The "Perfect Body Image"

Today in the media, we are bombarded with images of our role models and celebrities. But most of the time, these photos are enhanced using Photoshop or other programs. I got the chance to use Photoshop to change a photo of me without makeup and put my face on a celebrities body. For my photo I used Jessica Alba's face for my background.

The finished product as seen above looks extremely better than the original which is below. But the fact that those kind of changes would have to happen in order for me to be on a magazine cover is hurtful. People on magazine covers are changed so much that sometimes they are unrecognizable and that is not truthful.

Now that I know what happens when pictures are used for magazine covers, I will understand that no one is perfect. These people are not this beautiful in real life even though they are portrayed that way. The fact that already beautiful people need to be enhanced with tools like Photoshop portrays our society in a negative light. We like our celebrities to be skinny, tan, and perfect. But that is not realistic and it leaves people disappointed when they see the real people.

When enhancing my photo, I think i did really well on making my skin tone one even color, and matching my skin tone with Jessica Alba's skin tone. This is because my skin is one color all over, and you can barely tell where her face stops and mine begins. I think i could improve on applying eye makeup because I think mine looks a little fake. I could also work on the teeth whitening because my teeth look fake.

A Day in the Life of a Mercy Student

An important part of our lives these days is capturing moments so we can cherish them forever. But in order for them to be even more memorable, we must make sure they are clearly taken. Another way to improve these memories is by using Photoshop to enhance them. This week in computer class we made collages using Photoshop to depict the life of a Mercy student. Below I shared my collage and I explained what effects I added to the photos.

This is my collage. There are ten photos in this picture and I will explain what I did to modify each. First off, I took a picture of the jaguar some of our art students drew. I decided that I wanted to make this the background of the collage so I selected that layer and changed the opacity to make it faded out. For the picture at the top left, I used the magnetic lasso tool to select only my friend and me. Then I changed the saturation of only us. For the blue and yellow picture, I added a gradient layer. The picture of the chicken sandwich was changed by using the channel mixer. The picture of girls playing volleyball in the middle was warped. My dog is an important part of my life, so I had to put a picture of him on here. For this picture, I just changed it to a black and white setting. In the picture of my friends at lunch, there were a few girls with red eyes. I used the red eye tool to solve these problems. I used the magic wand tool to change the color of my toothbrush from white to blue. I did not change our school's crest because I did not see the need to. This is an example of simplicity when taking pictures. Finally, I cropped the picture of my cereal bowl so all you see is the cereal and no blank space behind it.