I used to do a lot of this stuff for a living, both in front of and behind the camera. It's still pretty amazing to see though.
Really good FPP. I may have nightmares about Daryl Hannah's legs tonight.
Suddenly I feel fantastic about myself!
slaps on anti-wrinkle cream just in case
...So Elijah Wood and Tobey Maguire are exactly as hot in real life (covered in makeup) as they are in pictures, but apparently all women need to be cut in half.
the woman cutting in half thing really annoys me. they did that to pics of Kate Winslet in...I think it was Maxim, and she outted them, loudly and proudly proclaiming that her thighs were a lot wider than the pics indicated. (Kate Winslet does not need photoshop to make her hot!)
next time a friend bewails some physical imperfection I will send them to this site.
Yeah, the Jessica Biel photo was a WTF moment for me. Her ass looked good in that shot, why cut half of it off?
Half an ass is better than three buttocks.
"Due to the volume of visitors we are currently receiving you will experience slow performance and/or delays in certain sections of the site loading.
We are in the process of repairing this delay, please bare with us during this transition."
Perhaps they need more 'befores' to work on... mmh, maybe they could help with my hairy legs and love handles...
Half an ass is better than three buttocks.
You evidently haven't been around here long enough to encounter my tri-ass fetish.
I generally find it hard to muster any sense of outrage about this sort of thing, but some of those were terrible. The one on page 1 with the two women sitting on a couch? They didn't just cut her ass is half, they cut her in half. WTF? It wasn't that they thought she was fat, her bone structure was too wide. Yikes, now that is a tough body image to conform to.
These before and after style pictures should be compulsory viewing for all children early on, so they can learn how much of a lie the media sells them. It might just remove some of the pressure kids put upon themselves nowadays.
Plus, it allows us to make even more fun of overpaid famous-for-being-famous airheads!
My right hand feels so....violated.
markr: "with the two women sitting on a couch?"
I love the implication that you don't know who those women are. There is hope for the world!!
The woman on the couch who was cut in half has now done that to herself in real life!
Behold!
So who are they, then?
Someone needs a donut.
I'd love to see those stupid tarts reactions to being unknown by so many!
they are paris hilton and nicole ritchie, celebroids who are famous for nothing, except perhaps continuing to pimp the glamour of anorexia.
They's some bony peoples, i'll give 'em that.
More than a couple of those models looked much better before being slimmed down to look more like teenage boys.
I! Like! Big! ButtsandIcannotlie! You! OthaBrothas Can'tDeny!
It's no wonder so many starlets think they need to starve themselves from 99 to 82 pounds, if all of their pictures have to be halved to be presentable. Gack! Of course, then someone has to edit out bony elbows, knobby knees and scarily protruding ribs and collarbones...
That's what I was thinking as well, Lara.
Also, what up with the freckle removal? Freckle are cute, yo.
Man, did you see how fat those chicks get when you click the button!? It's like some kind of instant cow machine! MOO! MOOOOOOO!
The scary thing is that after looking at them for a while, you start to see the "before" pictures--which would have seemed perfectly nice and appealing if you'd seen them on their own--as kind of disgusting. Creepy how easily the eye and mind are turned. Or maybe just mine.
*Feels good that he has no idea who Nicole Richie is*
*Feels nauseous that he recognized Paris Hilton*
As someone who is recently and unwillingly single, the pictures that remove a guy from the picture without a trace make me very sad inside.
Awww...
*hugs flaterik with my floppy batwing arms, pimply face, hairy legs, chunky thighs, overly small breasts, crooked teeth, big ass, crow's feet eyes and saggy knees*
I agree that many of the 'before' pics only look bad in comparison to the 'afters'.
A case in point: I was pretty intrigued by the degree of photoshop-fu that goes on here, so I decided to try some for myself:
here is the result just mouse over the image to see my before, a pic I never thought was too bad, but now....MOOOOOOO!
Medusa - the main difference I can see between the two is that you look as though you have a light film of sexual sweat in the "before." Don't knock it.
path, you rock! that is such a nice compliment darling. I don't think that most people are improved by airbrushing, body-cutting-in-half or thick layers of makeup. Its sad to think (like Lara said) that some impressionable viewers imagine that they should look like these cartoon-like mannequins.
