Senior Yearbook Photos Edited

After the student ID scandal at St. Teresa’s Academy, Shawnee Mission East has become the next victim of DeCloud photoshopping. The senior yearbook photos taken last summer at the Overland Park studios have been edited to, among other things, make the skin smoother and more tanned, the eyes wider and lighter, the face more contoured and teeth whiter.

This is the fifth disk of photos Yearbook received. The previous had all been incompatible with the computer or blank. This is the first one with actual photos, and the yearbook staff was horrified to find the photos had been retouched.

“It’s frustrating because if we have to publish these, it gives the message that we think people need to be retouched, and that’s not the message we want to give out,” senior yearbook editor Afton Apodaca said.

Whitney Baker, a representative from Balfour, the publisher, has gone to the studios to try and get a disk with the unedited photos.

The story DeCloud gave STA when this happened to their student IDs was that the photos had been run through an automatic photo enhancing program.

“We want the portraits in the book to be who they really are, what they really look like,” Claire Ridgway, senior Yearbook staffer, said. “And if we publish these [edited] ones, people will think that we did this, when in all actuality we’re completely against this.”