The world has become smaller and competition is not anymore local. Traditionally, businesses produced quantities that were sufficient to provide the needs or demand of the local market, which was national, state, or city level. They used to design products, both goods and services, that catered to the specific preferences of people who had the nearest proximity to their production center or distribution area.
With the introduction of international business and trade, the creation of the Internet and electronic business, and the advent of outsourcing, the world indeed has become smaller for entrepreneurs and capitalists, and their competition now includes suppliers who come from all corners of the world. To improve global competitiveness, businesses can use basic/intermediate photo retouching to improve their advertisements.
The Relevance
It is not quite surprising that when improving global competitiveness, advertisements play a major role. Persuasion, which is the ultimate goal of advertisements, is a game that has been played by businesses and people to achieve what they wanted since the concept of competition ever started. Even among the earliest politicians of the world such as Nero and Cesar, they used speeches, colossal architecture, and beautiful statues to persuade their constituents that they were their true leaders who will bring nothing but glory. Businesses as early as the wheel makers convinced consumers of the benefits of using their products. As trading and businesses progressed, the forms of persuasion evolved too.
Among all forms of persuasion or advertising though, nothing beats a photo - still or moving. The better the pictures are, the more capable they are of communicating the message of the sender. It is this that makes the use of basic/intermediate photo retouching relevant because with it, businesses could have enhanced photos that would be more effective in advertising.
The Specific Tasks
Photo shoots require a lot of preparation and actual execution and costs much financially and could eat so much time and effort. It would be quite costly and time consuming to redo each shot every time an error is identified. It would be more effective and efficient if basic/intermediate photo retouching would be performed on shots that were already taken. Some of the specific tasks that could be done through it are:
- Improvement of the colors of the shots of models and products so that they will be more attractive to the consumers. In fact, the colors could be manipulated to change from one set of colors preferred by a certain sub-culture to another set that is preferred by another sub-culture. An example of this is changing black and white photos to bright colors to cater to the preference of young people.
- Increasing or decreasing of brightness in order to create the desired image or perception in the eyes of the target market. For those who love rock music and gothic music, darker images are much preferred. Thus, if there are existing photos that would be used to capture said market, what is needed is to decrease the brightness.
- With basic/intermediate photo retouching, it is possible to play with the colors, shapes, figures in the image, and the people in them too.
