“Seeing Double Edits”: 34 Animals Meet Their Younger Selves In Adorable Photo Edits
Interview With ArtistPets grow and change so quickly that sometimes it feels like we blink and they’re all grown up. That’s where Mandy Helwege comes in. Through her project, Seeing Double Edits, Mandy blends puppy photos with adult portraits to create heartwarming images that show the journey of our beloved pets in a single frame.
What began with her own Great Dane has now become a service loved by pet owners around the world. From dogs and cats to horses and beyond, Mandy’s edits are a touching way to celebrate the bond we share with our animals and to keep their memories alive forever.
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Mandy never set out to start a business; she simply wanted a special keepsake of her own dog, Elliott. “When she was about a year old, I saw someone on Instagram do one for their dog and sent a message asking if they’d be willing to do one for me,” Mandy recalled. But after being disappointed with the result, she decided to try it herself. With her background in art, photography, and Photoshop, she discovered a way to blend the images so they looked natural and meaningful.
That must have taken some real time to improve the "before" picture to that state and fit it in on the deck!
Those first edits were just for fun, but friends quickly started asking for their own. Before long, strangers were reaching out too. “Eight months after doing my first transformation edit of my Great Dane, Seeing Double Edits was born,” Mandy shared. Since then, she has created more than 1,300 edits for pet owners all over the world.
Mandy explained that she uses “an average of 75+ individual layer masks to make changes to lighting and color to blend the two images together.” This attention to detail is what allows her edits to feel so realistic—almost as if the puppy and adult pet were in the same moment together.
For Mandy, though, it’s about much more than Photoshop. It’s about connection. “Getting to know and feel the love that so many other pet owners have for their pets has been the most powerful experience for me,” she said. “It’s always been about so much more than just the edit.” Whether she’s celebrating a new puppy with someone or helping a grieving owner remember their best friend, her art captures the love we all feel for our animals.
Aww man! A really good friend of mine has two newfie's, and they're adorable sacks of fluffy hair! 😊
Looks they were putting eye make up on in the car while on gravel road.
Man, this AI photoshop is SO good these days. The ambient occlusion (thank you Corridor Crew for the vocab) on the puppy is so dang good.
Husky pups' eye markings always make them look so serious and judgmental.
Excellent work. Also a cautionary photoessay on why we mustn't trust images as evidence any more.
Fortunately there are programs to look for editing. I even have an app for it but I don’t think I’ve ever tried it. Deep fake videos can also be detected but there needs to be an interest in doing so, labeling them, and then there’s the final issue of convincing people.
Load More Replies...Oh waoh, I had to upvote them all! Wonderful idea and great work done here.
But that’s the same as not voting or downvoting them all. I resist doing that.
Load More Replies...I love that some of them showed us the before and after progress. Photoshopping is a LOT harder than it looks. I've done some of it myself and it takes insane amounts of patience and a good eye.
These were lovely, thank you for sharing them! I swear animal posts are like an antidote to the stress of the world!
98% of the growth is within the first 12 months.
Load More Replies...Excellent work. Also a cautionary photoessay on why we mustn't trust images as evidence any more.
Fortunately there are programs to look for editing. I even have an app for it but I don’t think I’ve ever tried it. Deep fake videos can also be detected but there needs to be an interest in doing so, labeling them, and then there’s the final issue of convincing people.
Load More Replies...Oh waoh, I had to upvote them all! Wonderful idea and great work done here.
But that’s the same as not voting or downvoting them all. I resist doing that.
Load More Replies...I love that some of them showed us the before and after progress. Photoshopping is a LOT harder than it looks. I've done some of it myself and it takes insane amounts of patience and a good eye.
These were lovely, thank you for sharing them! I swear animal posts are like an antidote to the stress of the world!
98% of the growth is within the first 12 months.
Load More Replies...
