What do you think of when you hear the phrase digital image manipulation? Perhaps one of the things that most easily springs to mind when you consider the idea of photo manipulation services is politicians trying to make themselves look younger!
Certainly digital image manipulation has been responsible for creating many public images, from models and photo shoots to publicity photographs and advertising pictures. Sometimes it can see that photo manipulation services receive a bad press, but in truth what they are achieving is extraordinary.
In a very short space of time professional photo manipulation services can help a person shed several pounds instantly, roll back a decade or more, grow a fuller head of hair, have Hollywood style cosmetic dentistry and a facial that would be the envy of any reputable film star. All this in a few hours, at a relatively low price, and with no pain.
Yet this aspect of digital image manipulation is only a very tiny portion of what is really going on. It's easy to think that photo manipulation services spend most of their time trying to make politicians and film stars look young and healthy, and many people cry at the use of photo manipulation. Whether you feel it's right or not is up to you, but the real truth is that rather than making noises whenever a photograph appears to have been manipulated, it can be harder to find an image that hasn't been edited in some way.
Photo manipulation services work hard every day helping the advertising industry and businesses marketing their products or services to generate the right image. It's critical that businesses communicate with their customers or potential customers in the right way, but increasingly this has become very difficult to achieve.
We live in a world that seems dominated by media messages, consumer broadcasts, marketing speak, advertising and corporate brand identity statements. In response to this changing world we have all developed the ability to filter out the majority of marketing and advertising that's going on around us.
Surveys have identified that the average adult in the UK is exposed to over 900 marketing or advertising messages every single day, and the truth is that we just couldn't cope if we paid attention to each one. If we spent 15 seconds looking at each advert we're exposed to each day we'd have to spend 4 hours every day trying to take in all of the information we're being bombarded with.
So in order to try to cut through the noise and reach customers more effectively businesses and marketing companies are using images and photography. But a photograph is just a picture - it says relatively little. What is often required is to add something to the image in order to make it reach the target audience more effectively, grab attention quickly and still have something to say.
Photo manipulation services use advanced digital image manipulation techniques to achieve exactly this, but often the methods are so subtle that you hardly realise that any manipulation has taken place at all. Sometimes digital manipulation is obvious, and when you know full well that a politician in his forties is likely to have a few lines and wrinkles, and you know exactly what the actress looks like close up, seeing an edited image makes it obvious that the camera is lying, and we stop believing it.
But subtle use of digital image manipulation can be extraordinarily effective. Often it's a case of incorporating ideas, elements, themes, colours or inspiration drawn from the existing brand identity, and then increasing the impact of these elements within the picture.
For example, if the brand image uses red as a particular colour, and the main item in the photograph is red, then subtle digital image manipulation can be used to slightly lower the blue and green tones of the image and slightly raise the red tones. Another subtle trick used to help ensure that people spot the most important thing in the image is to very slightly blur the picture, but keep the main elements sharp.
Another form of digital image manipulation used is to combine multiple exposures of an image in order to create a composite image that could never have been achieved in a single frame. This is often the case where lighting problems make it impossible to simultaneously light a product or scene enough to banish the shadows without bleaching out the lighter elements. Digital image manipulation is often subtle, but subtle lies are the truths behind what the modern camera wants you to think you see.
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