What is real?

In the last class, we talked about how technology improved the editing in pictures. Because of the technological improvement in the past couple decades, we are able to edit a picture easily by using some computer software and it has better quality. Nevertheless, we can see some cameras in the market are able to do the editing right after you take the picture. It reminds me a experience of my friends taking pictures in a party. One of my friend has a cameras which has a feature of making the skin look better then the original. Then when I saw the picture she took of herself and other people, I feel surprise that my friend look totally different from the picture. Then I ask my friend what is the reason of making yourself look better in the picture? She said it is because she will be posting the pictures on the internet and people would not say she is not looking good in the picture. Then I started to think of the pictures people post online nowadays. I saw that people would edit their picture specially themselves before posting it online. Then I come up a question in my mind. Is it the real look of that person or the object? How can I know it is not edited?

For instance, when you go online and find a apartment to rent, you would see the pictures of the place look pretty and nice. You would feel interested to see the place and call for a appointment to visit. However, when you are at the place and find it is totally different from what you saw online, you would have a feeling of being cheated. Therefore, I would concern the technological improvement in editing pictures might create problems in truth vs optimism.