very neat explanation of how to make people in magazines look better than they actually do

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yeah, we all know pictures get fucked with but it's nice to see exactly how.

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=14537

― alma, Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:25 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, this is really interesting!

― paulhw (paulhw), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:34 (eighteen years ago) link

Indeed.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:36 (eighteen years ago) link

what about all the girls who are conventionally gorgeous in real life and don't need retouching? that's a thousand times more depressing.

― miss michel legrand (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:37 (eighteen years ago) link

are the first two posts sarcastic?

― alma, Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:38 (eighteen years ago) link

Nah.

― ailsa (ailsa), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:40 (eighteen years ago) link

How many of those have you met?

(x-post)

No, I wasn't sarcastic at all. I find kinda ironic that when we say lifestyle mags set impossible standards of beauty, they really are impossible, literally.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:40 (eighteen years ago) link

How many of those have you met?

i live in new york.

― miss michel legrand (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:42 (eighteen years ago) link

Who likes conventional gorgeousness anyway? At least no one I know.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:45 (eighteen years ago) link

There are other good examples of this online, in fact someone may have posted a link a while back (?) of some photo retoucher's site where you can hover over pics for before/after shots. The above example's a bit on the extreme side - I'd call that overdoing it, with the too narrow waist, it doesnt look right. Still. This is rampant. Think for eg of those ads for Revitalift cream with Andi McDowell's supposedly smooth skin real close up. NO ONES skin looks good that close up. She's photoshopped up the wazoo and for skin-miracle creams that seems really fucked up, I think.

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:47 (eighteen years ago) link

I love that this the Swedish government is behind this demonstration. Would this be a tertiary impulse?

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:53 (eighteen years ago) link

I would live and die for conventional gorgeousness.

― Lara (Lara), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:54 (eighteen years ago) link

My bf's showed me how to do retouching, it is quite the art!

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:57 (eighteen years ago) link

So are the pics in the What Do You Look Like threads going to get even more gorgeous after this?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:59 (eighteen years ago) link

Out of context, Trayce?

― ailsa (ailsa), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:59 (eighteen years ago) link

I wish I could real-time retouch and end up walking around like a better version of myself.

― Lara (Lara), Sunday, 8 January 2006 23:59 (eighteen years ago) link

"better"

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:00 (eighteen years ago) link

God, Nick + Ailsa + Martin + me still up = no one's got work tomorrow or we'll all be looking tired and feeling crappy?

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:01 (eighteen years ago) link

"better"

You should se me, mate, it's hideous.

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:02 (eighteen years ago) link

And guess what, the records you hear on the radio aren't the result of musicians all playing live in the studio together!

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:05 (eighteen years ago) link

I want an animated gif of the breast before/after.

― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:06 (eighteen years ago) link

So are the pics in the What Do You Look Like threads going to get even more gorgeous after this?

Pfft I semi retouch mine as it is, thats the only reason I look any good to begin with :/

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:06 (eighteen years ago) link

(just my hair usually, as I ALWAYS seem to have horrid root regrowth)

And ailsa - argh! ;P

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:07 (eighteen years ago) link

"better"

You should se me, mate, it's hideous.

Ah, sorry, it's just that I live in this weird world where Cosmopolitan cover looks don't make anyone better in any sense, person-wise or beauty-wise.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:07 (eighteen years ago) link

And it's 2 AM in Finland and I have work too, I should be sleeping.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:08 (eighteen years ago) link

Ha! I didn't realise you were Europe-based. I am going to be kranky in the morning.

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:08 (eighteen years ago) link

I have the day off tomorrow. Also Lara, we have met, and although you are hardly the model type by personality, what with the fierce intellect and all, you totally have the looks for it without any retouching necessary.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:09 (eighteen years ago) link

And guess what, the records you hear on the radio aren't the result of musicians all playing live in the studio together!

and the people on tv don't all live inside that little box in your living room.

― miss michel legrand (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:10 (eighteen years ago) link

is that 1st sentence sarcastic?

2 xpost

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:10 (eighteen years ago) link

Oh no! All the Brie cheese I've stuffed in there throughout the years!

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:11 (eighteen years ago) link

and the people on tv don't all live inside that little box in your living room.

My great-grandmother used to tidy the living room before she turned their first set on - somehow she thought that the presenter would see...

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:12 (eighteen years ago) link

What if we banned retouching when the part is directly relevant to the advert? No retouching skin if it's skin cream, no retouching lips for lipstick ads and so on. This means that the advertisers very much want the mags to stop making the models in every other shot have unrealistically fabulous lips (etc.) because it makes it impossible for them to make their product look good.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:12 (eighteen years ago) link

Man this thread's out of context-tastic.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:12 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, aren't there laws against advertisers making false promises? Surely they should be applicable in such cases?

