I have seen a lot of photoshop jobs done by the church floating around the web as of late. I thought it would be fun to put them all in one place so we can bask in the awesomeness. Thank you Photoshop for protecting us from bare shoulders and angel wings.
Change the tint a little… and oh yea, add cap sleeves! Source: bycommonconsent.com
This one is strange, not that they all aren’t strange. Notice the images that they are holding.
By far the worst offender, this appeared in the Ensign (page 54 in the December 2011 issue). Source: dovesandserpents.org
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander right? Â I don’t know who did this one.
Photoshop or real?
Pablo
Born and raised in Northern California, Pablo received his education at Ricks College and BYU with a BA in Spanish, minor in PE Coaching. Pablo served his LDS mission during the years 94-96 in Rosario, Argentina. He now runs a skate shop and batting cages in Orem, UT. He's married and has 4 boys.
All posts by Pablo
That is funny! Jesus in a polo, wow. Haha
I wish I knew who did that one!
Good one! Paul.
The U one HAS to be real – I mean, who would waste there time getting that one SO RIGHT 🙂
It’s so right and so wrong!
Just so we are straigth, on the top photos they changed the tint of the whole picture which changed everyone’s skin color. Where did the second photo come from – forgive me for being a cynic I was just wondering. The last photo is definitely not photoshop, it is merely par for the course for Ute fans!
The are both from the lds.org site:
Original: http://www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/images/gospel-library/manual/06500_all_06-19-traditional.jpg
Altered: http://www.lds.org/bc/content/ldsorg/content/images/relief-society-sisters-in-congo-P1008-01-0726alts2-1.jpg
They changed the tint, which is fine. They just added more sleeves to her little dress. The third, they got rid of the wings and covered up their shoulders.
I dont know if I should laugh or bang my head on the desk…lol. It is really ironic to me that in the picture where the angels had their wings removed and sleeves added that Jesus is still showing his shoulders, his chest, and a left nipple. But apparently modesty as the church dictates only applies to females.
I almost deleted your comment because you said “nipple” tone it down Garrett!!!
Paul, i am sorry for the foul language. i should have used the term areola. this whole PC thing just isnt me…i’m working on it. Can i modify my post so that it say nip***? would that work? lol
Man-boob, man-boob, man-boob…
Dude, That Ute one is totally real! The “MUSS” all grown up! LOL! Rivalry week is almost upon us!
Ugh. This hypersensitive need to alter photos to appease the ultra-conservative/fundamentalists of the church is insane. BYU recently hosted many paintings from the Carl Bloch collection. Many of his paintings of Christ show him bare chested and with winged angels that have bare shoulders, yet BYU felt they were still appropriate enough to put on display. So why should the Ensign feel the need to alter these centuries old paintings?
Also, I really scratch my head with the african ladies photo. Why even alter the photo? Why not just get any of a number of branches/wards in Africa to pose with a photo of Jesus? Their desire to alter those photos and paintings is the same thing as academic plagiarism and should be viewed with disgust by us all.
UGH indeed.
These photos are really funny on the one hand and very disturbing on the other hand. I also wondered about copyright implications, having done a large project on copyright in my Master’s program. I knew a girl at BYU who was graduating with a marketing degree and got a job working for the Church marketing department…makes me wonder if she ended up having to be a Photoshop expert??? Great post, Paul!
Mostly disturbing!! That would be an interesting job for sure. I wonder what is discussed. I see they started advertising in the Book of Mormon musical, I wonder how that conference meeting went down.
Stumbled onto your blog through a co-worker and wanted to give maybe a different opinion than what I’ve read so far.
1) Whoever photoshopped Christ in a polo is ludicrous, but I didn’t see anything that clearly stated that it wasn’t the Ensign, so I had to check out the issue myself (not sure what it says about my thinking of the church’s practices to actually be concerned that that image could possibly make it in the ensign). In any case, might be helpful for other ignoramouses like myself if you gave some more detail.
2) I actually don’t find the church’s use of stock images, generic christian images, or their own images, Photoshopped to conform to church standards and church doctrines to be at all disturbing. Maybe more effort than it is worth and a little laughable, but by no means an outrage. Put yourself in their shoes. The institution of the church has clear messages and doctrines that it must uphold. If the church teaches that angels don’t have wings then why would it portray angels with wings? If the church preaches modesty in dress then why would it show a picture of someone dressed immodestly? Albeit, they could have found another image instead of Photoshop an existing one, but then what would posters on this blog be saying? (I presume nothing). If an image is nothing more than a visual representation of a story or message than why does it matter that it was modified from the original rather than simply portrayed as the same message in the first place? These images aren’t celebrating their artistic nature or honoring the artists that produced them (like BYU was with Carl Bloch, in which case any alteration would have been a slap in the face for sure), they are portraying the church’s ideals. The criticism of such now seems more like a distaste for the church’s ideals and doctrine rather than their photoshopped actions (modesty of dress and angels without wings).
3) I assure that all of the images are used with the proper license as any publication is very thorough about the law. I have worked with lds.org and if the Ensign is anything similar then they take the law very seriously on these matters.
4) I can’t figure out for the life of me what the point of modifying the images being held by the African sisters would be, but I only hope that it didn’t cost a whole lot of money to modify when they could have so easily taken the same picture with them holding the pictures they wanted with a little foresight.
5) Just wanted to relate my own story with Photoshopping modesty. When taking pictures for my engagement to my beautiful wife the angle at which we stood and a little wind had made one of the better pictures we took seem as if my wife was exposing her shoulder. To most and even to my wife it was not really that big of a deal and certainly I don’t believe a shoulder is enough enticement to drive any man to immorality, but it was a picture that would be archived and hallmarked as the beginning of our lives together that family, friends and future children were sure to admire (it was that good, mostly because I take terrible photos and it was about the only one that made my wife still believe I was marriageable). With those implications, we decided to Photoshop a sleeve so as to portray the intentions of modesty that the wind otherwise took away from us. Everytime I look at the photo, I think of the terrible Photoshop job I did and laugh, but no one seems to notice and their was no harm done. If this is a straight shooting blog, I’d love to hear real thoughts on my experience?
P.S. Thanks for the opportunity to post on your blog and I apologize for my longwindedness and conjugations of words that may not exist like longwindedness.
The polo shirt was a joke mocking the picture above it that was featured in the ensign. I give the issue on where that one was featured. The photoshop job on this is terrible because it is a classic painting – this work was even featured at BYU. The angels wings weren’t covered up and no one was confused on what we believe angels to be nor were the shoulders covered up and all the men seemed pretty tame during the show. Makes no sense to cover up shoulders and leave a Jesus nipple exposed – why not just leave this classic alone or just use a different painting!?
And the African one is bizarre! Hard to figure out the motivation for that one. And thanks for stopping by our little blog and a special thanks for your comment!