Photo Retouching: the Delicate Balance
Author of this post: Nomi Altabef | About Blog Authors »
Redbook cover of Faith Hill; image via Jezebel
In case you’ve ever wondered what’s in a day’s work for professional photo retouchers, the folks at fashion blog Jezebel.com have something they’d like you to see. In an effort to debunk fashion editorial mags’ unrealistic standards of feminine beauty, they offered a $10,000.00 reward for the person who could submit the most egregious example of Photoshop-generated perfection used on a magazine cover. The winner was an astonishing, but totally typical, Redbook magazine cover featuring country singing star Faith Hill. The 39 year-old mother of three is genetically blessed to begin with, but in order to be considered cover-ready, a photo retouching whiz had quite a project of it.
There’s been a lot of controversy as to how much retouching is too much, but as Ken Milburn, photographer and faculty in the Sessions Online School of Design Digital Arts Program, points out, “it’s the same principle for car photos in a car ad. We can take it for granted that no model of that car, no matter how carefully washed, polished, and accessorized, is going to look as good as the photograph in that ad. That’s true even if it’s a photograph of a Range Rover conquering a muddy swamp. You can bet that it will be the best-lit and grittiest mud you ever saw—if an extra blob or two is needed, it will be placed there—maybe even with a little sparkle added to it.” However, the caveat in this pursuit of commercial perfection is that the photo retoucher must not erase the valuable commodity of the photo subject’s identity, even while making, in the case of this Redbook cover, some drastic changes.
So, controversy aside, what actually went on in the Photoshop magician’s studio to produce this Redbook cover? We don’t know the editor who worked on this photo, but to help imagine what the process might have been, Ken Milburn gave his professional opinion of what was done to the original image in order to turn it into the cover image, and which Photoshop tools were probably used. He asks you to please note, however, that Photoshop typically provides us with many ways to skin the same cat:
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Before and after extensive retouching—are you impressed or appalled?
1. The top half of the background was removed by using the Extract filter and then a white layer was placed beneath the newly transparten portion of the layer. Clone and Brush tools were then highly feathered and used to “blend” the various shades of into one another so that the shift in colors and shades became seamless so that they wouldn’t compete with the text that had to go on the cover.
2. The Patch tool was used to remove the wrinkle under Faith’s eyes and the heavy shadow under her left clavicle. This took no more than five minutes.
3. A portion of Faith’s right arm was Extracted from a duplicate of the main layer and the extraction placed on a layer below her right side. Her right hand was then Cloned away and Erased away.
4. Faith’s entire body was extracted from the background and placed into the Liquify filter, where it was stretched and re-shaped, so now she appears to be sitting up straighter and her arm seems longer and more graceful.
5. While still in the Liquify filter, re-shaping tools were used to eliminate the back fat, slim the waist, and curve the fanny.
6. Once the body looked good in the Liquify filter, it was brought back into Photoshop and standard retouching was done on skin details, eyes, lips, and teeth. The Spot Healing Brush removed all the little speckles and wrinkles. The interior of the eyes was selected and feathered and then adjusted with a Levels or Curves layer to whiten them (but not enough to make her look like a staring Goth witch). The same was done with her teeth.
7. All of Faith’s skin was made to look smooth, soft, and cuddly. This can be done in a variety of ways that produce very subtle differences. The favorite technique is to select all the skin, feather the selection to blend smoothly with its surroundings, and then copy the skin selection to a new layer. The new layer is then treated to a filter called Diffuse Glow and given a Blend Mode called Screen, which greatly brightens the contents of the layer…especially in the highlights. The result is usually a bit too dramatic, so the Screened layer’s Opacity is lowered so that some of the original skin shows through.
In addition to the Photoshop insights, Ken leaves us with some historical context: “There is absolutely nothing in any of this process that isn’t used to at least some degree in almost every professional glamour portrait. Advertisers and illustrators realize that the sales potential of glamorizing their photographs is the power that Photoshop and numerous “accessory programs” currently bring to the game. It’s only been about a decade since publishers and ad agencies depended on highly trained artists to literally re-paint the original using techniques that could perfectly fool the eye into thinking that everything in the picture was recorded by the camera. Since the primary tool was a miniature spray gun called an airbrush, this technique became generally known as ‘airbrushing.’ Magazine cover and advertising-class airbrushing could take days and cost thousands of dollars. Today, most of these jobs can be done in a few hours, and many in less than an hour.”
July 30th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
WOW You can tell ALOT of retouching was done. Sad in my opinion, they deleted all her chubbiness!
