Special | 5m 24s | Video has closed captioning.
Photoshop has completely revolutionized our visual culture. Artists now use Photoshop to create complex imagery that would have been impossible 20 years ago. It has also profoundly changed the art of photo retouching, turning a labor intensive process into an artful and often controversial digital workflow.
Aired: 04/10/13
From:
JEFF HUANG: The word "Photoshop" is often used like, oh, you can just Photoshop that with a click of a button.
And it's not true.
It's really not true.
LAURENT LE MOING: Photoshop is such an amazing tool.
It changed the whole photography world.
DON CALDWELL: Online culture would be a lot more boring if there weren't editing tools like Photoshop.
JEFF HUANG: A lot of people feel that because you pass some work through Photoshop with digital, the process is not as valid, that it's going to be with a click of a button, which is a big misconception.
I feel like I do draw traditionally, but I just do it on the computer.
Photoshop, there's nothing you can't create with it, especially nowadays.
It's just like learning any program.
I feel it's definitely important to experiment for yourself.
Just go crazy with it.
I think a lot of my work is fantasy, but photo-realistic.
It's that floating world image and people seem to be drawn to that.
Usually, a production company or advertising company would approach me and they would give me one or two images to work with as a start.
With the Paul McCartney one, it was just him on a stage in a black background.
So I would have to take him and make an interesting illustration with it.
I'd say typically, 50 layers is normal, if not more.
I'd say that would be the base.
It's not just layers of random elements.
You got to have color, color balancing, and then you have to adjust levels.
Just everything and anything could be a layer.
10, 15 years ago, I definitely wouldn't be able to create images like what I do today.
I've talked to traditional artists before and a lot of them were just kind of stubborn in trying it or they feel like there would be a cop-out if they do.
And I don't agree with that.
It's really no different than a regular, traditional brush.
It's just how you want to use it.
LAURENT LE MOING: Before the digital age, we used to retouch prints, nags, Ektachromes.
Everything was made with hands.
Now, everything can be Photoshopped, so editors, they put a lot of work on the post-production.
The first thing is I start with a basic shaping.
Make sure the body, face, the hair, the finger, the hand, the feet looks pretty good to the eye.
Then, I work my way in to do some details in the skin, blotches, zits, bags and wrinkles, red eyes, crossing-front hairs-- I mean, I can go on and on.
A good retouching job, obviously, is when you don't see it's retouched.
There's still some quality into it, some luminosity, some shadow.
It's still alive.
This is a site called Photoshop Disaster.
People are just retouching without the eye of the retoucher or the eye of the photographer.
This poor quality, you don't have any structure left.
We're really bombarded with pictures of glamour and perfectness.
It seems like perfection has to be the norm and it's pretty sad.
I do believe those images impact our definition of beauty, but the trend changes and the beauty keeps changing over time.
There's a saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which I believe is true.
I think we can separate between, like, the commercial beauty and the artistic beauty.
DON CALDWELL: Photoshop has evolved along with remix culture in a very interesting way.
It's become a dominant way to be able to illustrate their sense of humor or what they find as funny, what their ethics are.
And images are much easier to spread than a blog post.
Sometimes, Photoshop memes can be a very simple way of communicating.
But other times, I think they can be quite deep and complicated.
Casually Pepper Spray Cop, for example, was a meme that originated from this photograph of a police officer who was pepper spraying some Occupy protesters on campus.
And a lot of people used this meme to make a statement about police brutality or to publicly humiliate Lt. John Pike.
There's a really recent Photoshop meme called Thumbs and Ammo, in which movie stills having an actor holding a gun has the gun replaced with a thumbs-up hand signal.
And this one actually requires some very significant Photoshop abilities.
And some people have said that it's an interesting way to make a statement about gun control or have an anti-gun sentiment.
I'd say Photoshop has been empowering for people.
It gives them the ability to humble celebrities, like Beyonce's unflattering photos, or politicians.
And previously, people didn't really have such a way to get their voice heard in these regards.
So these tools have really helped users to be able to interact with media and change it into whatever way that they want.
LAURENT LE MOING: The benefit is obviously the practicalness.
It's faster.
It's cheaper.
It's better and better all the time.
DON CALDWELL: Photoshop has become very important in terms of our visual culture.
And meme culture is becoming increasingly important in online discourse.
JEFF HUANG: 10, 15 years ago, I definitely wouldn't be able to create images like what I do today.
It's not possible.
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