# Photo editing: beauty for everybody. Belleza sobre el papel.



## heidita

En la edición de Playboy ha aparecido una modelo sin ombligo, o sea, no nació ni nada. Cosas de programas especiales para retocar fotos o "retoques" con el ordenador. La belleza al alcance de todos, sobre el papel al menos. ¿Estaba previsto que esos programas crearan una nueva mujer?
Y volvemos a Dios: Dios creó a la mujer y el gran "retocador" le quitó las pelusillas, grasa, lunares, cintura....y le pone volúmenes en el cabello, los muslos, los pechos....

¿Se trabaja con ese tipo de retoques en vuestro país? Habéis visto ya cómo cambia la gente? ¿Os parece lícito? Tengo entendido que sobre todo se usa en publicidad. ¿No sería publicidad engañosa? 

God created the woman and photo editing...took away her belly button (in the Brasilian Playboy a model appeared without a belly button!!), hair, weight, fat, ...and lifted her hips, backside, breasts...

Is photo editing used in your country? Do you find this licit? I understand it is mostly used in publicity, but is this legal in your country? After all, we can speak about _false promises_ here....


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## Pedro y La Torre

I think photo editing is used everywhere. Whether it be changing someone's complexion to making them appear thinner than they really are, it is a very important part of today's marketing industry.


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## ewhite

And before photo editing softwares, a skilled retoucher did more or less the same by hand.


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## Musical Chairs

I thought they used photo editing everywhere, though tabloids do show celebrities without makeup and looking their worst pretty often. But to promote things, of course everything is photo edited.


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## nichec

But that's what show business is about, isn't it? Movies that are too romantic to be real, special effects that can't possibly be done by men, heroes that don't exist in our everyday lives (superman, spiderman, batman, daredevil.....................there are too many of them) It's a business that sells dreams and "the impossible", either because it reflects what we want deep in our hearts, or because it gives us a door to get away from the ugly reality.

Think about an ad, you (customer) have about 1 minute to get to know this girl that's supposed to make you want to buy something, you have no chance whatsoever to really get to know her, yet you want to (or should I say, the people who are paying for the ads want you to) believe that she possesses all the good things possible in the world (thus enhance the good feeling, and hopefully reach the target), and how can you do that? You are not going to find someone with................Er, let me just say, you are not going to find someone who has any imperfection in what you can see, which is, sadly, very little, you can only see her body and her face in that 1 minute. It's just a way to represent something that can't possibly be "seen" with something that can be seen, it's easier, and faster, but the downside is, it lacks depth and in some way, murders "the truth" (if there's still one, I mean). It's like when you want to make a movie about the 18th century, all you can do is to make costumes and makeups and accents and backgrounds look like how they should be in the 18th century, and then of course, you are doing everything in the 21th century.


OKay, enough with the rambling, yes, they do that everywhere, and I don't think it's illegal, after all, it's either that, or..........the rebirth of the whole structure/business/social value? Hmmmmmm...........That sounds very far..............


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## alexacohen

Maybe the technology is new, but there is nothing new about changing images to fit with the idea of perfection. Whatever the idea of perfection is at the time.

Was Venus, as painted by Botticelli, a real woman at all?
She has no spots, no unwanted hair, no defects whatsoever. She is a perfect
woman coming out of the waves (_The Birth of Venus_)
Was Ramses II as young and fit when he died as he is forever depicted in his portraits?
Or Diego Velázquez's _Venus at her mirror_, isn't she an idealization? 
And I doubt the man depicted in _Hermes with the Infant Dionysus_ by Praxiteles is a real man, either.

Personally I think that a woman, or a man, without a belly button is rather disgusting and not perfection. But well, if people want to play with [removed brand name], it's up to them.


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## hello_miss

Interesting topic indeed!

Nowadays, technologies are so advanced. It is common for people to use software such as xxxxxxxx to make their personal pictures better looking. Even film, TV series use varies kinds of technologies to make the pictures cleaner, and most importantly make it attractive. 

Personally speaking, there is nothing wrong to use xxxxxxxx to edit photos. The only problem could be when comes to reality, sooner or later people will find out the differences between the real person they meet in life and the images represent on the pictures. 

For better or worse, it’s all about technologies!


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## Sepia

How should it be illegal - it is my constitutional right to compose (that is actually the right term - we talk about photo-composing and not editing) an image the way I want to. 

