The Power of Photo Editing

 

This is me, Coralee. I'm 18 years young, a student, musician, model, crafter writer and fighter of illness. I'm a friend, a daughter, girlfriend, and so much more. But is this really me? Do I really have almost clear skin, and perfectly applies makeup? Does my skin really glow like that? A lot of you may see me posting about what it's like to live with a long term illness on Instagram, Twitter, sometimes even Tumblr. So keeping that in mind, how can I look so nice in this photo, that I posted a few months back, on a day where I felt absolutely horrible. The truth is, I didn't look like that on that day. I wasn't wearing a speck of makeup, the lighting wasn't like that, and my skin wasn't clear. Below is the the original image beside this image.

 

This here, is just a small example of how much you can change how you look, or change how someone else looks with some sort of photo editor. And this photo, was edited with a very, very basic online editor called picmonkey.com. As you can see, I was able to make myself look more away, remove the dark circles under my eyes, eliminate most of the acne that was visble, add makeup that looks REAL, and as most basic editors let you do, change the lighting. By using the few tools available on picmonkey I was able to look better than how I actually looked and felt. This isn't anything new to me. For a long time, I hid being sick from those who weren't close to me. In photographs I did not want to look sick, I wanted to look alive. I made it my duty to not look sick, and a lot of the time, without even trying you can not tell, as I do have an invisible illness, but sometimes, it takes a toll on me, especially my worst days where I looked like a walking corpse. When I got sick, I suppose is when I really got into make-up. It was one of the ways to make me look healthier than what I was. So days when I want to take a selfie, but look awful, picmonkey can do the job instead of me applying make-up. This isn't the only thing you can do only such a simple editor though, you can change your proportions. I can increase or decrease my bust, chin, nose, lips, legs, arms, stomach, literally anything. I can change my hair colour, eye colour, I can add a spray tan, or lighten my skin. If this is what you can do with an editor that is free for the basics, or $5 a month for a few extra's, imagine just how much you can change with proper editors such as photoshop. People all around the world have been showing just what you can do in an editor, but I felt it important that I should share my own part in it. Too many girls are wanting to look like the photo's in magazines and on billboards, but the models, mots of the time, DON'T look like that. There has been instances where the photographed person no longer looks like themselves. We need to make more and more young girls aware of this, until they understand. It isn't real, and you're still beautiful whether you look like an edited photo or not.