Photoshop, and our increasingly mundane reality.

May 9, 2005 9:25 AM

Greg's Digital Portfolio Here's the way to make everybody unhappy with their own life. With Photoshop and other imaging tools, the advertising industry has implanted images of such impossible perfection that the things we encounter in our lives seem somehow tawdry and inqdequate. Greg is a "digital pre-press" artist that manipulates images to make them prettier, smoother, and more appealing--he makes the imperfect look perfect. On one hand, I am in awe of the command he has of his craft. But just as waxed apples make real apples seem uhealthy and crappy, what do such images of digitally mediated reality do for our relationship with the real world?
posted by curtm (41 comments total)

Deja vu, anyone?
posted by TheNakedPixel at 9:25 AM on May 9, 2005

Yeah, I posted it a couple years ago-- slightly different URL. Looks like he's added stuff since then.
posted by gwint at 9:32 AM on May 9, 2005

Great post, thanks!
posted by gagglezoomer at 9:42 AM on May 9, 2005

We do this type of work daily and although it does take a lot of attention to detail, time, and an artistic feel, basic retouching is something most people could learn in just a few hours. I'm a little surprised at the level of manipulation his clients are asking him to do in some cases. But I'm seeing this more and more with photographers. Unfortunately the development of Photoshop has really drained the creativity and attention to detail I've come to expect from photographers. Sad.

"what do such images of digitally mediated reality do for our relationship with the real world?"

Nothing. Photo manipulation is as old as photography and models have been having crows feet and blemishes removed since they started gracing the covers of magazines. We all get our dose of reality every day we put down the magazine and head out the door into the real world.
posted by j.p. Hung at 9:45 AM on May 9, 2005

hay guyz i just took Comm 101!!!!1!
posted by keswick at 9:56 AM on May 9, 2005

Some of it is cool - definitely shows he knows how to use his tools - but so much of it (rotating the palm pilot, and much of the lighting for example) could have been done so much easier by just setting up the shot correctly in the first place.
posted by devbrain at 10:00 AM on May 9, 2005

Nothing. Photo manipulation is as old as photography and models have been having crows feet and blemishes removed since they started gracing the covers of magazines. We all get our dose of reality every day we put down the magazine and head out the door into the real world.

Have to disagree with this, and not for any complicated, Baudrillardian reasons: a) photography is not that old, and b) certainly this is more pervasive and indetectable than it has been in the past.

Cool photos though--I love the guy with the fro.
posted by josh at 10:07 AM on May 9, 2005

I agree with j.p.. Digital retouching is part of my job, and I started doing live jobs in pre-press with no training. Not to simplify Greg's skills, he does excellent work, especially on the shoe. The real challenges these days are images taken with digital cameras. Just as desktop publishing created a slew of ignorant, at home designers, digital camera's have created an equal number of amateur photographers with no concept of things like gray balance, lighting or resolution.
posted by boymilo at 10:07 AM on May 9, 2005

The whole concept of overly perfectional images makes me think about the Walgreen's ads involving the 'town' of 'perfect.'
posted by mystyk at 10:15 AM on May 9, 2005

I must side with Josh -- Photography isn't some sort of ancient art that's been paired with retouching since we crawled from caves. Retouch for advertising, perception-management, and so on has been around, but the time span is measured in mere decades.

The ease of retouch at this point is one of the really dramatic differences. Sure, it's created a lot of amateurish photoshop hack jobs, and digital photo work is often sub-par. But the tools for doing dramatic perception-altering retouch work are on every desktop these days. Out perception of the human form, of products, of the world we live in, are mediated. When this kind of casual pervasive alteration comes to video as well as still images, I think we'll really start seeing some ripples.
posted by verb at 10:18 AM on May 9, 2005

When will the madness end
posted by seanyboy at 10:18 AM on May 9, 2005

Does this affect our relationship with the real world? I don't really think so, but then, I abhor fashion magazines for their air-brushed portrayal of women (and the consequent eating disorders and obsession with plastic surgery that they prompt).
posted by Specklet at 10:21 AM on May 9, 2005

Photo retouching is the digital equivalent of stuffing your bra. Sooner or later, you'll get found out.
posted by fenriq at 10:22 AM on May 9, 2005

"Perfectness" is gross.
posted by R. Mutt at 10:31 AM on May 9, 2005

Unfortunately the development of Photoshop has really drained the creativity and attention to detail I've come to expect from photographers.

what is unfortunate about this? to my way of thinking there is no difference between manipulating lighting, exposure, and developing (pre-image processing) and doing post image manipulation with Photoshop.

it is just using different tools to achieve the same result.
posted by three blind mice at 10:47 AM on May 9, 2005

I was with my girlfriend as she was purchasing some makeup, and this certain display caught my eye. It had three women in underwear on it, and everything was normal... but it seemed so out of place. She saw me gawking and said "Huh, no wonder you're confused... they actually look real!" Upon closer inspection that was exactly what threw me... they all had natural curves and skin deformations that you just don't see any more.

