Cautionary tales of Photoshop disasters
01st December
Gap: Gosh, she must be tall
In a good article rounding up the noughties Word magazine points out that one of the biggest but most subtle changes in our world has been the rise of Photoshop. With even news photography becoming questionable, we are now living in a world where we can no longer believe our eyes. Re-touching is nothing new – it used to be the province of craftsmen delicately manipulating photographic prints. The fundamental change with Photoshop is that now everyone can, and does, airbrush reality. And with the technology so accessible and user friendly, restraint and common sense often go out of the window. We all know that every model and famous face in every magazine doesn’t share the same plastic sheen because of a quirk of genetics, and there can’t be a food photograph on a pack in the UK which has not at least been colour corrected digitally. But what does it mean for brands?
Photoshop disasters, from which the images shown here are drawn, offers a fantastic guide on how not to improve on reality. While putting yourself in a good light makes sense, if consumers can’t trust your promise, they can’t trust your brand. Simply put, with all the airbrushing now at our disposal, the responsibility on visualisers, art directors and clients to ensure that what they are cobbling together is a true reflection of reality has increased. That means having a good eye for proportion, detail, lighting, colour – all the things, ironically, that a decent realist painter might have. As a single example, I recently headed off at the pass an image of food on a fork where the scale of the fork suggested that the product was the size of a truck. This wasn’t down to deliberate manipulation, just an ill considered (but potentially dangerous) piece of comping.
Our head of visualising, Stephanie Heasman, offered a couple of interesting observations for this piece. Firstly, that with so much ability to “fix in the mix” the image, she is seeing a drop in the general standard of the photography she is presented with. The best photography gets things right “in camera”. Good photographers cost more, but they’re worth it. Secondly, legislation and a general desire for food to look natural rather than synthetic has seen a big reduction in the amount of re-touching demanded by clients – less is definitely more. The days of plastic food and such-like are over, but my advice would be to keep a sharp eye on how you present yourself, lest you lose consumer trust or end up a Photoshop disaster.
Does that hair look natural?
Does that head go with those hands?
1 Comment
Will Robinson
December 3, 2009 12:16 am
As far as the Loreal advertisement goes, I think that perhaps they haven’t got it so wrong. Yes, maybe the model’s hair has been subjected to an outrageously large dose of the Photoshop treatment, however, the fundamental idea of the product is that it makes a woman’s hair larger than life. For that reason maybe its a good thing that the model’s hair comes across as unnaturally perfect. It certainly makes it stand out, and aside from the product itself (in the foreground) the model’s hair should be the main focal point of the advertisement.
As far as the Garnier advertisement goes, they’ve got it all wrong with the hands. They obviously look superimposed and take the attention away from everything else. This would certainly have been a case of less is more.
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