A Magpie Amongst The Beavers: Airbrushing Tutorial: How To Rectify God's Oversights (And Hone Your Skillz)

I have long had Adobe Photoshop listed as one of my areas of expertise, but I've never been able to satisfactorily elaborate for the purposes of job applications: my CV oughtn't be home to phrases like "grafted my friends' heads onto the Trainspotting poster for their respective birthdays", "moved somebody's eyes closer together for a laugh" or "took a nice photo, drained the background of colour and used it as a wedding present".

And while such a catalogue of doctored hilarities do indicate what an outstanding colleague I would be - an asset to any organisation, I'm sure you'll agree - they also show up a lack of versatility. Sure, I can crop, resize, cut and paste with the best of them, but would my labours make it to the cover of, say, Vanity Fair? Not unless they ran a feature on the world's most lol-worthy mock-ups of a beaver's head on a man's body.

I decided it was time to take it to the next level: airbrushing. Using a recent image of myself - and bravely ignoring suggestions that such a perfect specimen simply cannot be improved (or, to paraphrase, "You can't polish a turd") - I set about tweaking God's handiwork from plain, everyday, run-of-the-mill gorgeous to revelation-inducing, heart-stopping, ethereal beauty.

(And can you believe there's no such word as "pristeener"? Amazing)

Using, reusing and learning techniques best described elsewhere, I first selected the healing tool (icon: cute plaster/band aid) to eliminate infinitesimally insignificant blemishes; an endeavour lasting several long minutes before I even found a place to click. Next I created a duplicate layer, made it a "mask layer" or words to that effect, and applied a Gaussian blur filter. The purpose: to gently erase selected parts of the original image (hairy cheeks, crows feet, eye bags) and leave the blurred one visible instead. After that, it was a case of using the dodge tool to brighten the teeth and eyes to such vibrancy that you'd swear I'd been at the Pedigree Chum.

I am certain that prospective employers would be pleased with any candidate showing such an appetite for self-improvement (skills-wise and cosmetically), but dare I dive further into the lagoon of innovation and set the final image as the new background for my CV?... (No, I daren't)