Confessions of a Digital Artisté

Retouching, that's what it used to be. A little camoflague here, a little extra color to dull eyes there. Maybe fixing a little smudge issue or covering a blemish, but that was it.

The photograph was the art.

The make-up and lighting artists were the wizards behind the scenes.

Nowadays, its all digital collage - this woman's head on that one's body. Her arm is too fat, slim it down! Her neck is too wrinkly, smooth it up! She's got crows feet, he's got drunk-eyes. She's looking haggard at fifty years old, let's make her look forty- no, thirty! No wait- make it twenty.

And why you're at it - her hair is too yellow. Our readers prefer her as a redhead. Ugh, and that skirt is hideous! Why did they dress her in tangerine for a November cover? Morons! Make it a nice chocolate color.

Its not just National Enquirer and the other supermarket rags that interchange body parts and the like to make a story. No. These days it's the so-called glossies that do it, the respectable mags too. Redbook and Cosmo and Better Housekeeping are just as guilty as US Weekly and People.

Once upon a time, people like the legendary Annie and Fredrick composed incredible images that were incredible images. They shot our idols and celebrities and they created Art of the mundane to grace the covers of our media.

And these days any old hack or pap can snap a shot, send it off to the Perez Hilton School of Photoshop and make the cover. What a crock.

No wonder the Western World is going down to Hell in a Handbasket.

Of course the hand holding the handbasket in that iconic image for later generations will be photoshopped into porcelain perfection before publication - our children's "Migrant Mother" will be a pink-cheeked, perfectly coiffed Katie-Holmes-clone with nary a wrinkle nor spot of dust despite her hardships.