Photoshop isn't that hard to use

I've been working with Adobe Photoshop since I was a junior in high school - I'm now a senior in college. That's close to five years of working with it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Photoshop, that means I've been working with it since it was version 2 (Photoshop CS2). There is now CS5 - meaning I have been able to adapt every year, with every change - and to be honest, nothing too serious has changed, just some minor skill techniques to make it more user friendly. So, you would think that since it is supposed to be easier to use, the people who use it would make less mistakes and the quality of the image would be better.

And you would also think, professionals, a.k.a, people who are paid to retouch photos like in magazines, would be familiar enough with the program and they would not make mistakes.

My first example of the horrific mistakes people have made with retouching photographs comes from the August 2010 issue of Cosmopolitan (America).

I'm a pretty avid reader of Cosmo even though most of the time their articles are recycled to be worded differently. I digress. But for each cover, a woman is usually featured, usually a celebrity who is scantily clad and posing like she's inviting you to bed.

Now, Britney Spears has been on the cover of Cosmo multiple times in her career, and because she is Britney Spears, she never looks flawless. Yes, I know, she has flaws, but when photographing celebrities, magazines have the best skilled hands at work to make every celebrity look his or her best.

Well, on her latest cover of Cosmo, that previous statement is completely....how shall I say, WRONG!

What the heck did they do to her? It looks like her head has been pasted on to someone else's body and been poorly shaded.
My theory is this: They took her head off of one image and placed it onto her body of another image. Her neck is clearly detached from her neck, and the only reason I know this is her body is from this image:

This photo has not been touched - you can still the wrinkles around her eyes and her arms and stomach are not as toned as in the photo before.

But this isn't the only recent case of a Photoshop disaster.

Jessica Biel recently posed for The August 2010 issue of Glamour (UK), and was interviewed basically saying she's not perfect. Well, obviously no one's perfect and it's clear she's not perfect if they had to Photoshop her body for a magazine spread.

But seriously, Jessica Biel has one of the most rocking bodies out there. Why does she need to be fixed for a photo? Whoever did this job, should be fired. Especially since her arm looks like it has the worst case of cellulite ever known to man. How can someone mess up THAT bad? Seriously? Did they have a person with  low blood sugar that day? Did they have a seizure in the middle of toning up her arm?

Why didn't any editor see these problems before the photos were published? Who in their right mind thought, "Yeah, that looks good. Send it to print."

I'm sure after these incidents, there will more than two eyes checking the Photoshop skills of the people working.