We first wrote about Caillard and Persani’s hipster sculptures over a year ago, and since the new works by this duo are just as hilarious, we couldn’t let them go unnoticed! Whatever they say about not judging a book by its cover, we still do it. French photographer Léo Caillard and art director Alexis Persani illustrate that with their Street Stone photography series, were they dress ancient Louvre’s sculptures into something more trendy and up-to-date.

19-year-old Hungarian photographer Flora Borsi wonders where some of the greatest artists got their inspirations from, and imagines what their muses could’ve looked like if they were real people. In her Real Life Models photo manipulation series, Flora recreates the distorted features from classic paintings by such artists as Rudolf Hausner, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and Kees van Dongen, and that way brings some very surreal-looking people to the real world.

We first wrote about Erik Johansson, a Swedish photographer and retoucher, 4 years ago, when he was still a computer engineering student. Even back them, despite lack of professional training in photography, his wildly creative photo manipulations would be a stand-out example of retouching. Erik Johansson’s work has a two-fold effect: on the one hand, it’s completely unbelievable and reality-defying, while on the other hand the high-skilled retouching makes it look almost real.

„Shopped!“, is the constant cry of internet’s sceptic and avid web browser. But after seeing Thomas Barbéy’s works many sceptics are pleased to say “’Shopped”. Barbéy’s surrealistic manipulations are not only works of retouching and airbrushing – he also sticks the negatives together, photographs them, uses other techniques to reach the concept vision he had in his mind first – but few are able to resist the gripping illusion. Isn’t illusions what people are looking for in life and art?

Some artists get to the point when their usual medium or technique starts to limit their visions. This is exactly what happened to a Polish artist Michal Karcz who found that painting and the ordinary dark room photography techniques didn’t allow him to fully realize his potential. Luckily, the developing technology allowed him to combine the two with the help of some digital tools. Most of his work is “a journey to the places which don’t exist”. They’re places from Michal’s dreams, desires, imagination and fears. Are you ready to take a trip?

We have first introduced you to a Hungarian artist Sarolta Ban two years ago. Surprisingly, she was then working with a non-professional FinePix S5600 camera and claimed she had learned digital processing by herself. We decided to check with her again and see how her life has changed.

Hiding in the last row of a boring class in high school shouldn’t always be regarded as slacking. What once started of as fooling around with Photoshop and 3D Max in the back of AutoCAD class, has now developed into signature style that 30-year-old digital artist Michael Oswald describes as ‘photo manipulation on steroids’.

French photographer Léo Caillard teamed up with French art director Alexis Persani to dress ancient Louvre’s sculptures into something more trendy and up-to-date. To create ‘Street Stone’, Caillard first photographed the statues and his friends in similar poses. Then Persani stacked the shots on top of each other in Photoshop, erasing everything but the clothes from the top layer. The results are hilarious! It also shows that clothes have an enormous impact on the way one is perceived.

After looking at Creative Photoshopping by Erik Johansson and 25 Surreal Photo Manipulations by Sarolta Ban let’s meet Manuel Archain, another very creative and talented photoshopping master from Argentina responsible for creating a lot of insanely comical photo situations that are highly improbable and usually impossible in real life.

There are many people who say that Photoshop is bad, and that you shouldn’t alter your photos digitally (or at most you should do just some brightness corrections). Well, I think that this is a big BS! Why should we suppress our creativity in any way? Just look at these inspirational photo manipulations by Erik Johansson, could it be done without Photoshop? No!