Adding images and graphics to your website can really make the pages pop. Sometimes you don’t quite have the right image you need, but you know Photoshop, so making one shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Not always. It’s easy to get carried away, and after you’ve been staring at an image for too long you tend to miss some of the big no-nos. It happens to everyone. Top magazines and websites run poorly edited photos all the time. There are websites devoted to their mistakes; PSDisasters.com is a great site to check out if you want to know what kind of errors to avoid.
Body Editing: Face Lifts, Extra Limbs, Contortionists
Editing pictures of people is probably the most difficult because if you make a mistake it’s easily noticeable. In early 2010 Capitol File ran a cover of Nancy Pelosi that had been so manipulated that she appeared to have had a face lift. The January cover of Maxim features Katy Perry with an apparent dislocated hip.
Removing People or Objects
If you’re going to take something out of the photo, make sure you take it out completely. Newsday.com features an image of New York Knick’s Landry Fields about to dunk a basketball. Only, he seems to have an extra hand sitting on his wrist. When his opponent was edited out of the picture, his hand was left behind.
Adding People or Objects
When you add elements to an image, be sure to add them completely and to add the proper reflections and shadows. Tim Mitchell Artist Representative had a beautiful image posted on Graphics.com that featured an upturned umbrella floating in the ocean with a woman standing inside of it. You could tell the woman was added afterwards because the umbrella was perfectly reflected in the water, but she was not. The original has since been removed from the website, but you can still find it on PSDisasters.com.