The bride-to-be claimed she was fat-shamed by the photographer. Photo / Facebook
The bride-to-be claimed she was fat-shamed by the photographer. Photo / Facebook
A bride-to-be was astounded when she saw a photographer had Photoshopped her engagement photos to make her and her future husband appear thinner.
Katie Liepold, from the US state of Ohio, said the unauthorised doctoring of her photos amounted to fat shaming, reports news.com.au.
The photo furore began when Ms Liepold and her fiance took to Facebook to book a wedding package, reported 5 News Cleveland.
"I posted and got about 20 responses," she said.
One of them was from a photographer in Medina, south-west of Cleveland, which offered an engagement shoot along with two hours of coverage at the reception.
"Didn't really need the engagement session, but it was in the package so we did it," she said.
The day of the shoot with photographer Linda Silvestri went well, Ms Liepold said. But the photos she received were blurry or at odd angles, she claimed.
"This isn't exactly what I thought I was going to get," she said.
But it was two back-to-back images that really caught her eye.
In one, the pair looked as they are. In the other, they seemed to have instantaneously lost a lot of weight.
The original image. Photo / Facebook
The Photoshopped image. Photo / Facebook
"She actually photoshopped one picture of us skinnier.
"She probably took like 30 pounds (14 kilos) off each of us," said Ms Liepold.
The furious fiancee confronted Ms Silvestri and asked if she had indeed used Photoshop to slim the couple down.
"That wasn't asked for, and I just felt like that was really hurtful and my pictures weren't good enough to be left alone," she said.
The photographer said she was free to cancel the contract. And it could have ended there, but Ms Silvestri is then said to have taken to social media.
Ms Liepold said that in a post, Ms Silvestri had written, "and people have wondered why I have scaled back my photography business."
The post, which has since been deleted, went on to say "it is extremely difficult to get Pinterest worthy lovey-dovey pictures when people can't even get their heads together."
Ms Liepold characterised it as "a whole big rant about how … she had a photo shoot with two morbidly obese individuals."
"Bad lighting and blurry pictures isn't caused by fat," she said.
The soon-to-be bride said she was sharing her story to warn others and to get her deposit back.
"I didn't pay her $150 to have her make fun of me," said Ms Liepold.
News 5 reported that Ms Silvestri said she did refund the majority of the photo shoot cost but withheld the $150 (A$190) deposit as she spent two hours taking their engagement photos.
She apologised for Photoshopping the couple to make them look thinner.