Exactly. Plus you're seeing the real you right next to the homogenized you. Better lighting for the shot would have accomplished much the same thing.
And sweaty, panting women are my favorite variety. Especially if they're wearing bunny ears and striped toe socks and a fireman's coat!
Medusa - the most distracting thing about the original pic is the light reflection on your glasses. Glasses are tricky!
Apart from that - bit of blotting paper and a slap of powder would be the main difference.
And sweaty, panting women are my favorite variety. Especially if they're wearing bunny ears and striped toe socks and a fireman's coat!
*looks around with suspicion*
Sheez, MCT, you're not hacking my machine, are you...?
Oh, Medusa. Pigtails.
jeez, no ones commented on my oh-so-impressive photoshop skills
*cries*
*dries tears*
*is getting a semi*
*feels very awkward*
Sweetie, your skills are very good, nicely subtle. Particularly removing the reflections in your glass's, which is easy to fuck-up. You've taken at least 15 years off. I swear you only look 40-ish in the photoshop version. But then you should probably know that I'm not very good with ages.
40ISH??????????????????????????????????
randomaction please tell me where you live so I can come kill you come bring you lots of money.
ok, I just read your dirty little secret, you f*cker! I'm 37 >:P
I don't see what the problem with the photo-shopping is. Don't you want to live in a world where everyone is 18 and 98lbs? Christ, I think congress should pass a law that everyone needs to stay indoors in half-light all the time and then the only people we would have to look at head-on would be in photo-shopped magazine spreads.
Well yesterday I thought an 11 year old was of legal age. Anyhoo, I was only winding you up. Your teh hot!
medusa, you are a l33t photoshopper. honestly, it's a fantastic job.
i note that this is somewhat of a trap, along the lines of "do i look better in this or in this?"
and pigtails, oh.
I prefer to photoshop a bag over my head.
does this photoshop job make my ass look fat????????
/hysterical laughter, I kill me!
Not to divert from the merriment here, but there was a recent thread on Mofi, or on mefi, or someplace (and yes, this means I am too lazy to look it up) about a celebrated photo by Ansel Adams, and how his assistant and biographer said that each time he reproduced it from the negative he would have to spend hours in the darkroom dodging this and burning that just to make it look like his whole vision thing.
Well, what's the fuck with that? I mean yes, it is disingenuous to carve 40 pounds off of an image of Popslut Happypants with Photoshop, but isn't dicking with a analog photo in the darkroom just a lower=tech form of the same kind of manipulation? If we are going to compare the work of world-class photographers, should we not judge their unretouched photos and not their facelifts?
omfg. They photoshopped Jessica Simpson's breasts to look smaller. Smaller! I think that's breaking some internet law.
Ralph - I have a bunch of photography by Bob Sako that is all about the facelift. Often, you can only barely make out what the original photo was. Love the stuff.
RalpTheDog: I think there's a difference between the two. Ansel Adams et al. are trying to capture a vision they have of the landscape, and trying to translate that into the medium of photography.
The problem is for celebrity and model photography, there is a representation of impossible perfection in the human body. The message is sent to fans and viewers that they should look like that (or that they can look like that, if they bought product XYZ). Especially for young women, the pressure to conform to these ideals is enormous.
It's easy to sit in our chairs and say that people shouldn't be so easily affected by what other people say or other people's opinions. But guess what? How many of us bother put on something decent when we go out? Does anyone here go to the market or the pub wearing nothing but an old singlet and underwear? The pressure to conform and fit in is well nigh irresistible, and for almost all of us, it's just a matter of degree.
Yentruoc - But aren't photography and retouching separate arts? And isn't the former the harder discipline?
Alnedra, agreed, and were I a woman or a parent with daughters I would be waging a war againt those responsible for the covers of Cosmopolitan, who not only show impossible bodies with hentai-style cleavage, but also festoon their covers with headlines suggesting how to give your man the best blow job he's ever had (or other words to similar effect). Whatever momentum the "women's movement" may have gained in decades past has been stopped, reversed, smashed and smeared.