I agree with the previous comments on lazy photographers as a byproduct of an all-digital worfklow. Cool link though, really amazing work.
posted by prostyle at 10:47 AM on May 9, 2005

I've been using photoshop for years...as a very, very casual user, and I wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to do the kind of retouch work he knows how to do. Point being, those of you know know anything about photography and or retouching may think it's really easy...but to those of us who have no idea how it's done...it still looks like magic. ;)
posted by dejah420 at 10:50 AM on May 9, 2005

Doubleposting aside here, what an inane way to single out one person's professional website "for the purposes of showcasing [his] portfolio" and turn it into an editorial against an entire industry. Greg himself states that it sometimes "doesn't seem natural to me to take out every curve, to airbrush out every blemish, but what the Art Director wants, the Art Director will get." Undermining one's "relationship to the real world" is neither his goal nor his job description, nor that of the many others who work with digital imaging. His portolio includes many non-realistic images, such as composites and the color-enhancement job for Pixar. What's your beef?

Here's the way to make everybody unhappy with their own life.

Lame.
posted by DaShiv at 10:50 AM on May 9, 2005

Photography isn't some sort of ancient art that's been paired with retouching since we crawled from caves.

True of photography, however, painters have been manipulating their subjects since, at the very earliest, the Rennaissance. Making kings and popes taller, making French ladies paler and bustier, making Napoleon less dwarfish. I'm sure the list could go on. I mean, the entire school of English portraiture could be considered all about 'touching up'. Then again, in modernity, images are available to the masses on a scale unknown before the birth of photography, so perhaps an argument can be made that the impact of changing reality is greater.
posted by spicynuts at 10:56 AM on May 9, 2005

I'm not so sure, DaShiv.
When girls grow up seeing almost every image of women being some impossible to attain perfection; When boys grow up thinking that's how real women look, I'm not sure there isn't a cumulative effect that makes dealing with real bodies - and real people -more difficult. We all think "It doesn't affect me. I know real from fake." but I'm not convinced that the constant bombardment of these images contributes in some way to the eating disorders and other body image issues we find so common in girls today.
posted by cccorlew at 11:00 AM on May 9, 2005

three blind mice : "to my way of thinking there is no difference between manipulating lighting, exposure, and developing (pre-image processing) and doing post image manipulation with Photoshop.

"it is just using different tools to achieve the same result."

Ditto. The part where the effort is put in is now post, not pre.

DaShiv : "what an inane way to single out one person's professional website 'for the purposes of showcasing [his] portfolio' and turn it into an editorial against an entire industry. Greg himself states that it sometimes 'doesn't seem natural to me to take out every curve, to airbrush out every blemish, but what the Art Director wants, the Art Director will get.' Undermining one's 'relationship to the real world' is neither his goal nor his job description, nor that of the many others who work with digital imaging. His portolio includes many non-realistic images, such as composites and the color-enhancement job for Pixar. What's your beef?"

Er...presumably it's with the industry which requests folks like Greg to take out every curve, to airbrush out every blemish. It's not with Greg, it's with his bosses. And his bosses don't put up before and after photos. I think you're reading a critique on the industry using examples from someone's page as a critique on that person himself, which I am not seeing.

I, like curtm, am in awe of Greg's skillz, and slightly disturbed by the prevalence of taking out every curve, airbrushing every blemish. I don't think the goal is to undermine our relationship with the real world. That's silly. It's to sell more product. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the end result is a weakening of our relationship with the real world (or, more to the point, real world women and men).
posted by Bugbread at 11:01 AM on May 9, 2005

but so much of it (rotating the palm pilot, and much of the lighting for example) could have been done so much easier by just setting up the shot correctly in the first place.

Completely agree.

there is no difference between manipulating lighting, exposure, and developing (pre-image processing) and doing post image manipulation with Photoshop.

