If you’ve ever found yourself comparing your skin/hair/body to a celebrity or model and felt that you came up short, there is a very good reason for that: Photoshop.
Take a look at this 37-second time-lapse video to see just how easy it is for retouchers to employ Photoshop trickery to lengthen limbs, shave down hips and thighs, erase wrinkles and blemishes, and lighten skin tone.
http://youtu.be/8bVAl73JvLM
The video was created in 2011 by GlobalDemocracy.com to demand mandatory disclaimers on all photos of airbrushed models.
When this type of perfectionism is being touted as the ideal it makes you wonder why the fashion and modelling industry place such pressure on models to be thin.
Take a look at these celebrities before and after Photoshop.
Top Comments
Not saying that this doesn't happen but I'm sorry, the second image (that transforms from just rolled out of bed to full make up and hair style) is just not believable. No photog would go to that much trouble in post production when 90 percent of that effect could be achieved with proper make up and lighting. If it's meant to be an example of what is possible to do with Photoshop then it's right on but if you're saying that that is standard practice then it's really not.
Well, yes it's incredible (and pretty impressive) what can be done my skilled photographers with photoshop, but there's no way that this degree of work is done on most photos. This represents hours and hours and hours of photoshopping time, and is very expensive to do. Much cheaper and easier to just find the few people who are that tall and slim, and have the hair and makeup artists have a good go at them.
You'll note that in most of the celebrity examples, nothing even approaching this has been done. All that's been done in most cases is evening out skin tone.
Actually, not as many hours as you might think - there's plug ins and filters for Photoshop that make a lot of that very easy and quick to do. Also a lot of models and stars have measurement templates that are supplied to ad agencies and magazines - the templates give measurements to lengthen their legs, trim their thighs, shorten their noses - the works, ensuring their 'look' is consistent. There's a lot more going on in some of the examples than just skin tone evening out.