(x-post)

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:14 (eighteen years ago) link

Big time!

I would not buy stuff if the pictures in the ads weren't pretty.

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:14 (eighteen years ago) link

What if we banned retouching when the part is directly relevant to the advert?

I'm with this. I realise its all about the sell, but it is so frustrating.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:14 (eighteen years ago) link

Would adjusting the colour balance count as retouching?

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:15 (eighteen years ago) link

Cross post

But we *know* all this and still we're sucked in so I reckon a ban would be pointless.

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:16 (eighteen years ago) link

My great-grandmother used to tidy the living room before she turned their first set on - somehow she thought that the presenter would see...

that's cool! i'm going to start doing this.

― miss michel legrand (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:16 (eighteen years ago) link

The one that used to get me was the Shiseido ads. I really badly WANTED some kind of makeup that'd give me porceliean white skin, even if it was a bit on thw whiteface side. I assumed they had such a foundation because of their damn geisha-esque models.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:17 (eighteen years ago) link

And no matter how much eye-liner I wear, I'll never look like Lily Cole!

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, but I think ads work on a more subliminal level, even if we're highly critical of them and know they're a fantasy, something still gets trough, they have a cumulative effect.

(x-post to Lara)

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Fantasy = good, though, and reality = boring, no?

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:19 (eighteen years ago) link

(In terms of advertising)

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:19 (eighteen years ago) link

There are other good examples of this online, in fact someone may have posted a link a while back (?) of some photo retoucher's site where you can hover over pics for before/after shots.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 9 January 2006 00:32 (eighteen years ago) link

Here's that mouseover retouching site:

http://www.glennferon.com/portfolio1/index.html

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Monday, 9 January 2006 01:04 (eighteen years ago) link

x-post with Pleasant - but they're diff. sites!

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Monday, 9 January 2006 01:05 (eighteen years ago) link

Thanks PP thats exactly the site I was thinking of :)

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 9 January 2006 01:07 (eighteen years ago) link

The funny thing is: a lot of the corrections are for photographic, or wardrobe issues, rather than human flaws.

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Monday, 9 January 2006 02:31 (eighteen years ago) link

Who likes conventional gorgeousness anyway? At least no one I know.

To be honest, I think most people I know do.

― Sundar (sundar), Monday, 9 January 2006 02:51 (eighteen years ago) link

Skipping 7 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

I think the problem is that they didn't just make them look bigger, they made them look fake.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Monday, 9 January 2006 09:08 (eighteen years ago) link

and her left arm weird

― RJG (RJG), Monday, 9 January 2006 09:23 (eighteen years ago) link

Would adjusting the colour balance count as retouching?

Thing is, it's kind of irrellevant when the people making the ad have no way to predict the color in any given magazine. There's a standard called SWOP, or Standard Web Offset Press I think, that everyone works from, and within that , there's something like a 15 percent difference in color that is allowed. For instance if you make an ad where you think the girls skin looks nice, in one magazine it may look reddish and in another it may look blueish...and it's not the magazine's fault. Good retouchers keep this in mind, you can take 2 versions of the same ad that look identical, but the mixture/balance of colors underneath the main colors are different in a way not noticeable right away, but one solution will drift more then the other.

Color is an imperfect art.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Monday, 9 January 2006 15:16 (eighteen years ago) link

They did this article in Glamour a few months ago with a naturally gorgeous actress (can't remember who, she's black and is on TV) and she was frightened by the after pictures. She said she didn't mind that they slimmed her waist or got rid of her under-eye bags and evened out the color, but she was upset that they got rid of her freckles and moles and her lopsided nostrils. Basically, all the things that made her unique and not an android. She tried to get them to compromise on the re-touching but they wouldn't.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Monday, 9 January 2006 16:29 (eighteen years ago) link

15 percent!!!
If the place I work for sent an ad out that printed with the skin tone 15% off there would hell to pay!

I posed the question because whenever you're printing an image, in any medium, you adjust the colour pretty much everytime. Does simply adjusting for poor lighting or funky shadows count as retouching?

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 01:35 (eighteen years ago) link

And yes; fake boobs are the gross.

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 01:37 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't remember the exact number...but SWOP allows shift. What range of magazines are you sending your ads to?

Ok, it's less dramatic:

For yellow, magenta, and cyan, the range is generally+/- 0.02. For black, it is +/- 0.04.

But that can have a big effect depending on the colors. The example I was shown was an ad that had a mostly flat greyish field. In one magazine it was noticeably magenta/purple, in the other, blue. And these were like, Time, the New Yorker, Business Week etc.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 03:03 (eighteen years ago) link

And these were like, Time, the New Yorker, Business Week etc.

