This is a photoshop - signed, a graphic artist. (with pics)

Thank you, fascinating, and should be ILLEGAL, or at least discouraged.

BUMP for later

this has to be one of the best threads on MFP at the mo..

As i started to look at the later photos I started to notice things before I read what you wrote..

Thank you!

I completely agree. What a brilliant and eye-opening (in some cases, with Photoshop) post.

Save to read later.

Thank you for starting this thread!

I'd be curious to see if things like the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign are photoshopped too and how much. Particularly because they claim to advocate for normal women. :P

You just made my morning, no my whole day!

I'm 5'8", 118# and work out like a fiend
But I will NEVER lose my thigh cellulite unless I have lipo or can walk around with a PS body.

I am definitely going to start making my 9 year old daughter more aware of all this "fakeness".

Thank you, thank you for posting this! :flowerforyou:

Thanks for sharing. This comes from a grown woman who was once a pre-teen/teen flipping through magazines full of "beautiful" images and wondering why, despite striving every day to eat less and less, my body was not changing into anything close to the perfect image of what a woman's body is "supposed" to look like. (Regretfully, insecurity is the main reason I started learning how to use Photoshop at the age of 12.) To this day I can visualize specific ads that I saw at this vulnerable time, shortly before taking the "eating less" thing to unhealthy extremes. Would it have made a difference if I had been educated that these perfect women were so heavily edited? Possibly. If you have a daughter (or son), I suggest having a conversation about it because they will inevitably encounter confusing images of unattainable perfection, and you can't be sure how they'll be affected. Still, images are often more powerful than words. Images PLUS the types of words found in magazines and advertising (short, concise, easy for your brain to consume without much conscious thought) are a powerhouse.

It's not just using Photoshop to make adult models thinner that is worrisome. It's erasing pores and wrinkles and suggesting a product did the work. It's "whitewashing" darker skin tones (seriously, shouldn't we be PAST that stupid white = beauty thing). It's using Photoshop to alter the photos of *healthy children*.

I think it is important for every person to be able to spot the B/S.... not just graphic artists with trained eyes who can easily spot the tell-tale signs. This education is not about criticizing celebrities for being "imperfect". It's about criticizing the fact that you're being sold a lie every day, and the only way to avoid it is to move into a creepy mountain hermit cabin and have no contact with popular culture. The celebrities are beautiful like any normal person. They have pores. They have wrinkles. They have cellulite. They have rib-cages. They have moles. They have blemishes. Most importantly, it's okay that you do too. It isn't ugly and neither are dark skin, realistic measurements, and skin texture.

Bump

#7 the compilation photo.


Look for heavily shopped images that look normal enough, but you don't know why it seems "off" You'll notice here, a mysterious floating head, also her wrist seems a little odd doesn't it?
The second image is from the same photo shoot. They first turned her white shirt lavender, and the babies shirt white. Now you can see it don't you?
The magazine cover is actually, from what I can tell at least 4 different photos compiled together. Notice her hands are the exact same, but the baby is different (and his head is floating). Her head from a different photo than the body. Not to mention the heavy work done on her "drop that baby weight" body. I think it's just terrible the pressure they put on new moms just to sell magazines.

I'm going to take off for the night, but I can keep finding them if it looks like the conversation shows enough interest, i don't want to bug the MFP world lol

This just disgusts me. This industry clearly can't regulate itself and is inflicting tons of psychological damage on women of all ages, and now new moms? I remember never being happy with my own body as a teen because of what I saw in Cosmo and Vogue. Now, I realize I had a great, athletic body back then.

When will it end? I'm okay with the photoshopping of makeup and pores and such, but I would love to see one magazine step forward and say we won't make the people in our magazine look thinner than they really are. I would buy that magazine.

Tia, thank you so much for posting these comparisons! If one is going to have "thinspiration" let it be based on a real, obtainable image, not one that is so doctored as to be unreachable for anyone anywhere. It's like a horse looking for inspiration from photoshopped images of unicorns. Well, pretty pony, you'll never be a unicorn. All these shopped magazine images are unicorns. They make the average mare feel pretty darned homely.