Previously: The Selection
Just like the Monday before, Kelvin and I found ourselves at Sophia Ritz, and this time we were here to look over our final, processed pictures. My mom didn’t make the trip, since everything had already been paid off last visit, and looking at processed pictures shouldn’t take too long anyway. It was noon, and it was pouring outside, so I’m sure any brides taking photos that day (there were a couple) probably weren’t too happy. Walking in, I noticed the same Australian couple from all the previous days was already there, looking at their own photos. One of the Sophia Ritz ladies at the counter seated us at the desk in front of them and loaded our processed pictures into the same program as before. She told us to look at each picture and make note of any further changes we’d like.
Immediately with the first picture, we noticed drastic changes had been done. Even though we very, VERY specifically said to not mess with my eyes too much, in almost every photo my smaller right eye was the exact same size as my left eye. Because my right eye is smaller and lower than my left eye, the Photoshop artist enlarged my eye, which made it slightly blurrier than the left eye, and moved it up higher, drastically changing my face. It looked ridiculous. They also did things like drastically skinny my arms and my face, and I usually wouldn’t mind this, but I looked like a twig in some of the pictures! The artist also photoshopped one of Kelvin’s favorite pictures that had a fuzzy look to it. This didn’t make any sense; her changes were obvious because the changed areas lost its fuzzyness and stuck out. We were most pieved about the eyes though, since we had very specifically told them not to do that. Almost every picture was marked off because of the eyes.
There were some other things that the artist missed. In one of the foggy pictures, there’s some random junk in the background (like a satellite dish or trash bin or something), and it wasn’t edited out. In one of the evening gown pictures, the powder all over Kelvin’s suit was very apparent. Because we can’t write Chinese, I waited for one of the ladies to come over so I could tell her all these changes. However, they were taking a long time (I don’t know where they went or what they were doing); the Australian couple was waiting for them as well. Kelvin decided to make little sketches on the note paper illustrating the changes we want, simply because he was bored. As we waited, there was a lady in the hallway by the restroom, yelling at 7 or 8 other people lined up against the wall. It looked they were in trouble, but more probable was that they were new hires in training.

Check out the right eye modification.
This is one of our final pictures, so this
is after we asked her a
second time to chill on the eyes.
Eventually, a lady did come over. I can’t remember if she went to the Australian couple first or if another lady helped them, but they were done fairly quickly, asking only for a couple additional changes. Meanwhile, we complained to the lady helping us about how unsatisfied we were with the modifications, as it almost made every single picture unacceptable. We needed a lot of changes, but we didn’t know how to write them down, so the lady rushed upstairs to grab the girl photoshopping our photos. (I wonder if the fifth floor is just a bunch of graphics peons huddled in front of computers in the dark.)
A petite, casually dressed came downstairs and spoke with us. While there was a language barrier between us and Photoshop girl, we were able to convey our issues with the pictures. We pointed out how my eye looks totally unnatural in a lot of the photos and how, as a result, my face in the pictures looks unlike how it is in real life. (I’m sure seeing my face in person helped. :P) We also asked her to calm down on the fat trimming, and we pointed out the garbage and powder we wanted removed from the photos. Kelvin also told her to do zero photoshopping on his beloved fuzzy picture. Photoshop girl nodded and said she got all that. The counter lady asked if she needed to write anything down, and the girl confidently said she didn’t. They had a short discussion about when all this new processing would be done by. The girl seemed to want more time, but the counter lady me told us to come back at 7PM. I was bummed we had to come back an extra time, but we had to this. We accepted this arrangement and left to figure out what to do until 7PM.
After eating lunch at the MacDonald’s a couple doors down from Sophia Ritz and watching National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (surprisingly decent adventure flick) at Vie Show Cinemas by Taipei 101, we were back at Sophia Ritz. This time, Miss Guo was here, so she showed us to a desk so we can look at pictures again. The second time around was MUCH better. While there were still some modifications, I didn’t look unnatural or abnormal (at least in mine and Kelvin’s eyes) in the pictures anymore. My eyes were kept in its uneven state, though my right eye was still ever-so-slightly enlarged in a few of the pictures. (Miss Guo: “I know your eyes are uneven, but I felt slight changes were okay in some of the pictures since it seemed more exaggerated than how you look in person.”) The garbage in background had been removed from the foggy picture, and I wasn’t as anorexic-looking in my pictures anymore.

The pictures still weren’t perfect, though. While the Photoshop girl had been pretty good about remembering all the changes we asked for, she had forgotten to edit out the powder on Kelvin’s suit. And while I did ask her to calm down on the fat trimming, she left one of the photos as-is from the original, and my arm looked like a freaking slab of meat. Kelvin said it was fine, but I was self-conscious enough about it to request the arm to be shaved down just a teeny-weeny bit. We told these new changes to Miss Guo, and she told us to wait a bit. She went over to a phone, called upstairs, and told Photoshop girl what we wanted to done. Not too much longer later, she finished her photoshopping, and Miss Guo showed us our pictures one last time. We approved them, half cuz we were finally okay with them and half cuz we were sick of being there (again). Also, upon seeing all the pictures again since the Friday before, one of the pictures had significantly grown on me, so I switched it to be one of the thank-you cards. It was still okay to make changes to all the selections made on Friday.
As another example of the photoshopping, here are the unprocessed (with all the changes marked) and then processed (final picture) photos for the one picture that grew a lot on me. I didn’t like it that much before, but I think it’s one of my favorites now. (It’s probably because of all the processing.) I now kind of wish we had made this our giant portrait (as opposed to the other boring pose). Even though Kelvin’s face isn’t the clearest and it looks like he’s going to eat my forehead, this picture looks more intimate and interesting to me now.

In the end, Photoshop girl did a decent job. Looking between processed and unprocessed pictures, she removed any specks or artifacts in the images. She cropped out or photoshopped out background edges or outside objects sticking into the pictures. I was pretty impressed with her removal of the garbage in the foggy picture; the foliage originally blocked by those objects looked unmodified. Obviously, we thought some of her original edits looked unnatural, but it’s probably because we’re biased on those points. (I’m sensitive about my eyes, and Kelvin’s sensitive about preserving my facial features.) We are generally happy with the way the final pictures look. Though they were some major changes, they don’t look odd or out-of-place, especially to folks besides Kelvin and me that don’t know what the originals look like. While it’s not as important to Kelvin and me, I think the photoshopping was worth it. They said they can edit anything (except teeth… for some reason, they said they can’t/won’t edit teeth), and I buy that.
After double-checking all our selections we made on Friday, Miss Guo said all our goods should be available next Monday (yes, one more trip), so she told us to drop by the studio anytime after 2:30PM the following Monday. We were leaving for America the Tuesday after that, so Miss Guo went upstairs to get us a burned CD with all 30 of our processed images. That way, we could still show all our relatives our photos, even though we didn’t have the albums. I thought this was very nice. We bid Miss Guo farewell and finished our evening at Sophia Ritz.
If you want to check out the pictures we selected, you can look at the processed pictures here and the unprocessed pictures here.
Next: The Final Product
I was thinking about ranting about all this photoshopping stuff, but I’ll save that for another post, another day.