Completely disagree. A photograph, whether it be digital or analog, has very strict limits in the exposure latitude. This is why you get a white sky when you take a picture of your friend outdoors. If you don't artificially adjust the light before it gets to the recording medium, you will lose information.

Amateurs with no understanding or respect for the limitations in technology will go about adjusting light levels afterwards in Photoshop, and will get a craptacular product as a result. Think of exposure like narrow blinders on the light spectrum: if your light falls to either side (too little light, too much light) your data is either 0 or clipped. You can't invent data that's not there.

I, like curtm, am in awe of Greg's skillz

Bleeeach. His stuff looks way too artificial. The real masters of manipulation go unsung because you mistake it for the real thing (see: just about any cover Conde Nast puts out).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:15 AM on May 9, 2005

The nice thing about Greg's portfolio, as opposed so so many slick & shiny portfolios out there, is that, along with getting a good look at his expertise, you also get a sobering look at the lengths retouchers often go. The eye-opening before & after makes one think about the glossy plasticization of the world at large, and this is not a place most portfolios take us.
posted by CrunchyGods at 11:40 AM on May 9, 2005

Completely disagree. A photograph, whether it be digital or analog, has very strict limits in the exposure latitude.

True, however, with the advent of PS CS2 this is becoming less and less relevant. Actually its really not relevant anyway as long as you know enough to take two exposures, one for your highlights and one for your shadows and then blend them in Photoshop. CS2 has a feature that will allow you to take multiple exposures for multiple exposure areas and then blend them together to get an extremely wide dynamic range in a photo. This essentially eliminates the restriction of dynamic range in your capturing medium. So, as long as you are an amateur who knows that, you are good to go. You will have all the detail you need in all of your exposure areas.
posted by spicynuts at 11:40 AM on May 9, 2005

Of course, there is nothing to stop him from modifying the originals using the same techniques to make them look worse than they were, and make his skills look even better, no?
posted by dglynn at 11:56 AM on May 9, 2005

Actually its really not relevant anyway as long as you know enough to take two exposures, one for your highlights and one for your shadows and then blend them in Photoshop.

Uh huh. As long as you're talking about pictures of monuments, or landscapes. Where there's no wind.

This doesn't work so well when your subject is alive.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:15 PM on May 9, 2005

This doesn't work so well when your subject is alive.

I believe the new Nikon D70s has a STUN setting. IN YOUR FACE, CANON.
posted by spicynuts at 12:17 PM on May 9, 2005

spicynuts made me laugh.
posted by boymilo at 12:59 PM on May 9, 2005

Er...presumably it's with the industry which requests folks like Greg to take out every curve, to airbrush out every blemish. It's not with Greg, it's with his bosses. And his bosses don't put up before and after photos.

No -- curtm said "implanted images of such impossible perfection that the things we encounter in our lives seem somehow tawdry and inqdequate." But imagery as a method of establishing ideals is as old as visual art, and one of the greatest fallacies in viewing photography is that it's supposed to be a neutral, strictly accurate representation of reality. It's not and it has never been, or else there would be no art in its composition. Just look at the brouhaha over Time magazine's "darkening" of OJ's face on its cover as an example of how photography has always been a form of "mediated reality" (in curtm's words). Advertising is just particularly good at subverting this to fulfill its goals, as it does with everything else.

Images do not, as curtm editorializes, "make everybody unhappy with their own life." People are already unhappy, and images in advertising shrewdly exploit this to sell products. Stick your head outside and you'll find that clouds, trees, and people are still out there looking as they do "in reality" sans the mediation of images, digitally manipulated or not. It doesn't "change our relationship to the real world" so long as you continue to do what humans have always done before digital manipulation: you look at the world as it actually is, rather than wasting all day gawking over pretty pictures on your TV or in your People magazine.

CS2 has a feature that will allow you to take multiple exposures for multiple exposure areas and then blend them together to get an extremely wide dynamic range in a photo. This essentially eliminates the restriction of dynamic range in your capturing medium.

A very old trick. It's much more convenient now that CS2 has automated though (thus dramatically lowering the bar for how much time and Photoshop skills are required). It only "essentially eliminates the restriction of dynamic range in your capturing medium" when you have the luxury of being able to bracket exposures, though, which usually means landscapes (and even then, moving clouds, running water, wind, etc can all ruin the effect).

I believe the new Nikon D70s has a STUN setting. IN YOUR FACE, CANON.

