Artificially intelligent photo editing software has placed capabilities normally reserved for professionals into the hands of anyone with a smartphone and a selfie, resulting in a severe uptick of portraits of people with biological impossibilities like pore-free skin.
But handing off tedious manual editing tasks to a computer unintentionally gives software the ability to define today’s beauty standards. With each launch of new AI editing features, it seems as if the list of normal features that are no longer considered fashionable grows. A key example? The odd list of features that Evoto, an AI-based photo editing suite for Mac and Windows, apparently thinks need to be edited out.
Earlier this week, the company launched Evoto 4.0, an update that includes several AI-based automatic editing tools. The list of new features, as you can see below, includes helpful tools like a slider to remove green tint from skin tones.
However, the list feels largely made up of edits that feel poised to redefine beauty standards, including the ability to reduce the appearance of veins in hands, make the gums in a smile less apparent, remove braces from teeth, and even automatically remove the blemishes on an infant’s skin.
The guidelines that I use while editing my portraits are twofold. First, if it’s not there 24/7, remove it. And second, if it’s over-exaggerated by the camera, fix it. This means that I have no problems removing acne and rashes, but I leave scars, freckles and moles in place.
My tendency towards warmer tones can also exaggerate yellow teeth, so I will often do some slight teeth whitening. I will also reduce flyaways highlighted by my love for backlighting and reduce but not obliterate skin texture in close-ups with high-resolution cameras. But revoking things like scars and freckles steps too far in attempting to change all the quirks that make a person who they are.
This approach means I’m okay with removing the blemishes on a newborn’s skin and braces, which are both temporary. But tools designed specifically for veiny hands and big gums feel poised to once again raise the bar on already unrealistic beauty standards.
According to Men’s Health, the leaner you are and the more muscle mass you have, the more apparent your veins will look. (Veins can also increase in appearance as part of the normal aging process.) If the visibility of veins is a sign of good health, why are we editing them out of our photos? Suggesting that people should not have prominent veins is a harsh double standard coming from an editing platform that also offers AI tools to slim someone’s body type.
Perhaps the better question to ask is this: why are veins typically left intact in photos of men, but less so in photos of women? Granted, as a woman living in the U.S where voters have chosen a felon over a female, perhaps I’m nitpicking on a small issue, and yet I can’t help but feel that editing signs of strength out of women's portraits is a symptom of a larger problem.
Editing someone’s gums strikes me on a different level: one that attempts to hide someone’s own unique quirks. Evoto 4.0 adds the option to reduce the gum-tooth ratio, as well as tools for correcting teeth alignment and gaps.
Everyone has a different smile; some are gummier than others, some have straight teeth while some do not. I believe the two key elements to capturing someone’s personality in a photograph are their eyes and their smile. Editing that out feels like removing some of that personality from the portrait.
At least I can take some solace in that Evoto is a desktop-based platform, not a mobile-based app for editing selfies. I’m not sure I could stand seeing my social media feeds filled with AI-defined smiles and hands when I already have to scroll past impossibly plastic skin.
Read more with our list of the best photo editing software or the best free photo editing software.
