Scatter Brain says: Beware the Art Director With a Photoshop Program
As long as there have been photographs, there has been photo manipulation. It’s interesting, because this art form came about to capture reality, but as soon as we figured out how, we started altering that reality.
For instance, I have a baby picture of my Dad, taken at a portrait studio over 7 decades ago. My sweet chubby baby Daddy has rosy cheeks that are hand tinted and the lushest painted on eyelashes that ever adorned a baby’s face. He even appears to be wearing just the slightest hint of lip color. Hand tinted of course.
Later came airbrushing and composite photos. When I worked at the advertising agency in Atlanta (I’m not telling how many decades ago) there was big dust up over the fact that TV Guide used a “photo” of Oprah on the magazine cover that was Oprah’s head on Ann Margaret’s body. This composite caused a bit of outrage, but the technology was already “out of the bag” so to speak and after that we used it often to make funny birthday cards for colleagues and other such hilarity. I remember distinctly one composite of my boss’s head on Queen Elizabeth’s body as she sat on her royal throne. It was very fitting.
Faux photos
Now we have Photoshop, which allows multiple ways to manipulate photographs, and when we look at advertising images it’s hard to know what is real and what is the product of a skilled art director or photo retoucher. Do the models in cosmetic ads really have blemish free skin, no wrinkles, no cellulite, no bumps, lumps, spider veins, varicose veins or moles? (Except Cindy Crawford’s famous mole of course)
In fact, it almost seems a sure bet that the images are not real which is really a shame because it adds to the “unbelievable factor” already inherent in many cosmetics ads.
The newest thing I’ve observed (which frankly causes me to laugh uncontrollably) are these popup internet ads with the roll over feature that shows a woman’s face before using the miracle firming skin cream, age reducer, wrinkle reducer etc. As you roll your cursor over her face she amazingly becomes MANY years younger. I often wonder what art director thinks this is believable. Seriously, the change is so dramatic, the model goes from looking like Baba Yaga the hag from Russian folklore to Barbie-like perfection.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
Sadly, when a photo has been so obviously manipulated it makes me wonder why. My thought is the product must not work that well or the visible results would not have to be so blatantly faked.
What do YOU think? Does it bother you that you can’t believe your eyes anymore? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.
Scatter Brain is a real-life copywriter for hire. If you’re interested in contacting her with business opportunities, please write to “Scatter Brain” care of thebeautybrains@gmail.com.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I’d adore beauty ads without photo editing to make the person look better.
Of course, lighting can do a lot of what photo editing does, with more effort, so I wonder how much of a difference it would make. Still, swapping the body of the person is a little excessive.
Unfortunately, beauty is a business full of lies, and often I just buy things to make myself feel more confident, even though I know it probably isn’t doing anything.
Photoshop free, and for one very simple reason, which is wha tall this boils down to:
I’m sick of bullshit in my life.
I’m sick of seeing ANYTHING and immediately not believing it.
NO makeup works, NO skin creams work, none of it. That’s the only conlcusion that anyone can draw when you’re surrounded by lying 24/7. It’s all bullshit, believe none of it, tune it out, turn it off. I’m sick of it. I don’t watch TV, I don’t go to movies, and I don’t read magazines. I’d like to be able to open ONE of them without being instantly insulted.
However, it’s sort of nice to not have any of that babble in my life, too.
Still, though. I’m sick of bullshit. That’s why I want that garbage gone. What point is there to admire Sophia Loren’s beauty when anyone can look like that in a faked picture? It’s like music nowdays with all the audio pitch correction. What’s the point of sounding like Beverly Sills when some talentless little chippie can make a record with pitch correction that gives her computer accuracy?
I look at it a bit differently than Janis. Nobody (I think) expects advertisements to give objective information about a product. We realize ads serve to sell the product; this aim is not disguised. So why would we expect a photo of a celebrity (who probably hasn’t used a product for any reasonable amount of time) to be true to life? And what if this was achieved? The skin and hair of celebrities and models in no way reflects the quality of the product, nor is this the purpose of ads, as we are well aware. Instead, people can use good resources such as the Beauty Brains blog to learn about what works and what doesn’t.
I don’t think airbrushing has detracted from my appreciation of beauty. And I believe that music is characterized far better by other things rather than singing accuracy (accuracy by itself doesn’t create good music, it is only a tool).
