I was photoshopped within an inch of my life!
November 28th, 2006 by MarkLast night, after learning that my favorite department store offers photos, I went in to have my ARC pictures taken. It must be the seventh or eighth time I’ve done so, and before it’s always been about the same. I sit down, some guy takes my picture, I come back an hour later and that’s that. This time was different. The guy spent literally 40 minutes mercilessly photoshopping my image. He lowered my right shoulder, he made the scar on my forehead disappear, he smoothed out the appearance of my stubble, he lightened my eyebrows from black to a slightly reddish brown, and he even made me 5 shades whiter. I really wish I had the original, but here’s the result.
There’s something he did that made my eyes look glassy, too.
:

November 28th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Looks good. I usually photoshop myself to get rid of a mole and realign my lazy eye so it looks like I’m lookign at the camera with both eyes.
November 29th, 2006 at 12:15 am
Glassy and sassy!
What’s “ARC”?
November 29th, 2006 at 1:26 am
An ARC is an “Alien Resident Certificate” (居留證)
November 29th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
They did that to me too; I went from “normal” to “Hitler Youth” in about 20 minutes. Thankfully another shop was willing to leave me as me.
November 29th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
I didn’t realize they do that. I just had a ID photo taken yesterday. I picked it up today and was surprised that it came out better than I thought. My skin looks so much better in the photo. Now I know why.
December 3rd, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Erm, isn’t the whole point of the ID photo to identify the person? Well, I suppose it still looks like you. Just without visible skin texture.
BTW, what’s your favorite department store? You never struck me as the department store kind of guy…
December 3rd, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Aìmăi is my favorite at the moment.
December 5th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
You’re funny! You should also come to study Chinese in Beijing. It’s probably easier for you to learn simplified Chinese.
Ha! I’ll see if I may come across you in the street of Beijing someday, now that I now know how you look.