It's an issue for everyone, because you can't call the level of, say, magenta like you can a spot color, by Pantone number or the like. If only.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 03:07 (eighteen years ago) link

um, Lynn before retouching still makes me depressed

― emilys. (emilys.), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 03:31 (eighteen years ago) link

Lynn before retouching is still a model.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 03:33 (eighteen years ago) link

that doesn't help

― emilys. (emilys.), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 03:55 (eighteen years ago) link

They did this article in Glamour a few months ago with a naturally gorgeous actress (can't remember who, she's black and is on TV)

tyra, no?

― 2 columbus circle in 1964 (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 04:00 (eighteen years ago) link

i wonder how much of the retouching she'd have noticed had they not shown her the before and after shots. vanity, yo.

― tres letraj (tehresa), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 04:24 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, kinda per what Dan's saying, you'd have trouble outlawing touchups even for things like skin products -- that would depend on there being some kind of "authentic" way to transfer the real-life image onto the page or screen. But as soon as you get a camera involved there's already so much technical/artifical stuff going into making the image work: how you light the set, how you develop the film, how you transfer it and break the colors and so on. So you'd have kind of a hard time isolating any "true" picture to use as a baseline.

― nabiscothingy, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 05:11 (eighteen years ago) link

The other thing is that apart from celebrity-spokespeople types, ads aren't ever claiming to depict a "real person," so theoretically there's nothing stranger about retouching faces than there is about retouching the sunsets behind them, or whatever. Which is kind of hilarious, because here we can fret about the ways unrealistic body-beauty standards affect our lives, but then consider the deeper issues: not only will your body never be as unrealistically beautiful as ultimate-retouch models, but your life will never be as beautiful, either! Your sunsets will never be as vivid as theirs! Your lawn will never be quite as green and even! Your beaches will never be as sandy and your oceans will never be as crystal-blue, the sunlight angling into your efficiency apartment will never be as cheery as the sunlight angling into their spacious lofts, your feelings of joy after making credit card purchases will never compare to their feelings of joy after making credit card purchases, and your use of the new wringer-less EZ-mop will never be quite as life-changing as theirs.

We realize that pretty instinctually about parts of advertising but are naturally more resistant to it when it comes to renovating humans -- and to be honest I think it would be ridiculously depressing to live in a world where we were all so sophisticated about advertising that we didn't even trust faces to be faces anymore.

NB have any of you read any of the recent stuff about HDTV worries with regard to this stuff? All that new clarify/definition has raised the bar such that facial stuff that wasn't previously evident on television -- pores, moles, scars, etc -- now shows up like a monument on giant plasma widescreen HDTVs, potentially in larger than life size. A lot of actors are pretty spooked by this, particularly when it comes to stuff like talk-show appearances, where you don't get all the good lighting and well-angled shots. I was reading something or other where a TV critic pointed out that this run-of-the-mill "character-building" scar on Brad Whitford's forehead looks, in close-up HD, like a gaping wound.

― nabiscothingy, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 05:29 (eighteen years ago) link

I think thats fantastic! =)

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 05:35 (eighteen years ago) link

That site is great. It confirms that I'm doing the right things from a commercial standpoint when I retouch my own photos.

― She's been known to sleep on piles of dry leaves... (papa november), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 05:47 (eighteen years ago) link

this is a pretty dramatic change:

http://www.glennferon.com/portfolio1/portfolio28.html

― 2 columbus circle in 1964 (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 05:52 (eighteen years ago) link

I met Kelis and I can tell you, that girl needs no retouching!

― She's been known to sleep on piles of dry leaves... (papa november), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 05:53 (eighteen years ago) link

it's kind of hilarious that they made her look thinner but made her butt BIGGER!

― 2 columbus circle in 1964 (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 05:55 (eighteen years ago) link

How on earth is that hilarious?

― nabiscothingy, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 06:01 (eighteen years ago) link

Feron's site is frustrating as it seems he could cover 90% of the retouching by learning to light the scene.

― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 06:04 (eighteen years ago) link

conventional attractiveness = make the butt smaller

although sir mix-a-lot brought quite a few dissenters out of that closet.

― 2 columbus circle in 1964 (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 06:04 (eighteen years ago) link

That's assuming he's the photographer as well as the retoucher - if the magazines are hiring people that incompetent, then I should quit school right now and start sucking cock for editorial jobs. I can fake being legit.

― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 06:05 (eighteen years ago) link

haha, I just noticed Kenan fulfilled my wish. Completely hypnotic.

― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 06:07 (eighteen years ago) link

Un peu de beaute plastique pour effacer nos cernes
De plaisir chimique pour nos cerveaux trop ternes
Que nos vies aient l'air d'un film parfait

― S. (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 06:10 (eighteen years ago) link

conventional attractiveness = make the butt smaller

I'm not sure this convention is particularly true in general, leave alone for an ass-out thong picture of Kelis from what looks like King or something. If anything I'm surprised they didn't fill her out more than that.

― nabiscothingy, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 06:28 (eighteen years ago) link

They kind of just rounded it out a bit more.

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 06:36 (eighteen years ago) link

I met Kelis and I can tell you, that girl needs no retouching!

Damn, that is two ILXers to envy on that score.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 13:19 (eighteen years ago) link

i can't wait until lynn's 16. etc.

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 13:23 (eighteen years ago) link

(way up x-post)No it wasn't tyra banks, it was a woman on a UPN show.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 14:52 (eighteen years ago) link

This happened to me when I saw Batman Begins at the imax. The screen is so huge you can see every little flaw and mark on each actor, to the point where they became grotesque. It was very distracting! I don't think I'd see a regular movie at the imax again.

― Lars and Jagger (Ex Leon), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 14:59 (eighteen years ago) link

The HDTV thing is funny, the actress that ALWAYS gets trotted out in the "HDTV will ruin careers" discussion is Cameron Diaz, who looks like Bryan Adams in hi def apparently. It's like, christ, people, 90% of us would have no fucking clue just how awful her skin is if you'd all stop telling us, it is, just wait and SEE when you can afford a ten trillion dollar tv!

― Allyzay must fight Zolton herself. (allyzay), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 15:01 (eighteen years ago) link

Ha, it's actually some big plan for selling more HD televisions! You're not just buying clearer, more vivid color displays -- you're buying a ticket into a secret world of smug superiority and celebrity schadenfreude!

― nabiscothingy, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 15:23 (eighteen years ago) link

CD has awful skin. So does Amy Sm4rt. It broke my heart when I found that last one out...

― Jimmy Mod (I myself am lethal at 100 -110dB) (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 15:34 (eighteen years ago) link

don't they know about Proactive?

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 15:41 (eighteen years ago) link

the problem in cd's case is supposed to be compounded by bad scarring. i don't think proactiv takes care of that.

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 15:43 (eighteen years ago) link

what about dove's "real women" ads? the first time i saw them, i thought, "those are not the kind of "real women" i see every day," because they're all still gorgeous and i doubt any of them was over a size 12, but i'm sure they've been retouched, etc, so i don't feel quite so bad.

the coolest example of the unretouched woman was when jamie lee curtis did that spread with no makeup in her underwear and showed everyone how imperfect she was.

― tres letraj (tehresa), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 22:11 (eighteen years ago) link

Did it show her male genitalia?

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 22:16 (eighteen years ago) link

They were all on Oprah in their underwear over the holidays and still looked exactly like that ad, so I think it's mostly makeup as opposed to hardcore retouching.

― Dan (Also The Largest Woman I Think Is A 10) Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 22:29 (eighteen years ago) link

oprah's makeup artist could make my dog look like julia roberts!

― tres letraj (tehresa), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 22:39 (eighteen years ago) link

Funny how they changed the girl's features, but didn't touch the dude.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 22:40 (eighteen years ago) link

i would have lowered the waistband on his jeans... looking a bit urkelish. well, like stephan urkelle, not steve urkel.

― tres letraj (tehresa), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 22:45 (eighteen years ago) link

conventional attractiveness = make the butt smaller

on this one, they added to the ass!
http://www.glennferon.com/portfolio1/portfolio02.html

― tres letraj (tehresa), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 23:03 (eighteen years ago) link

four months pass...

I liked the Shanghai incarnation of this ad campaign the Banterist guy posted:

http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/images/dove2.jpg

― Abbott (Abbott), Monday, 5 June 2006 21:07 (seventeen years ago) link

My cat is bigger than those girls!

― Abbott (Abbott), Monday, 5 June 2006 21:07 (seventeen years ago) link

oprah's makeup artist could make my dog look like julia roberts!

-- tres letraj (boringstandardaddres...), January 11th, 2006 9:39 AM.

I'm sure no one's dog could look that hideous.

― S- (sgh), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 00:45 (seventeen years ago) link

Also The Largest Woman I Think Is A 10

Please tell me US sizes are way different to AU's - a size 10 here is someone who weighs 90 pounds soaking wet.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 05:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Ha ha, we were taught actual proper Heat Magazine modelling tricks on Sunday as to how to look better in magazines. It's all about the angle of your upper torso to your neck. and bloody uncomfortable to stand like that, too.

― harmonic generator, haircuts are for losers (kate), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 08:27 (seventeen years ago) link

US sizes are very, very different from AU's.

― Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyzay), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 13:44 (seventeen years ago) link

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