During my internet real estate browsing, one of my favorite ways to waste time, I came across a darling cottage in Pennington Borough. In fact, it's so dang cute that you might get a cavity if you gaze for too long. It's a sugar house! It's not the best fit for our family, but I would throw practicality out the window if I could live there. The house looks like it came from a fairytale.
Now look closely... is that grass a little greener than your neighbor's lawn? Is the sky a bit bluer than the last lovely Spring day? How about those perfectly placed cotton-candy clouds? This picture on the computer screen may be a tad small to notice those enhancements, but the too-beautiful-to-be-real colors are obvious on the shiny brochure I received at the open house. (Yes, I'm one of those annoying looky-loos.) I'd dare say, I think the house has been photoshopped!
In our computer age, it has become all too easy to "photoshop" any picture. We have all seen models with legs so twiggy they'd be unable to carry the human body. Yet it only takes a couple swipes of the digital paintbrush and wah-lah!, the girl has gams no amount of thigh-master squeezing could create. (As much as I like to complain about the false reality of the gorgeous faces and bodies that cover my bedside magazines, it also gives me an excuse. If a covergirl in her 40's looks half her age, I can always amusingly dismiss my own shortcomings with a snort, "Oh, she was so obviously photoshopped," as though I'd look just like her if I had that advantage. I wish!)
The word "photoshop" has become a common verb. In Marketing 101, all students learn how the brand names Kleenex and Xerox have, over time, become generic words for all facial tissues and any photocopying. It seems that Adobe's Photoshop software will suffer the same fate. The word "photoshop" is now commonly used for any kind of image editing or alteration. Back in the dinosaur ages when I was growing up, there was no such word or activity. In college I was actually writing code on 3x5 cards for mainframe computers. Now my daughter is happily photoshopping away on the laptop. "Look mom, I just gave myself curly hair!"
The word "photoshop" has become a common verb. In Marketing 101, all students learn how the brand names Kleenex and Xerox have, over time, become generic words for all facial tissues and any photocopying. It seems that Adobe's Photoshop software will suffer the same fate. The word "photoshop" is now commonly used for any kind of image editing or alteration. Back in the dinosaur ages when I was growing up, there was no such word or activity. In college I was actually writing code on 3x5 cards for mainframe computers. Now my daughter is happily photoshopping away on the laptop. "Look mom, I just gave myself curly hair!"
We all wish for a perfect world, so I guess photoshopping is not such a bad thing. We haven't yet been able to attain world peace, but we can achieve perfect cheekbones (at least in the digital world, if not the real world). I realize photoshopped images have often been wrongly used to miscontrue the truth, but sometimes they are simply brightening up humdrum reality.
The pictures of my sugar house may indeed be dreamily photoshopped, but I don't mind. In real life, the little cottage is just as delicious as it is in pictures.
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