The “Photoshop Fails” Online Group Shares 50 Of The Worst And Funniest Attempts At Photoshop

Believe it or not, there was once a time where we could actually trust most of the photos we saw on magazine covers, in the newspaper, and even online, for a while. Sure, a little editing here and there has always been done, but as technology has advanced, it has become almost impossible to distinguish an edited picture from a raw one. This is assuming that whoever did the Photoshopping was a professional, of course. Because along with how high the standards have risen when it comes to editing images, the backlash for trying to manipulate viewers through a photo has become extremely strong as well.

The Photoshop Fails subreddit was formed in 2013, and it has had an unlimited stream of content since then. The page currently has over 23k members, and they share a wide variety of photos, from screenshots of photos they have seen posted on social media to horribly edited advertisements. Despite access to editing technology becoming much more widely available these days, many of us have also adapted to have eagle eyes when it comes to spotting Photoshop fails, and we can’t help but laugh at them online.  

To gain some insight from some Photoshop experts, we reached out to Jesus Ramirez, of the Photoshop Training Channel. When asked what inspired him to get into Photoshop, Jesus told Bored Panda, "As a kid, I often drew comic book characters. I saw a friend's dad working in Photoshop, and I decided to use Photoshop to enhance my art digitally. I quickly became obsessed with the program and learned as much as possible by watching videos and reading books."

We also asked him why Photoshop is so difficult to master. "Mastering anything is difficult, not just Photoshop," Jesus explained. "Anything you want to become a 'master' at requires a ton of hard work. I don't think learning Photoshop is any different than mastering a sport or becoming a painter. They all require a lot of time and dedication."

We also asked him what he thinks the best thing about Photoshop is. "Photoshop has been the industry standard imaging application for over 30 years," he told us. "And I think it is because you can do anything with Photoshop. The only limit is your imagination."

If you'd like to learn more from Jesus about Photoshop, be sure to check out his Youtube videos on The Photoshop Training Channel right here.

We also consulted Photoshop expert and editor of Photoshop Roadmap, Enrique Flouret, to hear what inspired him to get into photo editing. "I began using Photoshop in version 1.0, when Desktop Publishing was the new thing and Digital Photo Retouching wasn't even a concept," he told Bored Panda. "So I can't say I was inspired to become a Photoshop Expert. I simply grew up professionally with Photoshop as it became a more popular and capable tool."

We also asked him why Photoshop is so hard to master. "I don't think Photoshop is hard to master," Enrique says. "It's a professional tool made for photographers, artists and designers, who can master much more complex tools and concepts than Photoshop itself. Of course, if you treat it as a social media meme generator, you will have a hard time trying to use it. Besides, it's expensive and requires a lot of machine power to simply use it for fun."

We also asked Enrique what he thinks the best thing about Photoshop is. "Well... That's hard to say," he shared. "In the past (version 3.0) the addition of the 'Layers' feature was a game changer. Believe me it was. But today I believe that all the new AI features, although in their early stages, are hard to beat."

Enrique went on to share, "Although I did my fair share of photo retouching, my main activity was always training creative professionals. But 22 years ago I created one of the oldest Photoshop sites that are still around today: Photoshop Roadmap. My main goal was to showcase all the great tutorials and assets that were hidden all around the web, specially at times where Google was a little known search engine, and social media didn't exist at all."

If you'd like to gain more expertise on Photoshop from Enrique and his colleagues, be sure to check out Photoshop Roadmap right here.

Photoshop has been around for decades now, 32 years to be exact, and it has completely changed the way we see photos since then. Almost any image we see on an advertisement, movie poster, product, posted by a celebrity or in a book has received some amount of Photoshop doctoring. The technology was incredibly innovative, as at the time of Photoshop’s release to the public, digital retouching was only done by a handful of professionals who charged about $600 per hour. Suddenly, any photographer with a computer could purchase the software for about $2,000 and learn how to correct their own images. The prevalence of Photoshop has skyrocketed since.

By the mid nineties, photographs that were essentially collages started emerging on magazine covers and advertisements. At this time, Photoshopping was not primarily used to emulate reality but rather to create surreal images that would be difficult or impossible to make without digital editing. Some of the most influential photographers of this period who set and embraced the surreal trend were David LaChapelle, Nick Knight, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.