July 30th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
As a personal rule, I try to limit myself to imagining what the photo would look like on a better day:
“This zit won’t always be there”
“What if they were more well rested and didn’t have the bags under their eyes”
July 30th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Just imagine how carefully orchestrated the conditions of a fashion magazine celebrity cover shoot generally are– makeup, hair, clothing stylist, lighting, photo subject possibly starving down to a photo-ready weight– and on top of all that, a tremendous amount of retouching is used. In some ways, the retouching is balancing the effect of the camera’s eye, which in its two-dimensionality and split-second permanence can be much harsher than the human eye.
July 31st, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I don’t understand why they made her arm so skinny, it looks too elongated and disgusting imho. While getting rid of the wrinkles and spots is expected, why make tiny Faith any skinnier than she already is?
August 9th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
The impact that magazine covers have on general society is much more powerful than most realize. The doctored image of Faith Hill reminds me of three incidents that involved magazine cover controversy. Does anyone remember when TIME magazine darkened a picture of OJ Simpson on placed the darker version of his mugshot on the cover of their magazine? (In contrast, their competition magazine, Newsweek, did not run a doctored photo.)
http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/african/images/1994_OJ_Simpson_Time_Magazine.html
Recently, tennis pro Andy Roddick complained that a men’s magazine doctored his photo, and made his arms look ridiculously huge on the cover:
http://www.tmz.com/2007/05/18/did-mens-fitness-pump-up-andy-roddick/
A few years ago, Esquire magazine took newbie actress Ali Larter, put her on the cover of their magazine, and called her “Allegra Coleman” saying that “Allegra” was going to be the next Hollywood starlet:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/allegracoleman.html
Esquire and “Allegra” were inundated with calls from people wanting to know more about this hot new movie star no one’s ever heard of.
But it was all a sham–One big joke by Esquire, who wanted to show the public how gullible they can be when it comes to fame, fortune, and believing everything you read. There was no Allegra Coleman. It was just a joke asking readers–do you truly believe everything?
Rachel Sokol
Associate Editor
Sessions Online School of Arts and Design
August 9th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Rachel, thanks for posting these examples. The Time cover with O.J. Simpson is incredible. It really illustrates how our prejudice towards something visually “dark” as adding a sense of menace and intrigue plays into racial prejudice and stereoptyping.
You could probably dramatize and add menace to anything by making it darker and more shadowed– an entry or hallway could be made to look ominous, or a landscape more threatening– not necessarily a person. People tend to attribute threatening qualities to something that is mysterious or partly hidden by shadow. The OJ photo really illustrates how our prejudice towards something visually “dark” as adding a sense of menace and intrigue plays into racial prejudice and stereoptyping.
TIME probably would (and did?) argue that they would have darkened a mugshot of any suspected murderer for dramatic effect, regardless of race. But the fact is, race is an explosive subject, and mixing it with the controversial issue of photo doctoring was bound to provoke outrage.
And as for the tennis beefcake on the cover of Men’s Fitness, Andy Roddick was quoted as saying of his digitally pumped-up arms, “Yeah, I wish I had those guns!”
August 10th, 2007 at 12:10 am
[...] Take a look at Nomi Altabef’s blog on designsessions. She analyzes the techniques of an unknown photo retoucher who used Photoshop to transform an image of Faith Hill for a Redbook magazine cover. Amazing! What is it about some retouchers and photographers that make them feel like they need to remake their models into something other than what they are? Why can’t they just remove the dust spots and blemishes and leave the model’s likeness intact? Hear what some magazine editors have to say about it on this Today show segment. [...]
August 10th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
[...] Speaking, as I was last week, of photo retouching, BBC news has just reported on a new tool that takes image doctoring much further than a little dodge and burn. Developed by James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University, this new algorithm replaces unwanted bits of photos with preferable scenery cherry-picked from other images. [...]
September 1st, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Airbrushing did not start a decade ago. Our Philadelphia advertising agency was using it routinely 40 years ago, as were most agencies and magazines. Playboy was airbrushing its centerfolds from the first issue with Marilyn Monroe on.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Personally I don’t see a problem with it. It’s how people make a living. I love retouching in Photoshop- it’s amazing what can be done. Sorry- but people buy fashion photography and magazines because of the the fantasy- if they want reality they can wlak outside their door. I was a women’s studies, magazine journalism and photo ilustration major in undergrad. Believe me– I’ve weighed the options.
March 7th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
they did alot of retouching.. thats so sad.. she was pretty more then after retouch.
http://www.a2a.cc
March 18th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Yes, it is unfortunate that the entire body seems to be an airbrush of the original. We are almost to the point of just having virtual models. Why start with anybody in particular if what you want to end up with is a plascticized creation.
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:44 am
Although I switched to wedding photography 2 years ago,I still do some retouching work,once in a while for a few well known fashion photographers.
To tell you the truth, I wish I’ve seen this blog before… this isn’t the best change I’ve seen. I had to do some amazing manipulations to get those celebrities look good
Here’s a link to something similar to what I had to do a few times
Although not to this extent,but still
http://view.break.com/291573
Dmitri
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