Week 5 - Media & Information Literacy

In Week 5, we discussed Photoshop and how it can affect the accuracy of a picture and the message that it portrays. We all asked ourselves the question, "Is what you see TRULY what you get?" We finally determined that we should probably not take things at face value all the time because sometimes things just aren't what they seem! You should always give things a second look. We looked through a series of pictures and saw how the originals differed from the Photoshop version. Not only does it make the original look different, but often times it gives the picture different meaning as well after it has been altered.

In Advertising, I think the importance of Photoshop is huge. We use this software all the time to make our products seem "cool" or "what you WANT". However, there is a line you have to draw because you don't want to give your consumer a falsified idea about the what the product can do for you. Sometimes, as we saw in the Dove movie in class, advertisers can give people the idea that a model looks a certain way when really the final product was Photoshopped. I have a problem with this because I think that we should really be focused on being truthful in this industry. Most people take things for truth when they see them on a billboard or on a page in a magazine, but we should really focus on giving the consumer the facts they need without all the puffery.


This is an example of a Photoshop picture that if someone saw they would probably immediately understand that it is not real.

In this example, if the person was only shown the picture on the right they may envy the skin of the person or how tan she is. When really, she is not that way in real life.