So that's what the "s" in the D70s stood for? Now I understand why the D2X is Playboy's camera of choice.
posted by DaShiv at 2:24 PM on May 9, 2005

DaShiv : " No -- curtm said 'implanted images of such impossible perfection that the things we encounter in our lives seem somehow tawdry and inqdequate.' But imagery as a method of establishing ideals is as old as visual art, and one of the greatest fallacies in viewing photography is that it's supposed to be a neutral, strictly accurate representation of reality."

I understand (and agree) with what you're saying, but I don't see how it is in opposition to what I said. I also don't see how it supports your contention that curtm's post is somehow an attack on Greg. It seems you have some valid disagreements with curtm, but I don't think the using of Greg's site is one of them (at least, according to your followups).
posted by Bugbread at 2:37 PM on May 9, 2005

"Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."

"What you see has always been perfect."
posted by tommasz at 3:26 PM on May 9, 2005

It seems you have some valid disagreements with curtm, but I don't think the using of Greg's site is one of them (at least, according to your followups).

Actually, it's exactly about how he used Greg's site. My original "what's your beef?" question had to do with his raising the issue of the side-effects of advertising imagery -- which is fine and all to have issues with that and want to discuss it, but it's also rather tacky and tasteless to use some guy's porfolio to editorialize about that subject. This is especially true when the content of the link isn't even strictly advertising-related (such as his composite work or color enhancement work for Pixar), nor is pre-press photo preparation the same industry as advertising.

It would be like me making a link to a software developer's resume that featured MS work experience, and then using it to editorialize about the negative impact of proprietary software and advocating the use of free community-based open-source software instead. I should be linking off of some Slashdot article if I wanted to do that; he should have picked a particularly detrimental advertising campaign to discuss the use of imagery in advertising, rather than to misuse some guy's web porfolio for a discussion that is tangential at best.

Just my own opinion, that's all. I know some photographers who are loath to post their stuff online, and it's because of things like this thread. People who work with images and people who use them to sell stuff aren't the same people. You'd be surprised by how frequently, for example, glamor and lingerie photographers take flak from uptight feminists, when all those photographers are trying to do is to make good images for their clients (who are often the models themselves when it comes to entry-level work). Not everyone wants to deal with the wrong kinds of attention, and I don't see photomanipulation as particularly germane to advertising. Look at all the controvery the Calvin Klein underwear ads had stirred, for example -- these issues are almost always more about the content of the images and the context in which they're used, rather than about how they've been produced or prepared by some guy with a website.
posted by DaShiv at 3:33 PM on May 9, 2005

But just as waxed apples make real apples seem uhealthy and crappy, what do such images of digitally mediated reality do for our relationship with the real world?

Keep in mind all these manipulated images in fashion magazines are sold next to tabloids that seek out the most unflattering photos of people and expose every little flaw and defect.

The proliferation of HDTV will also make it a lot more difficult to maintain any illusion of perfection for celebrities in particular.
posted by bobo123 at 3:57 PM on May 9, 2005

DaShiv : "This is especially true when the content of the link isn't even strictly advertising-related (such as his composite work or color enhancement work for Pixar), nor is pre-press photo preparation the same industry as advertising."

Ok, fair point. I hadn't realized that was the aspect you had issue with, and it makes fair sense.

DaShiv : "People who work with images and people who use them to sell stuff aren't the same people."

I suspect (though I don't know for sure) that curtm is aware of that.

Personally, I knew things were quite retouched for print, but I didn't have an idea how much (or, rather, I thought that after a certain point, the retouching would reach old Playboy levels of airbrushedness, and Greg's model retouching (especially the bikini-clad lady) surprised me greatly), so it caused me to mentally springboard into "if this much retouching can be done, and well (to a complete amateur, which most people are), then the amount used in advertising might and probably is even greater and more extreme than I had imagined", leading me basically on the same lines as curtm (I should point out that this FPP link came from a link a few posts back about the Huntington Review or some-such, so I had seen Greg's site before curtm posted his opinion on it).

As you point out, people should base their opinions on real-life. However, people don't generally do what they should, so the question "How divorced from reality does advertising manipulation make folks?" is a valid question, without particular reference to Greg's portfolio, nonetheless. Greg's portfolio perhaps just opened curtm and my eyes to how much could be done. At least for me, it didn't reflect in any way on Greg himself.
posted by Bugbread at 4:03 PM on May 9, 2005

Let me (the original poster) step back in for a moment, and reply to a couple of the concerns raised.

