Photo Editors and Expectations

My main question about my essay is how broad or specific I'm going to be with it. I'd rather not go into the minute details of how Photoshop or other photo-editing software works, but I would like to go into the implications of Photoshop and how editing images can be a positive or negative cultural phenomenon. Astrophotography as a positive aspect vs. professional modeling as a negative aspect.


"Think about a hotel room: at high-quality hotels, there is now fierce
competition to provide extremely high-quality televisions. Why is beyond me."

Lessig is commenting on how digital technology changes consumers' expectations about how often or in how many places they can access information. But from my project's perspective, I'm thinking about why the televisions are so high quality. HD television is expected in almost every location now, whether it's at home or, as Lessig says, in a hotel room. Consumers demand more and more perfection out of images, whether in the form of video or still photographs. Even pictures that accurately represent a person or scene are unsatisfactory--they must be edited to 'perfection,' whether it's accurate or not. Photoshop and other photo editors can be useful when a picture has been damaged, but most people use the software to edit out tiny imperfections, creating a flawless portrayal of themselves meant to match up to airbrushed photos of celebrities.


"There’s a part of culture that we simply consume. We listen to music. We watch a movie. We read a book. With each, we’re not expected to do much more than simply consume."

Here, Lessig reiterates the current way that most people think about culture. With new technologies like Photoshop, however, anyone can take an image found on the Internet and manipulate it until it is almost (or completely) unrecognizable. While this can allow artists to create works of art that would have otherwise been impossible, advertisers can use photo editors to create idyllic representations of both females and males that our society is then compelled to match in beauty. Even though it's now common knowledge that "no one really looks like that," countless people try to live up to society's expectations of 'perfection.'