RalphTD, I don't so much mind all the sex advice, actually. If we really all could be so open about it. I believe the male versions of these magazines give tips on how to please your woman as well.
But I have to agree that feminism still has a long way to go, and in some areas our rights are actually being eroded.
For a short while, young women were jazzed to launch themselves as being equal to or better than young men. Now they want to be thin, hot, Paris Hiltons. The mainstream media is very, very much responsible for a large part of this. Sadly, so are older women in positions of responsibility and who could act as role models who should have done more and should do more now to stop this.
Not to divert from the merriment here
Bit late for that.
With regard to photoshop versus airbrushing negatives.
There is also a Marxist interpr whatever etation here. It is the same blah argument that applied to 'office jobs' in the 80's and e blah arlier. It is simp blah ly the what ever value is added by the worker is appropriated by the owner. To maximise the va blah lue the task is proletarianized. Everything is turned into blah piece work, a fungible co blah mmodity, not just the output of people but people themselves. Society is now more polarised then at anytime. There are no white collar jobs for yo blah u anymore.
I just think that most of us hadn't realized the extent to which we'd been duped. I mean... these celebrities and models all kind of look like... you know... real people. And it's sort of surprising. You get used to this idea that these people are some sort of luminous ethereal demi-gods locked in an ageless beauty. It's kind of... affiriming to know that that isn't the case.
Has anyone here access to HDTV programming? There's a new 'myth' about how many (most?) current TV stars just won't be able to make the jumpt to HDTV due to their human flaws becoming sharply apparent on higher resolution... just like all those actors that couldn't make it to sound films. I've seen industrial video HD footage and it does make the make-up artists' job harder, that's for sure.
And, Medusa: any woman with photochop skillz is *hot* in my book; that means you're doubly, crispy, burning *radioactive*. Say the word and I'll dispatch someone to cap that randomaction punk : )
just like all those actors that couldn't make it to sound films
This is actually pretty much a myth, just so you know. John Gilbert is often mentioned in this context, but it seems drink and the devil are actually what did for his career. The actors who really missed out with the introduction of sound were those who spoke, erm, minority languages, as suddenly, with sound, the medium became (much more acutely) language-specific.
When Ansel is out on the field he's putting colored filters over the lens to alter what light is going to hit his black and white film. This'll do stuff like darken the sky, lighten plants, etc...
In the darkroom the dodging and burning only affects things like brightness and contract and stuff. But you can localize it to specific areas, like making the subject of the photo pop out more by creating a greater contrast ratio between it and it's background. It's really quite a minimal change, but tastefully done it can make an average photo compelling--without changing what's really there. It's a bit like having a zillion lights, reflectors and assistants to run around placing them.
The stuff that's done in photoshop though, that can easily get to recreating reality. But there's a big difference between changing values, brightening and darkening areas, and radically altering things though trimming off a few pounds and removing all traces of wrinkles and pores.
All good modern photos get diddled around with in photoshop, much as Ansel did though often to a far higher level since it's so darn easy and quick now. The problem is that it's also super easy to take 10 years and 20 pounds off someone.
Tell me I'm not the only one who likes clicking really fast to make Eva's earring jump or Teri's midsection leap four inches. You can't NOT do it.
Nickdanger's comment re the degree of the 'deception' is very pertinent, I think. We all 'know' that celeb photos are re-touched etc., of course, but the 'evidence' we see that in fact bodies are 'cut-in-half' that the awfully protruding bones of underweight coke-head ditzes are erased...ugh! I have worked thru enough of these issues myself now, but when I think of young women particularly, I feel pretty angry. How can I even be a role-model? How do you express that a lack of perfection is not only the norm but the truth?
am I raving? I'm kinda hungover...
...I would be waging a war againt those responsible for the covers of Cosmopolitan...
Those would be the readers of Cosmopolitan, who wouldn't buy as many copies if the cover didn't look like that. The publishers and editors have no vested interest in distorting reality, they just do whatever sells more magazines.
