Touch up on Pictures - Page 1

Why do professional breeders think that touching up pictures (colour enhacement, saturation, backgrounds and even bone structure of dogs) should create a better market for their dogs? Has anybody ever thought that this process makes the prospective client more skeptic about buying a dog or a puppy? Has anybody thought that the "art" of touching up pictures trains everyone of us to be able to "read" into and recognize these pictures? Has anybody thought that there may be a exceptional case that sales through the internet are reducing this way? (I am talking about a relative reduction here ie I do not know the stats regarding how many dogs are sold this way, maybe there is an increase in that, but it certainly would be greater if the truth was straight forward). Of course, one may argue that, since even one breeder uses such a means of promotion this automatically creates a disadvantage for the others...Imagine however, what would happen if half of the breeders would use photo touch up tools and the other half not. Wouldn't this make all public suspicious about that fact? Maybe with an organised campaign of awareness..."But who would organise such a campaign?" you may ask? In my opinion, some inspired SV people could start this. Official SV photography, etc... Any of you professional breeders out there, please explain to me...Am I too romantic?

No Petros, you are not too romantic, you are simply naive. Since the dawn of civilization people who wanted to take advantage of others have existed. It is up to a buyer to look out for himself sadly in most areas of commerce and so it is also with GSDs. Yes, there are reputable breeders and many populate this board. But there are and always will be breeders who are not reputable or have no clue. Some populate this board as well. The most important thing a buyer can do given that none of the formal organizations do much policing of breeders is to make sure one does his/her homework. A board like this can help in that way by using it to ask questions. Photo enhancement is not something I would do. But yes, I suppose there are some that do it. If one is looking to buy a dog, try always to get an independent party to take photos, unless you have an excellent relationship with a breeder whose credentials and integrity are impeccable. Also be sure you get copies of scorebooks etc., know the judges and make sure these can be independently verified.

Hear, hear, Hodie - what worries me is that with digital manipulation, the possibilities to correct visible features must be enormous.

Lots of people continue to buy their first "big time" dog from internet, and almost 75% of those folks whom I know make a big mistake. A few idiots have done that twice or more even. It is very sad that I come to know of these thinks after the fact - otherwise I could have warned.

I think it's dishonest for the reputable breeders to be touching up their dogs pictures. I can see that they want to add in a headshot of their dogs in their pose pictures but what's goals of adding contrast to a dogs picture? to "trick" people into believing that this dog is a "fire" dog? sorry but I don't want a dog that looks like Satan.