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Politician uses Photoshop to create more diverse image
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You might think that if an American politician wants a picture with an ethnically diverse group of people, they would be able to find them and take a picture. That's not what Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's campaign did recently, as they committed a Photoshop failure by adding people into a campaign picture who weren't anywhere near where the photo was being taken.
While many people have become accustomed to images being manipulated with Photoshop, the changes made by Governor Corbett's campaign are significant and obvious to most users. The Governor had his picture taken with a group of individuals who are primarily white. To make the image appear more diverse, a black woman was added to the image using Photoshop. While the group of individuals in the original picture are all looking at the Governor, the lone black person that was added into the image is staring blankly towards the camera. The focus, depth-of-field, and off-center stare are all indicators that the image has been manipulated using Photoshop.
Pennsylvania is a large, ethnically diverse state, effectively eliminating the need to use Photoshop to create an image containing people of different ethnic groups. The campaign admitted to using Photoshop to alter the image, and has since removed it from their website. This mistake from Governor Corbett’s campaign is one of many recent examples of Photoshop being used to add black people into imges in order to make a group appear more diverse, or to change the composition of a group so it may appeal more to an audience in a different culture. A university in Wisconsin even did this in an admissions catalog sevearl years ago, which also did not go unnoticed.
If you are going to be carrying out retouching tasks, Photoshop training classes at American Graphics Institute are a good way for making certain you have the skills needed to produce high quality images. A specialized Photoshop retouching training course is one of the many classes available to improve your skills so that you can avoid making mistakes that detract from your image and your message.