So, a friend on Facebook posted Sacha Baron Cohen’s new character, The Dictator, this morning. Now, I really couldn’t give less of a damn about Cohen, but the Hammurabi hairstyle drew my eye, so I clicked.
What immediately struck me, though, was the fugly Photoshop flaw at the bottom of his beard. Everything in the photo is in clear focus, and then suddenly, it goes all weirdly blurry. It’s jarring. It makes it look like his head is floating in thin air.
So what’s up? Did they, in fact, Shop his head onto a different body? Did they digitally extend the beard down for some reason? Or did someone just go nuts with the blur tool?
Photoshop expert checking in. I don’t think it’s poorly-done Photoshop trickery.
I think it’s just an unfortunate effect of a big black bushy beard that is the same color of the dark shadow it casts. It stands out from other areas that aren’t casting shadows (the background behind him and on the right side of his uniform where one of the lights is shining) because those areas aren’t getting any shadow.
You think? I dunno. It just looks…fake to me. You can plainly see detail in the beard down to a certain point, and then it goes all fuzzy (no pun intended.) And if that’s just where the shadow begins, then it looks very asymmetric. It just has an appearance of going all 2D and fake-looking.
I brought the larger image into PS to mess with the levels and such. It seems the beard does have detail all the way down to the bottom, but the shadow just seems too soft and/or dark compared to other shadows cast on his uniform.
Hard to say really what the deal is, but it does seem 'shopped in some way. Not surprising, since 95% of all digital pics on the net are 'shopped today. Especially promo images.
It’s the shadow of the beard, but it’s also bad Photoshopping.
Three things to notice:
The shadows cast by his sunglasses are pretty symmetrical. The main light is straight up, so the shadows are the same shape on both sides of his face. The shadow of the beard is off to the left, not straight down as it would be based on the other shadows. Note that none of the medals and whatnot on his chest are casting shadows to the left. (The light might be a scootch over to the right, but not enough to make that much difference.)
The shape of the shadow is exactly the same profile as the bottom of the beard, which wouldn’t be the case if it were a true shadow, as the shape of the front edge of the beard would be what determined the shadow’s shape, not the bottom.
The color of the shadow is standard Photoshop gray in “multiply” mode.
So I say you recognized a bad Photoshop but didn’t know why.
I also changed the color profile under Color Settings to ‘Apple RGB’, rather than sRGB, which has been the default standard for a while. But, using Apple RGB, it seems a bit less faked. Perhaps that’s what the retoucher was working under. Just a WAG.
I’m guessing the beard was all wonky during the photo shoot, then some PS hack attempted to straighten it out, having to add the shadow back in, and did a shit job.
It’s funny what cues your unconscious mind will pick out, huh? Now that you point out the direction of light, I notice that I can clearly see it reflected on his forehead, and the direction of the beard’s shadow is just wrong. Before, I just saw the image and thought, “Something about that is very off.” Almost Uncanny Valley off, in fact, although I’m sure Cohen’s overall bizarre look in this photo didn’t help.
