Photoshop and Politics - A Study In What If

November 23, 2008 by Curt Siters

I was around at the beginning of the "Desktop Publishing" revolution. I was there when Adobe launched Illustrator and Photoshop. I was there when there was a war between Ventura Publisher, Quark Express and other page layout programs. It's fun to reminisce sometimes. 

Photoshop has never ceased to amaze me with it's ever increasing capabilities that sometimes go way beyond what the average user will ever need (or use.) With Adobes' passion (at least regarding Photoshop) it has become a 'defacto' industry standard - which is not to say that other programs aren't good. It means that more professionals use it than any other image editing software.

I was browsing Twitter the other day and came across a tweet from the Chicago Sun-Times that made me catch my breath. The Grey New York advertising agency released a poster Monday, before the 2008 Presidential Election, depicting Barack Obama and John McCain with their skin color and hair switched. The agency said it created the image to remind voters to "let the issues be the issue."

I am not 100% positive that they used Photoshop or not but am fairly certain they did.

Can you tell who is who?

They did an excellent job with (now President-elect) Barak Obama. The skin color, tones and color gradients are flawless as is the super-imposed hair. Sorry to say that Senator John McCain looks more like something from a 3-D rendering program as the hair doesn't quite seem natural and his skin color seems a bit mottled.

Adobe has been around since the early days of desktop publishing and is one of the first software companies to get cross-platform file formats working correctly and Photoshop was one of the first applications to be able to work on files from sister applications on other platforms.

Although it may seem a bit pricey it is well worth the expenditure. It isn't hard to learn but it does have a steep learning curve if you want to master it. If you are interested in doing image editing it will be worth your time to check it out whether you are on Windows or Mac.

Take a look at Photoshop CS4
for your image editing

For Mac	For PC

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Curt Siters is an Independent Associate for Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. He is also aYoung Living Essential Oils Independent distributor and publishes articles on YourWebReference and at TheVeryEssence. He also does web work such as website design, website maintenance and SEO for websites.

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