The world of photograph manipulation is more accessible than ever. Photoshop has existed for years, but now most of us have powerful photo editing tools built right into our phones.
While these tools can turn a good picture into a great picture, it’s easy to take things too far. And when it comes to social media , it’s often easy to see when someone’s gone a little bit nuts with the editing tools.
“You can barely see her nose.”
I know that we tend to want to diminish and change the facial features that we don’t like through Photoshop trickery. But removing your nose, which is something that everyone has, seems like it’s taking things to the extreme.
“I hope she’s not teaching Photoshop.”
Here’s a common bad Photoshop technique: shrinking one’s waist through skewing the photograph. It’s usually easy to tell when you look at the surrounding environment. Alternatively, it can be easy to tell when the person’s waist just doesn’t look real.
“Spotted one in the wild today! I don’t even know where to begin.”
Here’s another morphed waist. I’m sure she spent some time messing with her face as well, but it’s hard to even notice that when the waist depicted in her photos appears to be about four inches across.
“She claims that she timed the plane to fly over.”
If there’s actually an airport right there, she could have just waited for an actual plane to fly overhead. Instead, she took some plane clipart and slapped it in the image without even adjusting the lighting.
“He has one sky that follows him around everywhere he goes. Amazing how it’s so consistent!”
This is one of the weirder sides of Instagram photograph trickery: not manipulating your body, but nature itself, to make for a more visually stunning photo. It’s hard to catch, unless you use it in literally every photo.
“My college roommate is now an influencer. Her feet have grown to be 3x larger than her head.”
Some of us have long legs, some have short legs, but she has the longest legs in history. You know something must be wrong when her calves are taller than her whole torso.
“Thumbnail vs the actual video.”
In actual reality, most of us look just fine. But for some reason, we’re all trying to look just a little bit better. And when you do this, it just makes the real you look that much worse by comparison.
“What she posted vs. photos from the event.”
Here’s another example. The real pic looks just fine, but seeing it contrasted with the edited photo creates a weird kind of dissonance. Like, her friends will see the edited pic and know that it doesn’t represent what she looks like.
“Found one on a dating app.”
I thought the Bratz doll trend had come and gone. Judging by this pic, Bratz is not only back, but has found a way to apply its aesthetic to real, living, breathing human beings.
“Learn to Photoshop in just 4 weeks.”
Putting aside the fact that no workout routine in existence is going to show these results in four short weeks, this guy really needs to tone down the Photoshop. The abs look particularly unrealistic.
“Don’t understand how someone can see this as anything but straight up scary.”
I’m not sure what she’s going for here, and I’m sure she looks perfectly fine in real life, but this Photoshop looks to me like a Halloween prop.
“I don’t even know where to start.”
This reminds me of the cover of a ’90s kids movie, one where everything is poorly photoshopped into place. The only difference is that this comes off as far less believable than one of those movies.
“Finally spotted one in the wild on tinder .”
The longer you look at this photo, the more messed up it gets. I’m not sure whether to focus on her left foot, which is 1.5 inches wide, or her waist, which isn’t that much bigger.
“It’s like a mask.”
Sometimes you see a photo posted by someone who clearly just learned how to edit. It’s almost charming to see their handiwork. Somehow, this guy looked at the final, edited version of this pic and decided it was worth posting.
“The sea is very wavy.”
There’s either some kind of gravitational abnormality in the water behind her, or she’s morphed the pic to give herself a smaller waist. In any case, it’s usually easy to tell when someone’s done the photo morph thing.
“Female bodybuilder meets an NBA player at the gym and thinks that no one will notice the extreme leg Photoshop.”
This pic is hilariously skewed. You might not notice what she did with her left thigh, but when you contrast her right thigh with the legs of the guy standing beside her, it’s super obvious.
“My friend met this girl and she looks nothing like this.”
She likely went a little crazy with the filters here, but I’m more concerned with her face. Like, she clearly doesn’t have enough face. Where did the rest of it go?
“Excuse me?”
This is a photo that’s been tastefully touched up in a way that’s almost believable. The only problem is that she no longer has a belly button, which I would say is more than a little bit concerning.
“Spotted on Tinder.”
Putting aside all of the obvious edits here, it looks like this guy collected beard trimmings from his dad and then glued them all over his face. Also, in real life, faces have lines and definition. Someone should tell him.
“Will never understand the appeal of little head syndrome.”
This is an all-time classic. His body just gets smaller and smaller as you move your way up, culminating in a head that’s so small, it’s dwarfed by his kneecap. Yikes.