aster

a few weeks ago, dad showed me the results of an unsuccessful attempt to
fix the colours on some old, yellowing photos from the 70s. he had used a
cheap photo program, and the result was awful: oversaturated and fake.
being the good daughter, i opened up photoshop and showed him how to use
the auto-levels and auto-colour adjustment tools to fix those old shots of
us on victoria peak.

i also showed him how to use the cloning tool to remove scratches.

this last weekend, i went to see dear old dad, who proudly whipped out some inkjet prints of photos he had been working on.

me: hey, this looks great! nice colour!

dad: yeah, it's good! i even took out some guys in this corner!

me: took out?

dad: there were some people in this corner, so i click! click! click!
get rid of it.

i looked. there, in the corner of the photo, was a bush that looked like
nothing grown in nature. dad had obviously gone nuts with the cloning tool
and obliterated some people who had been standing in the frame distracting
viewers from the subject: my radiant mom and sister. i was aghast, but
remained calm. another print looked like someone had smeared the wet ink
with a finger.

me: dad, what happened to this one? dad, did you use a photoshop filter on
this?

dad: yeah, it look better huh! boring the other way.

ye gads!