Picture Perfect: Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Photoshop!

Apologies for the bitchy title, but if you religiously buy glossies like Glamour, Cosmo, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Elle, etc., you’ll have no doubt greened up with envy at these magazines’ cover stars at some point.  In the 2D world of magazines, no-one has a single bump of cellulite, there’s not a hair out of place and there’s not a spot or a wrinkle in sight.  In high-school I often used to look at whoever graced the magazine covers and wish I looked like that.  I sometimes felt I had a long way to go before that blemish-free complexion could be mine!  My mom used to say “they spend an hour in a chair having make-up applied by an artist, and they use computers to edit those photos!”  If this video is anything to go by, mom, you were right, If the majority of international publications edit their content this way, there’s hope yet!

This clever time-lapse video shows the effect of professional stylists and Photoshop on a model.  I found this after much YouTube-ing yesterday and it’s so interesting to see the amount of steps that are taken on the part of the make-up artists and on the part of the picture editors to ensure this woman’s photo-shoot is magazine standard.  As you can tell, trusty Photoshop leaves no stone unturned!  They even focus on the smallest details like eyes and pout.  Elongating and slimming her legs with a computer mouse adds that all-important model-height!

Airbrushed: image on the left shows the model before any form of enhancement, which includes body-shadowing, digitally removing imperfections and “shaving” the legs with a cursor to make them appear longer and slimmer!

The wish to be picture perfect in photos is a common aspiration amongst many of us girls and women.  The selfie boom has lead to an increase in sales of mirrors, and more importantly, make-up.  Picking at a picture you could’ve looked better in with your smartphone can be marvellous, too.  I must’ve played around with hundreds of cool photo-doctoring tools, the App Store is swarming with them, just look under the Photo & Video category alone!

Lindsay Lohan, obviously Photoshopped on the left, and right, without any enhancements!

Because we’ve all learned the secret process endured by the “cover-girls,” us, the readers of these glossies have become just as savvy in our quest to look our best!