For many years I have seen these before and after pictures people / companies post and just laugh.  Often times the transformation can happen in a matter of 5 minutes or in a few days.  

I was looking on my external hard drive for pictures of my GPU mining equipment because I was going to do a post about Monero but then I ran across a long lost folder with pictures of me and started laughing hysterically!  

What I was doing was just sticking out my gut and was going to do a post about how ridiculous a lot of the before and after pictures are.  I didn't end up finishing the little project.  

I was trying to get in every weird position to look as bloated and destitute as possible.  I had grown out my hair at the time and I was able to make it extra greasy for added effect.  

You can see in this picture I pulled my swim trunks up so you can't see any definition in my hips.  

The ability to bloat my gut out there has been with me since birth and I refer to it as "Reverse Core Strength."

In the picture below I messed up because you can see my ribs and some definition where my rib cage meets my bloated gut.  You can also kind of see a vein in my bicep as well.  I did get the creepy depressed look down pretty good though.  

Just looking a little less depressed and sucking in my gut suddenly we get a decent enough picture for a before and after side by side that looks like I made a transformation.  

The truth is they were just taken 1 or 2 minutes a part.  

"Wow Brian, You are really making progress!" 

Now to really do it better you can shave, go to the gym and get a pump, and cut some water weight.  In the after picture my hair is cut shorter which for some reason in this society mean's that I'm "More Professional."  

All this was done without Photoshop / GIMP and to be honestly with you I was just screwing around.  

Just think about how supplement manufacturers really crank it up a notch by really working with the lighting and then manipulating the images with a computer.  

Here are the key tricks that are employed.  

1. Depressed and hairy before pictures.  
2. Person slouches and sticks their gut out. 
3. Lighting angles to take away definition on the before image but to show definition on the after pictures.  
4. Spray on tans for the after pictures. 
5. Photoshop is used to exaggerate the situation even worse.   

At that point they are ready to sell a supplement with a 2,000% markup.  It is a crazy world out there Steemit!  

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