Every image in every magazine, billboard and newspaper has some how been retouched, even if its just a slight bit of spotting. The main things that people like to change to improve the look of the image is the brightness, contrast, some spotting on the skin too.
This image of Joan Crawford taken by George Hurrell is a perfect example of what photos looking like and how much they were edited to give the appearance of silky smooth skin which no one has!
Post production gives everyone, especially young teenagers and women, this image in their head what they should look like. It gives the wrong impression on society, we are all perfect as we are with our imperfections. I know companies want to sell their products to their target audience but sometimes I see images and I think wow she looks beautiful but look at all the work they've done to the image to make her look that beautiful. I haven't seen an image yet where the image is just natural, no matter what they say, little things are always changed that not every one will notice.
A lot of images edit the face to remove bags and lines under the eyes. Bags can be corrected by telling your model to keep herself hydrated before the shoot by drinking plenty of water, lines are more tricky because you cant help those but they add character to the face so why would you want to take them out and make the face look flat?
Who knows if its the model who wants to look perfect or if its the photographer who wants to produce these images and change the total image of the model, is it what society expect? We see all these perfect images around so when we see something more natural we think it looks bad. The model could have bad patchy skin, lines, wrinkles, dull complexion and we think that doesn't look nice, when really its the natural image of that person.
I found this recently on social media, a model showing how upset she is that someone manipulated her body to something she isn't.
A term - Uncanny Valley, is used when edit pictures, there is a point where you have a perfect I'm age and you change it slightly and then you get to the point where the image is totally changed and you have ruined the image by using too much post production. The model will look odd and strange looking and definitely not real looking, this gives the photographer a bad name not the model as they are in change of the post production.
There are campaigns where the natural un touched images have been released and seeing and comparing those images makes you see how much post production is actually used. The model looks the same but the skin is always smoother and brighter, sometimes things are made bigger or smaller and the image over all does look different. Even though the image which has been edited does look better, you still look at the un edited one and think oh no she looks awful.
I some times think to myself that I am just like everyone else, judging all these people on how they look when they haven't had any post production on the image, but then I think to myself this person is beautiful in both images why am I judging her on what she looks like naturally when we should all be embracing this natural beauty.
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