Seeing Should Not Always Be Believing

A few days ago I was sorting through some pictures and placing an order for some prints.  I use Picmonkey to do any editing that needs done.  I’ve never used it for anything but the basics like cropping and fixing exposure and stuff, but I was playing around with one of my dogs’ pictures and found a whole mess of features I’d never paid any attention to.

My baby boy turned 6 on Monday!

It’s truly amazing how much you can do to a photo!  I decided to try it out.  It was early in the morning and I was still sitting around in sweats, face and hair completely undone.  I snapped this selfie.

It don’t get no more real than this.

Then in literally like three minutes, with a few clicks of self-tanner, airbrush, blemish eraser, tooth whitener, weight loss, eye brightener, lip color, eye liner, etc. I turned that plain Jane into this.

Ignore the hair. There wasn’t a flat iron feature. haha Although I could have given myself highlights if I’d so chosen!

If I can do that with a completely bare face in just a couple of minutes, if I’d been made up to begin with, I probably could have created a pretty stunning head shot.  I think everyone knows how much editing and photoshopping is done in magazines and other media, but with software like this so readily available to absolutely anyone, can you really believe ANYTHING that you see anymore?  I’m not saying this to sound jaded or anything.  I just know how we girls tend to compare ourselves to other women who we think are prettier or thinner or younger looking than we are–even our Facebook friends or bloggy buddies.  I mean I sure as hell don’t have the time or the give-a-damn to do this to every photo that I post, but you know what?  I’d be willing to bet that some of those bigger bloggers that do this for a living do.  This just served as a really good reminder to me, and I hope to you too, that you just can’t compare yourself to someone else’s photoshopped version of reality!