Looking Good
Found this link about how pictures are touched up for magazines.
Its pretty interesting.
I’m on a diet. I think low blood sugar drove me to this.
Holy crap. I mean, I knew they retouched everything, but this is a different woman!
That’s… quite a bit of photoshopping, to say the least.
You’d think it’d be disheartening for a model to see pictures of herself that have obviously been altered. It implies that her own good looks are not good enough.
A old friend of mine works for a manufacturer of high-end visual effects and editing systems for film and television. They used to publish calendars with retouched photos showing off how their equipment could be used. One page had a taken a picture of a baby, a mother and grandmother and then created a sequence of photos showing a seemless aging process, making it look like it was all one person at different stages of her life.
Also, you can see the visual effects here, it would be fun to let you listen to how an ordinary voice can be changed into a pop star. I used to sell equipment which would let you do that.
:smack: I was trying to make this small. Oh well, I’m new to this message board thing.
Pretty wild link, huh? Whenever any famous person says “It takes a lot of work to look this good” I’ll be thinking “Photoshop” or “ProShow Gold”?
There are some really good pictures of some famous people where you click on the picture and see the “before” version at Fluid Effect - or at least there were recently. At the moment, it appears that the site is down, but if it comes back up check it out. Very interesting.
This is a pretty compelling demonstration. Well, think of it this way – it’s cheaper than plastic surgery.
And I doubt I’m the only one who thinks the kid looked a ton better before she was “improved.” I mean, the whole point is to sort of standardize her looks, right? So she ends up with this completely generic appearance after the touch-up.
I work at a company that does this stuff. Large staff of retouchers, 90% of our business involves pix of female models (usually hawking female apparel). I’m not a Photoshop guy myself but we have quite a lineup of retouchers who do nothing but that, full-time. (I’m the database geek. I maintain the workflow-database in FileMaker).
Based on what I’ve seen, the example pic in the OP’s link is about typical.
There was an article in the Toronto Star last weekend about how the New Thing in fashion ads is Big Anime Eyes. I think Lancôme was the advertiser.
It’s quite rediculous how much effort goes into changing the way models look. And it gets much worse than thouse couple examples.
What is real nowadays?
Ick!! I hope this doesn’t spawn a “eye enhancement” trend.
I guess my dream of being a blonde bomshell model isn’t so far-fetched after all. I am a 32 year old dark and tall male but it seems like that wouldn’t be much of an issue.
Hee, not at all. Send us before and after photos, mmkay?
A few years ago TV Guide had some famous person on the cover. Turned out the photographer assigned to the job wasn’t able to get a photo of the lady in a dress, suit shots were all he had, so he just photoshopped her head onto a similar body in his photot collection. It was published. No one would have noticed except the body was wearing some designer’s dress and the designer wanted to be able to advertise this famous person wearing the dress. The magazine was obligated to reveal that they have routinely done this for years. It is more convenient than actually getting the star to stop by somewhere for a photo. It is free publicity and so the stars never say anything. So, never believe any photo you see. Even video can be seamlessly altered with enough work. And since eye-witness testimony is highly unreliable (
) I don’t know what courts do all day…
Is there really any point to using actual females for models any more? We were watching a bit of some crappy show on tv (Next Big Model or something like that), and we were horrified by what they were making the contestants do - walk down the catwalk in these obscene shoes. Of course the girls were falling off of them - one even hurt her ankle. It’s wonder that someone didn’t actually snap an ankle. They had to do this, because in the real world of modelling, they will be asked to do things this stupid and worse. Is there anything good that anyone gets out of the modelling industry?
How do we know they didn’t unhance (is that a word) the real photo to make the enhanced photo look more dramatic in that demonstration? I have no doubt that the changes made are possible, I’m just always a little skeptical at baseline.
I suppose we don’t, but the before photo looks like a normal, pretty, girl. The enhanced one looks quite unnatural.
It’s Lanvin. The first time I saw one of their ads, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I couldn’t figure out why. The models are “normal”, but their eyes have been anime-d. Here’s the only link I could find to one - scroll down to the February 3 entry & click on the picture.
http://www.fashionologie.com/fashionologie/2006/02/index.html
VCNJ~