The miracle of Photoshop

Thursday, July 17th, 2014

I was rifling through some old paperwork at the weekend as part of my ongoing clear-out, and came across two images which reduced me to a flood of uncontrollable tears (of laughter). These images brought back a much happier time in my career when we had fun in amongst the hard work!
Many moons ago our editorial department used to have an actual living human being to specially process, grade and improve the photographs intended for publication in the newspaper. This person sat at his own desk in the corner of the room and was a whiz at Photoshop and all things arty.
Well, one year we received a photograph taken at a local community champions award ceremony the night before, of one of the deserving winners with the celebrity host, actress Alex Fletcher (best known at the time for her memorable work in Brookside). The photograph below speaks for itself: all credit to the community champion in question, but she wasn't the most photogenic of subjects.

Exhibit A: the photograph before it was Photoshopped.

Our Photoshop-happy artist volunteered to try and make the picture look a little better for publication, as the lighting wasn't good and I am sure the photo made the poor woman out to look far worse than she really did. And I still remember the convulsions of laughter the entire newsroom was in when the artist unveiled his miraculous work to us. He hadn't so much as touched up the poor woman as completely transformed her. The comparison is startling, hilarious and actually really rather good, I am sure you'll agree...

Exhibit B: the photograph after it was Photoshopped.
Any likeness to Liza Tarbuck are purely in your mind's eye...

Needless to say, we published the original, so this is the first time the new, improved version has ever been published!