Before
PicTreat. At first I thought it was the answer to my prayers. PicTreat.com is a website that offers free photo retouching. And, it is simple to use. All you have to do is upload a photo to the site and PicTreat improves it using “face detection and correction technology.” Sounds great. But then I tried it and I realized the service has three major flaws.
First, it turns out all PicTreat can do is correct red eye, make skin brighter and shinier, and remove blemishes and marks from your face. When I look at pictures of myself, red eye from the camera flash is the least of my concerns. More than one chin? Now that’s troublesome. Gray roots? Hate them. And why are my eyes shut in 87 percent of the photos?
Second, who wants shinier skin? I spend $45 every three months at the cosmetic counter on powder that covers my T zone. Shine isn’t dewy, youthful and vibrant. It’s sweaty, greasy and menopausal (hello, hot flashes anyone?).
And finally, PicTreat is discriminatory. I am of Irish descent and I have freckles — lots of them, in fact. But the only noticeable difference I saw when I used PicTreat was that my freckles were gone in the retouched photos. Clearly, the makers of PicTreat never read the poem “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. “Glory be to God for dappled things.” This dappled woman happens to likes her freckles and prefers not to have her ethnicity erased.
That being said, if my friends won’t stop tagging me on Facebook, and the creators of PicTreat can improve the software so that it opens my eyes and gives me a definitive jaw line, I just might get past the monoculturalism and reconsider my review.
After
