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A word about
image generation at Horrify Me |
How much is real, digital CGI or A.I. in your portrait photos?
This page is a response to a lot of questions I get asked about how Horrify Me images are created.
We live in an era now where people no longer trust or even understand the nature of the images they are looking at. Horrify Me has been asked numerous times, and often even "accused" of using heavy CGI, and more recently of using text-prompt generative A.I. Nothing could be further from the truth. This page has been put together to make is as clear as possible just how practical the process really is at Horrify Me, and also attempts to help you understand how we use Photoshop enhancements when necessary.
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| REAL MATERIALS |
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FAKE BLOOD
The fake blood that we use is messy, but it's a real product that is applied to you in the studio and NOT added later using CGI or Photoshop effects. |
MAKEUP
The makeup is practical, tactile, and every bit a product of a physical creative process. It is glued to your skin and painted by hand, not added later in digital form. |
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| REAL EXPERIENCE |
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IT'S ALL ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE
Sure, Horrify Me could use CGI or A.I. to generate images pretty easily but where's the fun in that? The whole point of Horrify Me isn't just the end result, but the experience it offers people. You get to enjoy all the weird creative processes involved in horror photography! |
KEEPING IT AUTHENTIC
Wearing horror makeup and fake blood helps people with their poses in this genre of portrait photography because it affects the mindset. It looks, and most importantly, feels authentic when it is done properly. Adding effects in CGI afterwards rarely feels as authentic as using practical makeup. |
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| SELFIES AND FUN |
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SELFIES
What you see in the final portraits is the same as what you see when you take your own selfies. It's all there, right in front of your lens. |
FUN
I hardly need to say this bit, but wearing real makeup is just great fun. I just cannot see where the fun would be if this was being done digitally after the shoot. |
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| RAW vs EDITED PHOTOS |
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RAW PHOTO
A lot of people wonder how much editing is done in Photoshop after the shoot? The answer is, just a little, but generally not much. Horrify Me strives to shoot the portraits live in the studio as close to finished as possible. Of course, Photoshop is used for a few tweaks and some minor touch ups, which is perfectly normal and the industry standard, but this does not stop the shot from being a "real" image. |
EDITED PHOTO
You can see from this comparison just how little the final image has changed from the raw camera image. A few minor adjustments which liven up the colours a little, and if any small imperfections in the makeup are visible then these will be fixed, but the images are not digital creations. The final image is extremely close to the real shot. |
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| EYES |
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RAW PHOTO
One of the areas that does attract some Photoshop tweaking is the eyes. Not everyone is comfortable wearing contacts on their eyes so I am happy to add a bit of creepy enhancement to the eyes where appropriate. |
EDITED PHOTO
You can see from this comparison how eyes can often appear after a bit of editing. |
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| BIGGER PHOTOSHOP EFFECTS |
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PHOTOSHOP EFFECTS
Of course, a few projects do need a bit of Photoshop help, such as when we use flames or bolts of electricity for certain characters. But even this is done with as much studio lighting as possible so that the digital elements are merely the "finishing touch" rather than the whole show. |
BODY PARTS
The only other time Photoshop is used to any real extent is to paint-out body parts. A great example is the popular "arm eating zombie". This shot is always done with a real human arm rather than a prop, and the rest of the person's body is carefully painted out to create the effect. |
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So, does this mean Horrify Me is against all digital art and CGI imagery?
The simple answer is no. Digital art is fantastic. I personally love it and I even have a huge fandom for a lot of amazing digital artists. I love it, but I don't do it, that's all. As an artist, I prefer to get my hands dirty with real products, messy paints, sticky glues, and lumpy clays and rubber pieces. And of course I love to use creative lighting in the studio to achieve real effects. There's no crusade against digital art or CGI from Horrify Me. At the end of the day, while I myself am more traditional in my approach, I do understand that these modern digital methods are just tools to help artists create art.
A.I. art, however, is another matter. I flatly refuse to employ A.I. to any of my work. I never have and never will. As you may already be aware, many artists hate A.I. art for a variety of reasons. The argument that A.I. is just a new tool to help artists doesn't ring true, because it feels more like the tool that can replace artists. Plus the ease with which literally anybody can now generate an image from a text input feels hollow, unearned, and even a little unjust considering the years of training and skill development that artists invest into their talent. And that's without even mentioning the legal and moral aspects of A.I. art, which is known to steal the works of established artists to form its datasets. It's obvious that A.I. art doesn't mean real artists will vanish, or that real art will stop being made, but it does have the potential to cause the decline in income for many working artists, which is something that many artists are already noticing. I'll be perfectly clear about this: Horrify Me is very against A.I. art. I don't like it, and will never support it.
SUMMARY
So just to wrap it up in a nuthsell, Horrify Me is all about the traditional methods of film and theatre, using real makeup and lighting to create unique portrait photographs, with just the lightest touch of Photoshop tweaks on images to bring out the best in them. Once in a while we will use Photoshop to create a certain big effect here and there but these are few and far between. We like to create images which are practical, down to earth, and fully set up with an artist's eye from the raw shot to the end result. And A.I. can piss off! |
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