A reader sent me an email about this image, found at Photoshop Disaster. I thought it was an interesting image, but I was also suspicious that it might be a hoax ad--I mean, could someone really fail to notice they'd photoshopped a white head onto a black body? It also occurred to me that maybe it wasn't a photoshopping mistake--maybe it was on purpose. Either way, if the image was real, that would be fascinating--the idea that though a black woman's body might be attractive enough to use in an ad, a black face wouldn't be.
But as I said, I wasn't sure about the image, so I went through the comments from the Photoshop Disaster post and discovered that the creator of the ad said it was nothing like the original and the difference in tones must be due to a crappy camera. He provided a link for the original:
Although not nearly as obvious as the original, her head and body still don't really match, but whatever.
But another commenter pointed out that the ad had been posted on LasVegasVegas.com and, though not as dark as the first one, was definitely darker than the original.
Another commenter, the one who took the photo of the ad and sent it in to Photoshop Disasters, added that the photo she took was exactly what the actual poster that was displayed around Vegas looked like--that the body was in fact that dark. Whether somewhere along the line it had been intentionally darked or there was a printing problem she couldn't say.
I'm not at all sure what's going on here--has the original image been manipulated to make the head/body contrast more obvious? If so, why? Or was it an accident, and in that case, why didn't anyone notice? What do you all think?
Thanks to Peter H. for pointing this image out!
4 comments:
April 17, 2008 at 12:17 PM
Off hand, I'd say it's accidental, or at least not a cut-n-paste job.
Looking at the three shots in what appears to be order (#2, #3 and #1 last), you can see the progression of basic photo manipulation. Her face is washed out with direct light in #2, while her arms and legs are in relative shadow. I'm also guessing she has a tan and fairly pale base makeup to further create the difference. So, in #2, it's all her and the skin tone difference is either just a result of photography. Then, in #3, and more so in #1, they increased the contrast. They also changed the saturation levels in photo #1. As a result, it increased the skin tone difference between face and limbs.
They might have made these decisions (light/shadow, contrast, saturation) to create that skin tone difference, but I think it was a side effect. They might have washed out her face for "whiteness," but I think the other decisions were made to enhance the rest of the photo, not her. Look at the food in #1 compared to #2, for example. Maybe not more enticing, but the contrast and saturation makes it pop more.
So, in the end, they didn't paste a white face on a black body, nor do I think they intentionally created that impression. It's just the result of bad choices.
(Personally, I think the contrast and saturation looks good in the final result, if a tad dark. It's really the washed out face that makes it look bad.)
April 17, 2008 at 12:27 PM
I just thought of another possibility. Given the washout on her face in #2, they may have been changing contrast and saturation to give her human facial skin tone (instead of eyes and lips floating in a pure white field). By making changes to the whole image, instead of just her face, there were unintended consequences. Which would be bad Photoshop, yes. But you can see in #1 that her face is starting to approach a more human tone, instead of a polar bear in a snow storm.
April 17, 2008 at 2:00 PM
I wonder if every person in the various stages thought it was *supposed* to have a contrast, so they just kept reinforcing it and no one realized it was a mistake.
I dunno. I think it's kind of interesting to see the evolution of an image, though.
April 18, 2008 at 12:08 AM
I agree with Gomi that it's not a cut-and-paste job, and that it was probably unintentional. I achieved this by taking the original and just tweaking the levels in Photoshop really quickly.
As for why they didn't notice, who knows, but I have my guess—it wasn't looked at by anyone (or enough people) unfamiliar with it. Sometimes when you're editing in Photoshop for a while, your perspective can get a bit skewed and you can end up with unintentionally unrealistic images. It also might not occur to someone that it looks like the model has a black woman's body if they know that the model is white and that the photo is legit. That is, you see what you expect to see, I guess.
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