Photoshop Level : Fail - Photoshop and Its Entrails

"The art of the 21st Century that almost got people believing that..."

Perhaps nothing today is not photoshopped. :)

Photoshopping is slang for the digital editing of photos.

The term originates from Adobe Photoshop, the image editor most commonly used by professionals for this purpose; however, other programs, such as Paint Shop Pro, Corel Photopaint, Pixelmator, Paint.NET, or GIMP, may be used.Adobe Systems, the publisher of Adobe Photoshop, discourages use of the term "photoshop" as a verb out of concern that it may undermine the company's trademark.

Despite this, photoshop is widely used as a verb, both colloquially and academically, to refer to retouching, compositing (or splicing), and color balancing carried out in the course of graphic design, commercial publishing, and image editing.

In popular culture, the term photoshopping is sometimes associated with montages in the form of visual jokes, such as those published on the fark.com website and in MAD Magazine. Images may be propagated memetically via e-mail as humor or passed as actual news.An example of the latter category is "Helicopter Shark," which was widely circulated as a so-called "National Geographic Photo of the Year" and was later revealed to be a hoax.

Photo manipulation or photoshopping is the application of image editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception (in contrast to mere enhancement or correction), through analog or digital means.

In digital editing, photographs are usually taken with a digital camera and input directly into a computer. Transparencies, negatives or printed photographs may also be digitized using a scanner, or images may be obtained from stock photography databases. With the advent of computers, graphics tablets, and digital cameras, the term image editing encompasses everything that can be done to a photo, whether in a darkroom or on a computer. Photo manipulation is often much more explicit than subtle alterations to color balance or contrast and may involve overlaying a head onto a different body or changing a sign's text, for example. Image editing software can be used to apply effects and warp an image until the desired result is achieved. The resulting image may have little or no resemblance to the photo (or photos in the case of compositing) from which it originated. Today, photo manipulation is widely accepted as an art-form

There are Two types of Image Retouching...

Technical retouching

Manipulation for photo restoration or enhancement (adjusting colors / contrast / white balance (i.e. gradational retouching), sharpness, removing elements or visible flaws on skin or materials ...)

Creative retouching

Used as an art form or for commercial use to create more sleek and interesting creative images for advertisements. Creative retouching could be manipulation for fashion, beauty or advertising photography such as pack-shots (which could also be considered inherently technical retouching in regards to package dimensions and wrap-around factors) One of the most prominent disciplines in creative retouching is image-compositing. Here, the digital artist uses multiple photos to create a single composited image. Today, 3D elements are used more and more to add extra elements or even locations and backgrounds. This kind of image composition is widely used when conventional photography would be technically too difficult or impossible to shoot on location or in studio

When it Fails...

Need an extra hand?

The ONLY cereal that makes you white.

The classic freak - Woman with Three Hands.

But when it succeeds...

Beautiful then, much more beautiful now.

Flawless beauty.

Still successful.

Photo editing has been accepted as a form of art in the 21^st century but it is a very delicate art. It needs a lot of patience and heart on doing so. One does not simply edit photo! 

******

The make-up world has fully changed.

Take it to a higher level of photoshopping fellow 9gaggers and readers!

-seems legit to me