Since the dawn of fashion, glamor, and celebrity photography there has been a secret art behind the scenes working in every photograph we see on ads, magazine covers, and billboards: retouching.
Once computers got involved in the retouching process, it got a whole lot easier and widespread. Then cameras went digital, the whole process got a big booster shot in the arm. Now, the process was end-to-end digital and with powerful computers and software, the results could be more easily achieved, be more dramatic, and further skew our perceptions of beauty than ever before.
This skewing — and at times down-right deception — has affected girls and women the most. Since women are such visually appealing creatures in the first place, they’re the main focus of retoucher’s efforts. A woman’s beauty, both internally and externally, is legendary and biblical. Nowadays, both those traits are erased by the Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, and Liquify Tools.
Perhaps the most legendary beautiful woman was Helen of Troy. A woman so beautiful her face (alone) was said to launch a thousand ships. Entire kingdoms fought over her. I’ll tell you, no Photoshop there!
For her internal beauty and external worth, look no further than in Proverbs 31:10-31. Not only is a woman physically beautiful, but she is talented, helpful, skilled, and ought to be praised at the city gates for her works.
So, before Photoshop and heavy retouching took over, young girls and other women had those two motifs to draw upon, always knowing that their actual value was in Proverbs and not on the cover of a magazine.
Thankfully, the pervasiveness of digital alterations has come to the point where pretty much everyone knows it is done and there have been a growing number of reports about “too much” retouching, especially when heads and bodies are swapped and body frames shrunk to impossible angles and sizes. Unfortunately, few believe that both men and women (mostly women) actually do look that good without a retoucher’s aid.
Shine from Yahoo! posted an article showcasing before and after photos of famous celebrities. And you know what? They look great without all the in-computer trickery used to make them “beautiful”. And in some cases, I was scratching my head as to why the A.D. wanted to shrink things as much as they did when their subject was so pretty and well photographed in the first place.
Ladies and gentlemen, read the article and scroll through the pictures:
http://shine.yahoo.com/the-thread/stars-without-photoshop-183500648.html
So, ladies, this one is for you because although you’re not the only one affected, you’re the one’s mostly affected: You’re still beautiful. Don’t kill yourselves to be as thin or as flawless as what you seen in magazines. It is actually impossible because it is fiction.
As a photographer, I can tell you that there are a lot of tricks that are done on set to achieve particular looks and none of them are practical for daily beauty or even special occasions. Carefully planned lighting, professional customized make-up, custom tailored clothing, and posing is used to get there. Then it’s sent to a retoucher to push, pull, shrink, and fade whatever the on-site production couldn’t.
What you see is a carefully manufactured image. Always remember that.