Sometimes, that it. Some vocabulary charges in on a horse, like “blog” and “blogging” did. But some language persists. After all, you still “dial” a number, even though rotary dials have been gone for a few decades now (“enter a number” would be more accurate). We still get “on” airplanes instead of “in,” a century-old borrowing of seagoing terminology.

And despite the popular use of the word “photoshop” as a verb to describe the digital alteration of a photograph (after the name of the overwhelmingly popular image editing software), a lot of people are still using the old term “airbrush,” after the classic air-powered spray-painting tool used in days of yore to alter photographs printed on paper. I found this to be the case in the Katie Couric scandal, where CBS photoshopped a Couric publicity still to make her look slimmer. Even a magazine dedicated to photography used “airbrushed,” even though it is certain that Photoshop, and not airbrushing, was used. Old habits die hard.

And as an interesting side note, the sites I referenced (all the sites I could find, in fact) only offered a side-by-side comparison. The side-by-side comparison mostly emphasizes the general slimming features, especially in the gaps between her arms and torso. Again, this sort of comparison is a holdback from print photography days, while on the web, a superimposed animated GIF image–which I have prepared at top right–much more vividly shows the alterations done (if it doesn’t animate, turn animations on in your browser). You can see, for example, that part of the trick was to simply thin out the whole photo (or perhaps pinch the photo significantly)–see the background changing. Pay close attention to her neck and bust line as well to see where they put more work into it. Note the shadow added beneath her chin. This comparison shows that it was not just a 2-minute job–they really put some effort into this.

I made the animation cycle at two seconds because anything faster would be too distracting for reading purposes. However, if you click on the image, you’ll see a version which cycles at a half second, making it much easier to see the changes done.