I’m having fun this morning exploring a new software package called Portrait Professional. With a few clicks of the mouse and some simple adjustments, the software covers blemishes, reshapes faces according to well-established standards of human beauty, and shaves off a few pounds, too.
Here’s one of my favorite photos of me, prior to enhancement:
And me, after being Portrait Professional-ed:
The magic’s rooted in the software’s ability to smooth skin tones and narrow faces. I was curious about what it would do with people who were already young and handsome, so I fed it a photo of one of the nephews — again, a favorite photo of mine, taken on our trip to Barcelona:
Pretty good photo, right? Now, here’s the same guy, after enhancement:
Again, the subtle differences make all the difference — here, the nephew looks just a little younger, just a little thinner. He’s still recognizable, but he’s just … enhanced.
This is, of course, how people like Paula Deen and Valerie Bertinelli (“Can you believe she’s fifty?”) manage to look so great on magazine covers: their skin tones have been averaged out, their wrinkles have been smoothed, their heads have been elongated, their eyes have been repositioned, their teeth have been whitened, and their hair has been digitally varnished with gloss.
Take it too far, and people start looking like plastic rubber doll versions of humans — impossibly perfect, with alabaster teeth and skin stretched tight as a drum:
Hey, Paula! You’re not the only one who can be filtered to the max, digitally ironed out, and buffed out to the point you’re no longer human! Here’s me, after a severe digital makeover:
PS: The first three MadeByMark.com readers who send me portraits of themselves, I’ll gladly give you one subtle — and one not-so-subtle — makeover. (I’ll also want to post the results here … so don’t share a photo if you’re shy!)
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