I think it must be the nature of how the brain is wired up to the senses. We can know on an intellectual level that these folks really don't look like that, but on a gut level we believe the evidence of our eyes. It's like when a lawyer says something he knows is inadmissible and will be stricken, but he knows it will still ring in the jury's minds. We've seen it; we can't unsee it.
RalphTheDog wrote:
I mean yes, it is disingenuous to carve 40 pounds off of an image of Popslut Happypants with...
Heh. I just gots me a new Internet username. Thanks RTD!
Bastard! I wanted that one!
The mainstream media is very, very much responsible for a large part of this.
Please join us in the "TV Turnoff Week" thread in a couple of months.
am I raving? I'm kinda hungover...
Yes. Please continue.
I don't so much mind all the sex advice
Here's all the sex advice anyone needs: More.
you're welcome.
This is about selling something, but it's not about selling magazines. I think the publishers of Cosmo and the like are very invested in distorting reality, and not just to sell magazines. In the world of women's magazines (and now many men's... hello, Maxim!), the goal is not to deliver the editorial content of magazines to readers -- give them what they want so they'll buy it. Instead, the goal is to deliver readers' eyes to advertisers -- give the correct demographic to advertisers so they can sell products. The version of the body present in these magazines (again, whether it be male or female) must be distorted to sell the products advertised. If Cosmo started teaching women how to be content with their bodies as they are, advertisers would have a fit, because they need us to see our bodies as problems and their products as possible solutions. They need the women in the magazines to be impossibly young and impossibly thin -- ideals that we can never meet in real life -- because if the ideal were attainable we wouldn't buy so much crap trying to embody it.
Instead, the goal is to deliver readers' eyes to advertisers -- give the correct demographic to advertisers so they can sell products.
Meredithea, Cargo and Lucky would like to have a word with you :)
I took Cargo for awhile, and they have this thing where, at the beginning of the magazine, there is a page of little tab stickers that one is supposed to use to mark the pages of things that one wants to purchase, so that one might later be able to find that advert more quickly. ALSO, in the back they have little index-card sized, er, cards, with Cliff's Notes of the reviews of the various products, that you can tear out and take with you to the store, so as not to forget which one has which options, which is best, etc.
excellent point.
although "1001 ways to please a woman" would have also been appreciated.
darnit, Fes snuck in there
I get your point, and it's a valid one. But I still say that if Cosmo suddenly started putting 'real', or 'average'-looking women on their covers, and Glamour magazine (and whoever else competes with them for readers) continued to show the thin, attractive, enhanced models, their newsstand sales would plummet so fast the advertisers wouldn't have time to complain about any longer-term effects.
Way #659: "Wearing an iPod may be cool and might help you get through the long introductory warm-up session, but it is rarely appreciated."
Way #482: "They know when you 'do the Alphabet,' especially if you start with A. The crossbar gives it away every time. Solution: try Cyrillic!"
Does anyone here go to the market or the pub wearing nothing but an old singlet and underwear?
*looks around*
*slowly raises hand*
Seriously, I used to go to town to the grocery store in my cut-off jeans and irrigation boots with my hair in pony tails 30 years ago. Guys told me it was "cute."
*sighs to be young and skinny again*
"Solution: try Cyrillic!"
I knew there was a reason why I took Russian in first year!
Ah, Beh, Veh, Geh, Ye, Yo, Zhye...
Cripes! Cyrillic starts with an A too!
*goes off to look for 'Before' Summer to recite Cyrillic alphabet with*
Hafta make sure you find a girl who didn't also take Russian, though.
The alphabet is about the only thing I remember from my 2+ years of it. That and a couple of useless phrases about going to the post office to mail a letter. And lots of curse words we cajoled our native-speaking instructor into giving up.
What about katakana? No As there!
You only need to do vowels. Trust me.
In a pinch, you can get by with the right sequence of 'I's and 'O's.
Try Braille.
It works wonders.
"Hafta make sure you find a girl who didn't also take Russian, though."
Sooo... whaddaya telling me? You're off the list?
Fuck.
it sounds like 'fuck' is exactly wrong there, capt.
Fuck.
They took off the picture of Paris and Nicole! FUCK!
come kill youcome bring you lots of money.