week 6 Visual Literacy

During this week we learned a lot about visual literacy. We learned that using photoshop and other critique like tools to photos can enhance or take away from the photo. Companies and businesses use photoshop to create a picture or logo for their brand. Inorder to make the picture presentable and representalbe for the company the brand/company will use photoshop. Photoshop is also used a lot for magazines that focus on celebrities. A lot of time photographers will make celebrities look bigger or smaller just to create contraversey. Or they crop one person to another person to make it look like they are together.

I posted a piture up of a Victoria's Secret ad. In this picture the model WAS holding a purse but it looks like its suppose to be photoshopped out. Unfortunatley the company didnt do a good job at photoshopping the full purse out.

How this relates to PR...
This relates to PR because in PR we are trying to build trust with our audience and consummers. We want to have a good relationship with our consumers and potenetial consumers and we want to keep that relationship positive. If the company puts ads like this up on their website then we are showing that our company isnt being truthful with the ads. It shows that we use photoshop and the consumers wouldnt trust that our company (Victoria's Secret in this case) real photos but instead uses fake/photoshopped pictures.

Here is a website that shows more photoshop diesasters. http://abduzeedo.com/worst-photoshop-disasters-decade

Photoshop

Photoshop is a graphics editing program. Photoshop uses different tools to add, or take away, from pictures. For instance, it uses a liquify tool to pull in or drag out something in a photo; a pucker tool which shrinks something; and a patch tool that replaces one part of something with another part of the picture that you want it to look like. Photoshop can also change the colors and backgrounds of pictures. Photoshop can do a lot.

One thing photoshop is known for is that it can distort images or improve them. Photoshop can make a fat person look thin and can make a thin person look fat. It can also make a pretty person ugly and an ugly person pretty. Photoshop makes people look like something that they're not.

For example, it can make people look like monsters or mythical creatures, or even vampires. I posted this youtube video up because it shows the steps used in photoshop that turns Bella (a character in the book "Twlight") into a vampire....a human being into a vampire. So, as much as I LOVE photoshop, most of the things (and people) that are photoshopped aren't real. Yes, they might be a real person, but it's not the REAL image of the person, it's touched up.

hmm...Maybe thats why our society is so obsessed with perfection...