Photoshop & Instagram. My take on Adobe gains.
I only recently started an Instagram page. I never needed one nor thought I needed one now, but having consulted a few people I trust, I understood that if you want to blog about fitness with credibility and/or legitimacy, you should support your content with some imagery. In the era of ‘photo or it didn’t happen’ written content on its own won't do it. It needs visual reinforcement. Having fallen into this trap myself a couple of times, I couldn’t argue. So there, I’m on Instagram...
The first thing I did after signing in was search for profiles similar to where I thought I was going with mine. I saw plenty of badly Photoshopped locker-room selfies. Some were so sloppy they made my eye twitch. People tend to make their body parts abnormally huge or small to emphasise a feature but end up looking like victims to all sorts of extraordinary deformities. One guy is notorious for shrinking his waist with the Liquify tool (Photoshop>Filter>Liquify…) beyond what I’d consider aesthetically acceptable. Browsing thorough his posts is like watching a 16th-century freak show. It’s not impressive, dude - it’s pitiful. Clearly you have no clue about how human anatomy works. Also, when making your side deltoid look bigger, don’t warp the freaking background! Did you think I wasn’t going to notice?
Having spent over a decade in various design jobs, I was really annoyed to see this. I’m not expecting Instagrammers to be able to use Photoshop on a pro level, but if they could at least show some respect for human biological characteristics and not embarrass themselves in front of their audience.
And then, there is ‘covert’ fakery. You see, when someone sucks at Photoshop, at least they're obvious. But when they know what they’re doing, you’ll struggle to spot the enhancements unless you know the various tricks of the trade. Most followers on Instagram do not have a design background to prevent them from accepting things at face value. As such, they are fairly easily fooled into believing in the superhuman achievements they’re shown. This is actually worse that an amateur playing with Liquify for the first time. It’s worse because it’s a sneaky and sophisticated tactic aimed at deceiving people for clicks.
But that’s the Internet. Not much you can do. So I thought I’d whip up a quick video to show how some of the basic photo-manipulation techniques can enhance an otherwise very dull picture:
You can see in the Photoshopped one I’m broader across the chest, leaner, and generally more fierce-looking (I think the tattoo helped - I’m actually thinking about getting inked now). I’m a proper gym bro in that pic, too, and I am actually at the gym as opposed to my laundry room with a single lightbulb dangling above my head. So there you have it. Who knows, maybe this will help you spot and expose those Adobe gains next time you see them online.