I’ve never found photo retouching to be creepy or disturbing. I use Photoshop a fair amount to remove distracting bits from shots. To replace a portion of a shot with the image from another is just a more useful tool for retouching.
My siblings and I were frequently in family photos in matching clothes. My mother used to buy boatloads of material, and make shirts and dresses for all eight of us. (Shirts for the boys, dresses for the girls. Just so you know.) She claims it was not to embarass us all to death when we went out in public (there’s a reason that shit was on sale, y’know, Mom?), but so that it was easier for her to round up the kids that were hers.
None of that is wrong and everyone does that. It is the undercurrent of someone that desperately needs to show the world how great her family is (let’s note this is just a picture she is uploading to Facebook and not a Christmas card or something) coupled with the concept that photos no longer necessary reflect something real that gives me a slight case of the hebbie gebbies.
Or maybe the Heeby Jeebies!
Pfft, that ain’t creepy.
Using Photoshop on old family photos to remove the daughter who married a black guy… that’s creepy.
As an incidental note, I once removed my sister from a photo taken at her own wedding in order to make a solo pose of one of my mother’s cousins who had since died as a gift for her daughter.
My favorite family photos are the ones that didn’t “work”. The one where the baby is screaming and the other two are fighting and I have my eyes half closed? Priceless.
Gah, I knew I murdered it.