I totally agree with Janis–and I love photoshopping pictures. I recently sent out a cellphone shot of myself with the disclaimer ‘Not a single pixel retouched!’
I don’t mind marketing, but I’m tired of blatant lies. It’s sad that we can’t believe what we see (even if we could, we still couldn’t what with the way our brains our wired!) to the point of dismissing things out of hand. It’s easier to assume something is fake than see a rare quality. How sad is that?
The truth is, truth won’t sell. But if Keats was right, it’s the only thing that can.
The one that gets me isn’t a Photoshop trick – it’s using false eyelashes in mascara ads.
How is this allowed?
I don’t mind some photo manipulation, but I don’t like the idea of different models’ body parts being pieced together. That’s creepy.
I’m all for fantasy and glamour, but when the model starts looking like an animation rather than a real beautiful person it turns me off.
Ink – try being the one with talent who can’t get anywhere because pitch correction technology makes it possible for a tone deaf twit with a beautiful body to get a contract while the fat one with the real true singing talent is ignored.
I’m sick of photoshop too. Whatever happened to truth in advertising laws?
Jami, agreed. Music — and just regarding a person’s face — is not a THING. Some fake commodity to be consumed. It comes connected to a human being, and reducing it to a thing that has nothing to do with the actual human behind it is sociopathic in my view. Anyone who can consume beauty OR music as if they are using and then crumpling up and throwing out a kleenex deserves neither. I cannot fathom the mind of a person who sees either as something to be eaten then belched. Both are so connected to the humanity of the possessor.
Again, it’s sociopathic to not regard beauty OR talent as an opportunity to apprehend a real human being. We’re surrounded by flesh and blood creatures, not cartoons. Consuming that stuff is to the soul what a diet of McDonalds is to the arteries.
*off my soapbox*
*back on the soapbox*
I’ve heard pitch corrected pop garbage, where they have some 15 year old hopping around on stage with a fake headset mic. Deep down, people know it’s fake, and they feel crude for consuming it. Watch the same people when they listen to a real voice — their eyes light up and they are stunned. I’ve played some less challenging opera (the listenable stuff that doesn’t take a lot of explanation) for people off of DVDs I have. They gape. They can’t seem to believe that so-and-so actually sounds like that. And some of these are attractive people, but by no means blow-up dolls. They are NORMAL attractive people, of the sort that you can see and appreciate as actual humans.
That’s another thing — being surrounded by fakes makes people forget what actual humans look like, even the pretty ones. This junk actually trumps people’s own lives. We all know damned well what female faces look like. Pores, hairs, the odd wrinkle or two. That’s a FACE. And yet these images are so constantly rammed into our faces over and over until we want to puke that they start to seem more real. After stopping watching TV and movies, I stare in shock at them when I see them, and at magazines as well. After letting my eyes recalibrate, I can’t believe how ANYONE could be taken in by these plastic, frightening androids we’ve created.
And there are SO MANY gorgeous faces around — even the standard socially-accepted beautiful ones are so much prettier when they are real and seem to breathe than when they are blurred and sharped and retouched into cartoon world. Photoshop could take Sophia Loren and turn her into an unsettling uncanny-valley robot, and nowdays, that’s exactly what they’d do. And it would invalidate her beauty and twist the world such that it couldn’t even appreciate it.
Don’t give up on the singing, though — I can’t tell you how many young kids I know nowdays who don’t even listen to the shit music being cranked out today. They’re rocking stuff recorded twenty and thirty years ago, back when rock had real belters and the bands actually played their instruments.
Okay, NOW I’m off my soapbox.
Magazine International’s success, a company which makes it blantantly clear we do retouching, is simply to put the technology of retouching in the hands of the consumer. Originally a luxury product and service- we have re-tooled ourselves to job seekers looking to enhance their resume photos, thereby giving a better first impression. Besides wrinkle reduction and whiting of the eyes and teeth etc. many photos simply need a color adjustment for best results. Our tag line- “Becausse models can’t have all the fun!” implys that models have far too long enjoyed these enhancements- they do not REALLY look like that. Don’t feel bad. Ha.
How is enhancing a resume photo making a good impression? You have to walk in and talk to those people eventually.
Yup, we all are tired of the obviously faked photos. But please don’t say photoshop free. Thousands and thousands of people would lose their jobs if that happens. Including me.
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