Whether I "paint with" pixels on top of a digitized photo or with a brush on canvas, where is the difference? 

It is true it is mainly done in advertising - of course - somebody has to pay for the work and there is a lot of work behind what you see. The retouching is not just about removing wrinkles or trying to make somebody look thinner than he or she really is. A lot of work is invested in tiny little details like disturbing objects in the back ground.  Unfavorable light that make some parts of facial skin look too reddish wheras the more shadowy parts - typically arms and neck - have a tendency towards green. Things that you would never see that way with your eyes if you were there. So a lot of work is invested in making the image eventually show what you would have seen if the camera had not given you its interpretation of things.

I have done a series of autograph photos of people from a major radio network - shot in daylight on a sunny day down at the marina. There were approx. 12 hours of retouching per photo. Making shadows look less significant, in lots of cases removing tobacco stains from their teeth etc.


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## Nanon

A recent example of photo editing.


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## hello_miss

Nanon said:


> A recent example of photo editing.


 
It’s a very smart example indeed!

Don’t you just love the new result of your “perfect” image? 

Thanks to god we have new technologies!


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## sevener

Nanon said:


> A recent example of photo editing.


They got rid of his love handles but also altered the colour tones so it looks as if he has the pinkish skin complexion of a sunburnt British tourist. Strange choice.


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## Athaulf

On this page you can see the details of the standard procedure for preparing stylish-looking photos in magazines. It takes some time to load if you don't have a fast connection, but I think it's worth checking out in any case if you're interested in the thread topic.


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## nichec

Athaulf said:


> On this page you can see the details of the standard procedure for preparing stylish-looking photos in magazines. It takes some time to load if you don't have a fast connection, but I think it's worth checking out in any case if you're interested in the thread topic.


 
This is very interesting indeed 

I was once talking to a makeup artist for Dior in Paris, he told me: "You always read in the fashion magazines that they use very little makeup on the model, that the skin was so perfect in the very beginning, that's not true at all, the secret is the light and the retouch, it's the light and the retouch that makes the skin looks flawless".

No one can be perfect, we are all human beings.


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## ernest_

alexacohen said:


> Maybe the technology is new, but there is nothing new about changing images to fit with the idea of perfection. Whatever the idea of perfection is at the time.
> 
> Was Venus, as painted by Botticelli, a real woman at all?



Yes, but did Botticelli try to sell us anything? Was he trying to con anybody? I don't think so. That makes a difference. The advertising industry, unlike Botticelli, is waging a psychological war against humanity. Every day, and every minute. On the beaches, and in the fields, and in the streets... even in our own homes. Nothing stops them. There's no escape. They have sneaked into our lives, using state-of-the-art technology, to hurt us and our self-esteem in order to suck the last penny out of our pockets. These people have no scruples, that's for sure. Be careful.

Here is another video. Probably not a real one, but is suspect reality is even much worse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U


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## alexacohen

ernest_ said:


> The advertising industry, unlike Botticelli, is waging a psychological war against humanity. Every day, and every minute. On the beaches, and in the fields, and in the streets... even in our own homes.
> (...) These people have no scruples, that's for sure. Be careful.


 
My point was that manipulation of the human body to make it look perfect has always existed.
What's new is the media coverage.
I don't remember exactly which is the product that advertises with "real" women, thin, fat, old, young. 

A friend of mine and myself appear in a soap opera. My friend and I were chosen among all the airport staff because we are extremely thin. 
The make-up artists put on us lots of make up, till we thought we were suffocating under it; but the actors who were going to be shot at close ups were wearing one centimetre of it, and I'm not exaggerating.
If people want to believe an imagined, more beautiful world is real, well... 
Don Quixote believed that, too.


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## rodoke

Don't forget. The same techniques used to beautify people have also been used to vilify and ridicule them.


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## ernest_

alexacohen said:


> If people want to believe an imagined, more beautiful world is real, well...



What do you mean "people want"? People do not want anything! Seeing advertisements is not something you do for pleasure. It's not somethin you choose - at least not me nor anybody I know - they force them upon you. And I'm all for dreaming awake, but not that kind of dreams, for christ's sake! Who the hell wants to live in a dream where everybody is so perfect and pretty except you? This is no dream, this is a nightmare.


