How photoshop can help you

Reading time: Less than 1 minute

Have you ever had to put a really bad photo in an annual report or important PowerPoint presentation? It’s time for you to understand the value of Photoshop.

This week I had a terrible photo I had to use for a client.

What was wrong with it? I wish I could show it to you because you’d be appalled, but I don’t want to embarrass the client. So I’m going to use my words to describe it:

  • The subject appeared to have flowers or balloons growing out of the back of his head. It was a visual illusion but it looked almost exactly like a pair of deely boppers, similar to the ones worn by the young girl in the photo above.
  • The subject was in a cluttered room with computer equipment piled around. In fact, one of the monitors was even turned on throwing a swatch of distracting bright light across the bottom of the photo (the floor.)
  • The subject was wearing a black sweater and sitting in a black chair. You couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
  • The subject’s face was far too dark.

I would have thrown out the photo and asked for a better one. But this was already the second photo I’d received from this person and I had no confidence the third one would be any better. Instead, I contacted my graphic artist and asked him to work his Photoshop magic.

He did and the difference between the two photos is as dramatic as night versus day. With the magic of Photoshop, he made the flowers (deely boppers) disappear. He also erased all the computer equipment sitting on the floor. He adjusted colour and contrast so that the sweater appeared different from the chair. And he significantly lightened the subject’s face.

All of a sudden what was a horrible, unusable photo was transformed into something half decent. It’s still not great photographic art, mind you, but it’s acceptable. It won’t cause readers to blanch. It does the job.

The next time you have a really bad photo you have to use, pay a graphic artist to run it through Photoshop. You’ll be surprised by the power of this magical piece of software.

Scroll to Top