Kim Kardashian has practically made a living from her curvaceous figure.
But the E! network celeb was looking a little less shapely in Complex magazine in April.
Her body was reduced about a dress size, and her legs were smoothed to near-perfection.
How did readers know? Complex accidentally posted a pre-Photoshopped image of Kardashian on its website - before her thighs, arms and waist had been digitally sculpted.
In a matter of hours the photo was gone.
But in that brief time span, those who spotted it got a little reminder that we should think twice about taking photographs at face value.
"My belief," says Scott Kelby, president of the United States Association of Photoshop Professionals, "is that every single major magazine cover is retouched.
"I don't know how they couldn't be."
But don't stop there.
Aside from newspapers, most of which do not permit photos to be manipulated, is quite possible that the vast majority of images seen in the public arena have been altered.
Photoshop, the go-to graphics editing program that got a foothold in the 1990s, has become so ubiquitous that most of us gaze at faces, bodies and landscapes without registering that wrinkles have been diminished, legs lengthened and the sky honed to a dream-like shade of blue.
While some laud Photoshop for its ability to allow people - and things - to look their best in a photograph, others see it as a vehicle for feeding society's desire for uber-perfection.
"I think the perfect bodies we're seeing in magazines that are Photoshopped have a terrible effect on how women feel about their own bodies," says Prof Montana Miller, assistant professor in the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
One theory about retouching in advertisements is that it's done to create an aspirational concept of beauty that inspires women to buy more products.
Prof Miller has heard another: that the goal of showing perfect images is to make women feel bad about themselves - also making them buy more beauty products.
Mr Kelby, who writes a blog about Photoshop, doesn't believe it's a malevolent force.
He sees it as practical, and cites the example of singer Faith Hill.
In 2007, the fashion website Jezebel posted unaltered images of Hill that were shot for a Redbook magazine cover.
In comparing them with the finished product, it appeared that Hill got a makeover which erased crow's-feet, excised back fat and slimmed an arm.
The fallout was huge - the Jezebel post generated more than 1.3 million views, and was picked up by ABCNews.com, VH1.com, TMZ.com and a number of blogs.
Many commenters were angry an already attractive woman had her image altered to appear on the cover of a national magazine.
"If you met Faith Hill in person," Mr Kelby says, "you would think she's absolutely beautiful.
"And when you take her picture, you will see every flaw that you never saw in person.
"Those flaws not only become visible, but magnified . . .
"If I were talking to someone, I'd look at their eyes, not at the blemish on the side of their face.
"But as soon as you open up that photo on a 30-inch monitor, you'd say, `Oh my gosh, where did that come from?'."
What the brain perceives in a still photo is vastly different from what it perceives in real life, according to Dr Dale Purves, director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Up close and personal, "every second you're getting a series of images of a person that you're kind of blending together, and that would be a little more forgiving."
What we're taking in, he adds, is a load of stuff, including clothing, personality and smells - elements that don't necessarily translate to two dimensions.
With technology always evolving, no doubt graphics programs like Photoshop will become more sophisticated and easier to use.
If "to Photoshop or not to Photoshop" is the question, the answer lies in what retouching will ultimately achieve.
