When Great Masters Meet Bad Digital Photography You Get This…

What’s a sure way to ruin the image of a great master? Unleash the powers of Photoshop!

What’s a sure way to ruin the image of a great master? Unleash the powers of Photoshop! Some network producer for the UK’s “yesterday channel” for a show called Secret Life of…, got the cockamamie idea of doing a recreation of the portraits of English royalty. By teaming up (hack) Photoshop “artists” with pop historian Suzanna Lipscomb, master paintings were digitized and turned into laughable contemporary figures.

A part of the tradition of the portrait artists was creating a thoughtful rendering through the art and labor of a timeless craft. The gimmickry of Photoshop in the hands of dudes, gets you, well… this:


Poor William Shakespeare so totally misinterpreted…


Honestly this is so painfully bad, who wears plaid under tweed? And that hair! Clearly this photoChopper never learned how to use the selection or clone tools properly—that face, what is it doing hovering over there?!

This original painting of Elizabeth I is by an unknown artist, but it is perhaps the most skilled of her extant portraits. Hold on to your embroidery folks because it may turn into  shoulder pads and polyester! 1986 much? Uffa.

And perhaps the most laughable. Turning the great Hans Holbein portrait of Henry III into…


Vinny from Jersey Shore…

Yesterday’s channel is aptly named… pssst, art team, next time use the “comand z” prompt, for “undo.”