IT’S OUR own brush with perfection. Thousands of holidaymakers returning home this weekend will seek to improve their photographic souvenirs by enhancing their appearance.

It may mean slimming an expanding midriff, lengthening the legs or plumping up lips. All will be done at the click of an airbrush rather than the flick of a surgeon’s scalpel.

Britain has become so vain that one high street photographic chain says it has seen a 550% increase in the past year in people requesting remedial work on their holiday snaps to make them look more attractive.

“It’s plastic surgery without the knife,” said Snappy Snaps, which has 140 shops nationwide. “We can even put people on a beach in the Seychelles when they have had to stay at home instead.”

The airbrush was once the preserve of film stars. Kate Winslet complained when she was airbrushed for a magazine cover to make her legs look longer and her figure slimmer, but Elizabeth Hurley is so used to having her bikini shots retouched that she admits every time she downloads her holiday snaps she goes over them with an airbrush.

Advances in technology mean it is now available to everyone. Crooked teeth can be straightened, brightened and whitened to create a pixelperfect smile. Dark shadows can be removed, wrinkles and frown lines eased and bodies can undergo a magical digital diet in which pounds disappear in seconds.

Sociologists believe the advent of networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace has raised people’s expectations of how they ought to appear in their holiday photos.

Some are spending hundreds of pounds having photographs visually enhanced to make them look more attractive and their holiday more fun.

They can pay high street firms £15 to do the changes for them, make alterations in booths at other high street shops or do it at home on their computer using trickery such as Adobe Photoshop.

Kodak has launched a £65 airbrush plug-in for computers which automatically smooths skin surfaces, while HP Photosmart has introduced a £200 “female friendly” camera which can reduce the dress size of its main subject when it takes a picture without any tell-tale change to the surroundings.

Erin Graham, 31, originally from Manchester but now a foreign exchange trader in the City of London, volunteered to have her holiday pictures from Morocco visually enhanced by Snappy Snaps.

“I would enhance my boobs, flatten my stomach and remove my tattoo. Facially I would prefer whiter and more even teeth, a slimmer nose with the blemish underneath removed, less squinty eyes, a less flabby jaw line and a more even skin tone,” she said.

She was delighted with the results: “Wow, that looks a bit weird now, not like me. But yes, I like it; I like the bigger boobs best.”

Pictures of Tony Archer, 40, a fitness instructor from Hertfordshire, his wife Sue, 39, and their daughter Ellie, 3, taken on holiday in Cornwall, also underwent our airbrush treatment.

Sue Archer said: “If you could make my midriff a bit more svelte, it would be much appreciated, and swap my head with Liz Hurley’s, that would be even better. Could you turn Tony into a young Mel Gibson?" Ann Simpson, marketing director at Snappy Snaps, said: “We have seen a huge increase in requests for our airbrushing services this year. The obsession with all things celebrity means society is more accepting of techniques that improve appearance.

“Everyone wants to look their best. It’s not just celebrities that can enjoy the benefits of the airbrush.”

David Lewis, a psychologist and the author of Loving and Loathing: the Enigma of Personal Attraction, said: “There are very few people who are not vain to some extent and we are increasingly using vision to estimate someone’s true worth. People are now acting as their own PR agents to put a spin on their looks.

“It’s usually harmless, but the problem can come when reality meets the image.”

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