DaShiv: I posted a link to this site because it illustrates, more dramatically than anything else I have ever seen, the contrast between "reality-reality" and "PhotoShop reality". I certainly have no issue with Kevin (the digital artist); in fact, I noted how skillful he was. I have never seen examples of digitally-altered photographs that have so starkly emphasized the difference between the base and enhanced realities.

The site provided a kind of dramatic illustration of something I've been concerned about for a long while. I read a book about evolutionary psychology some years ago, in which it was noted that, in man's evolutionary environment, he might encounter no more than 3,000 people over his entire lifetime. So, his pool entire lifetime pool of potential mates doesn't exceed, maybe, 300 women. Our sense of attraction, therefore, evolved in this context. But, with modern media, you might see hundreds of thousands of women, most of them selected for beauty and attractiveness (i.e. professional models). As a result, our threshholds for "beauty" are scaled down to accomodate these extraordinary women.

Similarly: pictures of food, clothes, etc. The brain is a highly adaptive tool--if you lived among lepers, your standards of beauty, for instance, would be different. I suspect that if you grew up among people of a different race, or different culture, what you found attractive would be different as well. It is my belief that being frequently exposed to idealized images will recalibrate perception and attraction.

Now, you may argue that you can simply tell yourself that these are idealized images, and thus discount them. I suspect that it's not so easy: I don't think we're built that way. Non-photographic art is not purely representative: we know that it's not real. So when an ideal is represented in a painting, or art, it's a symbolic representation of an ideal.

But a photograph is different, in kind as well as degree. It is a representative art form (even if we know, intellectually, that it was lit, composed, and retouched). It is--to the eye--reality, I think. Of course you are free to disagree.

So just as waxed apples makes us less satisfied with real apples from a tree, I think that viewing sitcoms may make us think of the people we encounter every day as less witty and less attractive. And viewing freakishly attractive models hundreds of times a day has--perhaps--lead to pervasive disappointment with regular women, who have moles, pores, and hair in unlikely places.

So... Greg is good at what he does, and fully deserves my respect. His site simply illustrated, more dramatically than I had ever seen before, how completely and subtley that reality could be recast.
posted by curtm at 5:04 PM on May 9, 2005

The problem I have with your drawing the link between photomanipulation and portrayal of beauty is that digital technology is merely a new arrow in a very, very old quiver. Pin-up's are a century old, and Marilyn Monroe was around way before Photoshop was. Whether it's rubbing Vaseline on the lens or stretching pantyhose across the lens to simulate the soft focus "glowing skin" look, or using enormous softboxes to soften/eliminate skin blemishes, or using colored gel lights and filters to warm up the color balance for more appealing skin tones, or whatever other tricks they use, photographers have been doing this for a long, long time. And that's just on the technical end, to say nothing of posing, makeup, backdrops and props, etc that make a huge difference in how the viewer reacts to an image, regardless of the actual subject. Studio photography is all about using light to manipulate how the subject appears in the final image.

(My favorite comment from the link: "I also created a more natural look by bringing the hair down which was unusually high, probably due to the photogragher using a long lens." I bet a before-and-after portfolio of images taken under different camera/lighting setups would be just as dramatic, if not more so.)

You've already seen this before-and-after effect when you compare how much better someone you know looks in a portrait taken by a really good portrait photographer compared to a usual snapshot -- and the difference there isn't simply because of cloning out blemishes on Photoshop (though the examples in the link go considerably beyond that, of course). Personally, I think you would have made your case far more convincingly by linking to something that actually discusses the interplay between societal notions of beauty and pictoral representation of it (it's a two-way street) rather than simply a "look at what this guy's digital manipulation can do to make people more beautiful and makes us less satisfied so we buy stuff." For the argument you're presenting, the use and saturation level of images is far more relevant than the specific techniques used to create those images. And it's rather unfair to pigeonhole the link in this context when the portfolio of the imagist in question includes non-people non-advertising work as well, especially since his most interesting image work aren't glamour shots at all. To me, anyhow.
posted by DaShiv at 7:17 PM on May 9, 2005

then the amount used in advertising might and probably is even greater and more extreme than I had imagined

Every photograph used in advertising is manipulated. Every single one. That photo of the delicious ice-cream sundae? The ice-cream is actually dry ice and food coloring, because real ice-cream melts too quickly. The photo of the hotel room? $3000 in strobes to illuminate it just so. The photo of the latest Cool Car (tm)? Now you're talking $10,000 in strobes, plus a studio the size of a barn. The shot of the basketball player dunking? One of a hundred shots fired off machine-gun style, photographed with a lens/camera combination that costs more than many cars.

