The project with the same name (“Adobe Photoshop Day Cream”) appeared on the Internet several years ago;It used images of Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor and other celebrities.
On the collage, the authors combined two halves of their faces – before and after processing with Photoshop. The difference was so strong that it made retired faces almost unrecognizable. It seemed to me interesting to think about who sets the rules of the “game” and according to what canons the picture is processed. Retushera themselves inventively compare their work on photographs with the daily use of cosmetics: after all, if women themselves are tinted before going “into people”, then “where is the ethical difference, a pimple is smeared with a tonal remedy or brush in a graphic editor?”* In such an outwardly innocent situation, it turns out that supposedly the ladies diligently” retouch “their appearance, and professionals modestly bring these efforts to the end.
However, when the same retouches describe the details of their classes, it becomes clear that in their reasoning there is a share of cunning: there is still a difference, and very tangible. A professional retoucher acts on a commercial order, and behind his actions there is a strict logic. One has only to think about the list of manipulations: “We remove everything that distracts, interferes, climbs into the eyes. Add volume at the roots of the hair if they are dissolved. We lengthen the neck, remove some horizontal wrinkles on it, clean the axillary folds and armpits, finish the nails, remove the cuticle, adjust the makeup – eyes, eyelash line, sometimes finish them, smooth the moving eyelid, and make the uniformity of color. Clean our eyes: remove the vessels, redness, focusing the pupil. Correct the eyebrows, removing excess hairs, align the color and density, edit the shape. Naturally, we work with pores, bumps, spots on the face. We pay attention to excess hairs in the hairstyle. Correct plastic: folds of the body, waist outline, bending of the hips and back, remove the “goose skin” on the legs, always clean the heels. Contrasting transformations of excess weight into model parameters and, for example, rejuvenation for 20 years in our case remain one -time exceptions. We do not work as “wizards of Photoshop”, but we are engaged in helping customers bring their images to compliance with style, brand, long -term strategy ”**.
As we see, despite the all kinds of reservations, the commercial task of processing the picture very strictly cuts off all the “extra” manifestations of bodily, turning the body into an unrealistically abstract shell, the perfect background for advertising a fashionable or cosmetic product. This can be compared with the role of sauce that is covered by dishes to give them a “glossy” view for photographs in gastronomy magazines, which Rolan Bart penetratively wrote about at one time. The basis of glamorous cooking for it is a “smooth veil”, which is achieved due to sauce, glaze, cream and so on. The purpose of this coating is to advantageously submit a culinary ornament: Arabesques Tsukatov, lemon slices and slices of truffles. “Smooth Lessing creates a background for violent fantasy of decoration” ***. And if tons of tonal cream and powder play the role of sauce in fashion makeup, then in Photoshop the very listed actions of the retoucher, erasing all sorts of “irregularities” (and at the same time individuality) of the face. As a result of their efforts, the body is adjusted to the standard, acquiring visual isolation, graphic completeness. And then, against this background,
instead of centers and lemon lobules, bright red lipstick or any other advertised product stands out favorably. As a result, natural bodily with her hair, liquids, all kinds of “unnecessary” convexities are eliminated, and a rounded-rulous product is triumphantly in its place-the body represented by all rules, designed for consumption in the glossy culture system.
Violation of this smooth bodily contour, as a rule, is perceived as indecency, an inappropriate manifestation of a repressed nature. In such cases, in English -speaking texts, the expressive verb “to leak” is often used – “leak”. This term can describe the majority of random violations of the canon of glamorous beauty. One has only to recall what scandal the story with a “bloodied cuticle” caused in the beauty internet when the blogger Julia Grebenkin published photos of a manicure with a cuticle cut to blood. This is a typical example of how the body involuntarily “flows”, and from the same series – all other “inappropriate” in the gloss of the manifestations of bodily – blood, saliva, sweat, tears, fat, folds, acne, wrinkles … From this in the glamorous world they came up withOnly one radical remedy is the best Adobe Photoshop cream in the world ..