Memes. NFTs. Graphics. There are too many forms of editing and manipulation that we see today. Basic photo editing tools are present on social media sites and even your internal devices. A little tweak here and there and voila! Your sunset photo is good to post. Even face beauty edits have been made simple. Take a snap, set the tone, even out, and just in a minute, it has become ready to upload. While we enjoy this today, let’s understand what few native edits in the 1860s looked like.
- The first-ever edited photo: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was the first person to have his photo manipulated. The famous portrait only had his face stitched to the body of John C. Calhoun, a former vice-president. During this process of stitching, Lincoln’s face was reversed. This caused his right cheek mole to appear on the left. Seemed amusing but it’s thrilling even with limited editing knowledge, it appeared like a real portrait.
- The Commissar disappears, 1940: Nikolai Yezhov, a powerful official, was captured in a group photo in 1937. Yezhov was erased from the photo later in 1940 after his execution. One of the best examples of editing history in itself back in the early days.
- The famous photo editing from 1942: Benito Mussolini with a sword in his hand is riding a horse. To enhance the strength the photo projected, the stableman was edited out from the photograph. All this was just done manually, leaving us wondering was there a competition to be the best photo editor back then?
- Retouching: Editors back then spent six hours removing spots, smoothing skin, and getting rid of wrinkles. A retoucher machine was used back then that allowed the easy retouching aid for experts. Today all this can easily be done with a face editing app but back in those years it was done with pencil and few basic tools.
- Dark humor edits: Imagination slipped in the minds of editors when they got used to basic editing theory. A headless dog photograph seemed thrilling back then and it was unbelievable during that time to have a photograph of a 2 headed dog. A very amusing edit was of a lady stitching a run in her stockings by the aid of beetles. It is what it sounds like! She takes out a couple of beetles and has them placed at the end of runs of the stockings. Humor as well slipped in when a man began to juggle his own head in a double exposure photograph.
Editing and retouching evolved from a table to a tablet device. Humor evolved from juggles and dark humor to memes and ideas. Today searching for your best photo editor app isn’t difficult and is time-efficient as well. Edits are not only done for personal and marketing purposes, they are today also blooming as NFTs in finance sectors.
