Forty-year-old speech pathologist, Josh, married his girlfriend, Tejal, in a beautiful lakeside ceremony in Massachusetts. In their wedding photo, the couple were beaming.
Tejal wore a bright red lehenga and Josh rocked a cream-coloured kurta. The picture was almost perfect, but there was a noticeable empty spot where Josh’s father, who passed away in 2007, should have been.
Wanting his dad to be part of the special day, Josh had an idea: why not Photoshop him into the picture?
Josh decided to upload his wedding photo, along with an old picture of his dad, to r/PhotoshopRequest.
This subreddit, with over a million members, is where people who aren’t so skilled with Photoshop ask for help from experts, known as 'wizards'.
The requests range from erasing an ex from vacation pics to transforming a cat into Godzilla. One user ever requested an Animorph-style picture that turned his brother into a French bulldog!
Despite all the shenanigans, one of the subReddit’s most heartfelt purposes is helping people process loss.
They want to fix old photos, erase imperfections, or, in Josh’s case, bring a memory to life that never got the chance to happen.
A wizard in Canada took on Josh’s request, adding his dad to the photo with a bit of her own artistic flair.
When Josh saw the final image, he felt both joy and sadness. “He’s there, that’s where he should have been, but you still know he wasn’t," he told The Cut.
Josh plans to hang the photo at home and give a copy to his mum. “It’s still a little therapeutic just to see,” he added.
The wizards on this subreddit, like Akash Harsana from Delhi, take these requests seriously. Akash has been doing this for a few months, gaining a reputation for his realistic edits. He says the hardest part is staying true to the essence of the person in the photo.
While some wizards use AI for quick edits, Akash prefers the old-school way, spending hours on each request to make sure it’s just right.
Of course, not all requests are wholesome. Akash has had to turn down some pretty shady ones—like revenge porn, scam edits, or people trying to commit insurance fraud.
Turns out that this community offering help and support has a dark side, just like the rest of the internet.