Look, there's just not a lot of work for photographers--it's a hard business to get into. Anyone working at the level where they're actually paid to shoot has probably already got several grand in equipment and several years of practice under their belt. Their job is not to capture reality. Their job is to create reality.

The real coup is that when you flip through a magazine, you completely gloss over the ads; you accept that the photos are "real" because all you see, day in and day out, is the work of professionals who convince you these are "just" photos. Then you get behind the lens and suddenly the sky is blown out of your shots, or your subject's face is in shadow, or their expression is stupid-looking. But honestly, most people don't take a lot of photos. They bring the camera along to a wedding, or a bar mitzvah, or some other special occasion. If you took a couple dozen photos every day, you'd quickly start to appreciate the talent that goes behind the shots. You'd also quickly realize that just about every photo you see in a major advertising campaign is a carefully choreographed piece of fiction.

But a photograph is different, in kind as well as degree. It is a representative art form (even if we know, intellectually, that it was lit, composed, and retouched).

It's really not so different. Even amateurs with disposable cameras attempt to reconstruct reality: take the cliche "Say cheeeese" for instance. It's a prompt for the subject to put on a smile, a good face for the camera. Professionals are just better at controlling the environmental factors.

One of the things that surprised me as I was learning about photography was the degree of control that is not only available, but necessary to pull of a "good" shot consistently. Sure, you can vary the depth of field or the exposure. But that's only part of the equation. As DaShiv mentions, photographers have been using all sorts of tricks to make their "reality" more aesthetically pleasing for the past hundred-some-odd years.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:05 PM on May 9, 2005

then the amount used in advertising might and probably is even greater and more extreme than I had imagined

Every photograph used in advertising is manipulated. Every single one.

Yes, get a clue. Understand the intense effort and incredible expense that goes into creating the materials used to sell you stuff. Nothing you see in advertising is casually arrived at or accidental. There's an army out there of copy writers, actors, photographers, graphic artists, and people fetching coffee for them, hard at work every day churning stuff out for your consumption. They've been to school for this, often at great expense, and they think very hard about exactly what will get your attention and communicate, then use every available technology within their means to make it happen. If they could beam ads directly into your brain and make you forget about your family as an unfortunate side effect, they'd do it. Or is this what you're talking about, advertising has simply become too powerful, to the point where it's displacing reality in some general sense?
posted by scheptech at 11:00 PM on May 9, 2005

bugbread: : "then the amount used in advertising might and probably is even greater and more extreme than I had imagined"

Civil_Disobedient : "Every photograph used in advertising is manipulated. Every single one."

I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about frequency, I was talking about degree. I realize every image is manipulated, I was just surprised by the degree to which they could be manipulated (or, even more precisely, to the degree to which they could be manipulated without it being obvious to the inexperienced eye).

Civil_Disobedient : "That photo of the delicious ice-cream sundae? The ice-cream is actually dry ice and food coloring, because real ice-cream melts too quickly."

Yes, and the photo of the corn flakes in milk? The milk is actually Elmer's glue, because real milk makes the corn flakes soggy. I am not an idiot, I am aware of the manipulation in advertising. Once again, I'm talking about degree here. I apologize for being surprised, if it offends you so.

scheptech : " Yes, get a clue. Understand the intense effort and incredible expense that goes into creating the materials used to sell you stuff. Nothing you see in advertising is casually arrived at or accidental."

I have a clue. I understand the intense effort and incredible expense. I know that nothing is casually arrived at or accidental. Being surprised at the degree to which images can be manipulated is in no way equivalent to being surprised that images are manipulated or that a lot of effort goes into image manipulation.
posted by Bugbread at 5:44 AM on May 10, 2005

And (with less humanity).
posted by bdave at 7:18 AM on May 10, 2005

bugbread, yeah I was sorta talking to the world in general there about getting a clue, what I'm saying is we shouldn't be too surprised about anything given the money involved in producing and profiting from these things. I figure we crossed a threshold somewhere in the last three years where you can't believe anything you see on a TV, movie, or computer screen or in printed form. I guess I'm just basically incapable of surprise at this point.

Re the site, I find the women after/before things actually kinda creepy. I think there was a post about some related aspect of psychology a while back, apparently things that are obviously fake aren't scary but things that look almost-real can be very disturbing. Even more disturbing is wondering how much time the artist spent on creating fake versions of these women that aren't on the site...
posted by scheptech at 9:26 PM on May 10, 2005