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## alexacohen

ernest_ said:


> What do you mean "people want"? People do not want anything! Seeing advertisements is not something you do for pleasure. It's not somethin you choose - at least not me nor anybody I know - they force them upon you. And I'm all for dreaming awake, but not that kind of dreams, for christ's sake! Who the hell wants to live in a dream where everybody is so perfect and pretty except you? This is no dream, this is a nightmare.


 
Ernest, I said "want to believe", not "want to see". 
I don't very much mind them, to tell you the truth. I gave up watching TV, or reading magazines, years ago. 
The impact that perfect bodies (either male or female) make on me is nil-zero-nought.
Except those Bernini sculpted, that is.


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## Sepia

Nanon said:


> A recent example of photo editing.




What I find really odd about this one is that the one where the fat is removed is the one with the absolutely lousy colors. (Reddish skin - unnaturally blue water etc.) 


But talking about imaging perfect people:

Lots of you seem to believe this came with modern technology. It did not. The only think that came with modern technology is that a lot of the "perfect people" you see in ads and as pin-ups are actually recognizable as photographs. 30-40 years ago you'd see huge masses of illustrations in magazine ads - and anybody remember the "Varga-Girls"? When you see old pin-up-girl-illustrations they are often in the style of the artist Varga. 

They simply used illustrations a long time after color-photography was invented because it was a lot easier to reach the kind of perfect image that boys expected of a pin-up or that would sell the product than with photochemicals and reproduction-tech of those days. You can paint clearer colors than you could photograph them - and if you always painted with the same paints the colors that the "machine" that makes the films for your printing plates would be a lot more predictable than when you were printing photos. Correction of colors was made directly on the printingplate - absolutely possible but took hours.
They wanted Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart and Vivien Leigh to look perfekt on huge posters just like we want Bruce Willis or Nicole Kidman to look perfekt today. Nicole Kidman is processed through photo editing software [_Computer software brand name removed_] and printed on a large format ink-jet and Clark Gable was painted in large-format right there in front of the movie-theatre. 

So you see, the concept of the whole thing has not changed a bit. Only the tool. And of course we can work a lot faster.


---

And obviously people do want it that way - otherwise they would not pay a lot more for yellow press magazines that put a lot of work into printing perfect pictures - they would only buy the cheap one that rely on basically the same picture material and obviously don't invest more than a minimum in image processing.

----

I just love the Dove advert - because I really don't mind that people see how we actually do this stuff.


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## Etcetera

In Russia, photo editing is used whenever and wherever possible. 

When you come to a photographer to make several photos for your documents, you can expect that your photos will be slightly edited so your face won't show dark circles around your eyes or something like that. And it won't cost you extra money. I myself find it very useful.

As for magazines - I think that people who buy them don't want to see the same as they see around themselves every day, they want to see something beautiful, and they won't bother if it's photo editing.


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## argentina84

Photo editing is also used in Argentina. Mainly in advertisements and magazines.

Isn't it the new make-up? 21st Century make-up?


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## K-Milla

What can I say if I am a graphic designer and I use this software everyday!

I know that we like a beautiful person in front of us and she or he has to have a perfect body, so, I think that maybe this guy who did the magic in that photo forgot the belly bottom 

I love to use this sort of software because you can create everything you want and made it up!!!


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## Sepia

I suppose the guy who made the belly button disappear just forgot to switch on one of the layers he had been working on.

But sometimes it takes a lot less to create a lot of commotion: Some years ago a picture of Chancellor Schroeder had been printed, where his hair looked rather reddish. Normally his hair is closer to black than red. Later photos showed him again with his normal dark hair. 

OK, that the man on the street cannot figure that one out, I can understand - but I find it really stupid that the newspaper people, who actually should know better, started asking why he had died his hair and then days later had it changed back to his normal colour. They waisted a lot of energy and spread a lot of misinformation.

The explanation is simple: Sometimes you shoot a photo in less than optimum light conditions and especially the skin color looks really sick or is simply too dark. So you lighten up the picture - but that also means that you take out some of the Black ink that would be printed if you used the pictue like that. So a greater part of what prints Schroeders hair is composed of the colours Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. In artificial light the skin will often look too yellow, and what obviously happened was - somebody was in a hurry took out yellow, added magenta as an overall correction of the picture - not only skin - to make him look more alive. The darker part - hair - has too much magenta too then, but that often does not show on the screen. At least not as bad as it is. 
That is definitely where he got his red hair from, because that is an error that we probably all have made at some time. (Hope fully withouthaving it printed.)


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