This is a stunning image. Was it Photoshopped to get like that? Does it matter if it was? If the image was shot onto an electronic sensor rather than film is it really a photograph anyway? And how many “genuinely” photographic images are created with filters and artificial light and darkroom dodging-and-burning? Whatever its provenance, the artefact is still beautiful.

I don’t Photoshop (or Gimp) the scans of any photos I take these days, except to crop them or turn colour images to black-and-white ones, but you’re probably not aware how often and how radically so many of the “photographs” you see around you have been changed by such image manipulation programs. Scroll down this page to see the model before-and-after, take a look at this before-and-after pair, then go back to the first one and wonder. Girls, don’t you wish your exfoliator was this good?