that egg nog, vacuuming up drying pine needles and reflecting on the last 12 months, allow us to reflect along with you at some of our most popular Photoshop-related articles of the year.
[REWIND: OUR TOP 10 TIPS FOR JUMPSTARTING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY CAREER {2014 EDITION}]
2014 was the year of Photoshop. Almost a quarter of a century old, Photoshop became either the savior or the culprit, the butt of jokes or the life of the party. Whether it was a foriegn government using it poorly for propaganda or singers panning it for its role in the skewed standards of the beauty industry, Photoshop saw much media attention in 2014. Here are some of the best (and the worst) of Photoshop this year.
Best Photoshop Tutorial
Want to remove an unsightly trash can in your photograph? How about an ex-husband? If you want to remove anything from a photo using Photoshop, here is one of our most popular Photoshop articles with this tutorial: LEARN HOW TO REMOVE ANYTHING FROM A PHOTO USING PHOTOSHOP
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Most Interesting Photoshop Experiment
In this experiment, Freelance journalist Esther Honig sent out an unaltered photograph of herself around the world to 40 freelance Photoshop retouchers in 25 different countries around the world in an effort to examine the beauty standards in different cultures. Her only request to the retouchers was to “make me beautiful.” The results were not only interesting, some were hilarious in their amateur-ish renditions and others were thought-provoking. Read ‘MAKE ME BEAUTIFUL’ – PHOTOSHOP SERIES EXAMINES BEAUTY STANDARDS IN 25 COUNTRIES here.
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Most Controversial Photoshop Article
It’s easy to overdo it in Photoshop. An extra bump here, two nudges there and you may seem to have a pretty good looking photo – at least in your eyes (case in point, the project above). One Congresswoman proposed a bill to regulate the excessive use of Photoshop due to the damaging effects it has on body image in our society. What do you think? Should the government have a say in how we edit our images?
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Most ‘Questionable’ Use of Photoshop
Narciso Contreras, a Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer was fired after he admitted to altering an image taken during the conflict in Syria. He digitally removed a colleague’s video camera from a photograph that had nothing to do with the photo. He also stood to have all of his photographs (almost 500 of them) removed from the AP news archive. Did the punishment fit the crime? Wa the AP right in firing Contreras?
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Most Absurd Photoshop Fail
There were so many contenders in this category. In fact, if you have some time and want a few laughs, see these examples of terrible retouching, but this one really stands out. One because the Photoshop infraction was done so poorly and secondly, it was done by the second largest discount retailer in the US, Target. See their terrible hack job on this poor model.
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Best Photoshop Music Video
Many singers were vocal about Photoshop and their dislike of being transformed into a perfect and unrealistic beauty standard, using their platforms to voice their opinions through their music videos, at speaking events, or to the media; Lady Gaga spoke against her Glamour Magazine cover, where she is drastically Photoshopped, at a Glamour magazine event and Colbie Caillat made a video with her “un-photoshopping herself.” The music video that was an SLR Lounge favorite in terms of page views was this one from French singer, Boggie.
Best Non-Use of Photoshop
Who needs Photoshop when you have makeup? These before and after transformations are nothing short of amazing. Yes, you can make an argument for good lighting and posing, but for any of you who have gone home with a ten and woken up with a two, well, you know what I’m talking about. Read AMAZING ‘BEFORE’ AND ‘AFTER’ PHOTOS: MAKE-UP ARTIST TRANSFORMS A FACE WITHOUT THE USE OF PHOTOSHOP.
P.S. Okay, so this one wasn’t quite from the year 2014, but it’s one of my favorite articles about not using Photoshop and just from the dramatic changes in each photo that I had to share it.
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Most Helpful Quick Photoshop Tip
Pye gives this quick tip to help you non-destructively edit an image inside Photoshop.
Check out some of our other articles related to Photoshop and let us know what your favorite one is in the comment section below!