Same portrait "retouched" by photoshoppers in 25 different countries. Supposed to show cultural bias by country. That's not realistic because 25 different people from the same country would produce equally different images. But still interesting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/2 … mg00000063

(repost from RetouchPro)

This İş a duplicate from
The general industry forum but I will copy paste
My answer here as well.

That´s not journalism.

A serious journalist would AT LEAST check her sources.

A serious journalist would RESEARCH the field she is trying to inform people about.

A serious Journalist would have invested more time in the project and more money.

A serious journalist wouldn´t have used an already hyped up theme such as "photoshop is evil" and USE it to advance her pathetic pseudo career.

She is not a journalist any more than those people are retouchers.

This is not an "interesting project" it would be an interesting sociological project if it would have been done right.

Want to know the standards of beauty of each country?
Pick up the cover of the most bought general interest magazine. Not even a fashion magazine as they all look the same around the glove (almost without exception). This is not how you get 25 countries ideal beauty.

The only thing this is representative of is the poor judgement of a so called journalist.

The bad taste of cheap wanna be retouchers working in freelance websites with no knowledge or criteria, with no talent or taste.

I´m a retoucher. I´m Argentinian and I take personal offense for the stupidity displayed in this "project"

I agree with Natalia in that this was a poor project. It only shows the whims of the individuals who grabbed the photo and forced their idea of beauty. These weren't retouchers or photo editors in the slightest and reflects horridly on the profession and its image.

Again I agree with Natalia, you have only to pick up magazines within those cultures to see the fashion/beauty trend.

If she wanted to see what an image would look like retouched by people from different countries, she could as well have gone to the challenges, contests, and samples forum right here on mm, and jump to irrelevant conclusions about cultural differences in how people view beauty without having spent money to produce this thoroughly thought out project.

It looks as if all the retouchers in this article have about the same level of skills...

I actually saw this in one of the groups I belong to, and we've had a rather good laugh about it.

I can say it is, without a doubt, the biggest display of misrepresentation I've seen in a long time.

She claims that she is gathering images from around the world to demonstrate the varying opinions of beauty dependent on cultures. However, she states in her own site that she hired basically anyone she could find, probably by picking the country on Craigslist, typing "Photoshop" into the search engine, and snagging the first one in the list.

http://www.estherhonig.com/#!before--after-/cvkn

The only rule she gave them was "make me beautiful" and apparently wasn't aware of the idea known as "free thought".

No single person can ever represent the ideas of an entire culture and it's just foolish for someone to think they can, then create an expose hoping it holds any sort of validity.

If someones gives me free reign and says "make me beautiful" I'm going to go 80s with it. I love that decade. The poofy hair, the bright neon green makeup, the big earrings (which is kind of what the USA one did, except I would have done a much better job).

Okay, not really but that's the point. David Thoreau said "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see" and each person is going to find beauty in something different.

Now I'll admit that we have certain, core aesthetics we adhere to. Had she hired the top artists in the country and asked them to shape the image based on the industry  standard, she would have collected different results. However, I imagine they would not have differed nearly as bad as they did there. Maybe she knew that though and, like everyone does, just went so extreme it would turn into a witch hunt.

She even said "With a cost ranging from five to thirty dollars, and the hope that each designer will pull from their personal and cultural constructs of beauty to enhance my unaltered image". She HOPED they would do that, but they weren't required. And to put together a jumbled mess of individual opinions from people who obviously have no idea what they're doing, fueled by hope and a cheap budget, to boast it as a striking, harsh look at the reality of Photoshop and unobtainable beauty is just ludicrous.

Honestly, I think she's just trolling.

imho, a better way to approach this project would be to arrange a tour of one individual around the globe as a model to work with several photographers instead of poor quality retouchers. The requirement could be simple. Have a full team (photographer, MUA, hair, stylist..etc), and have them morph the individual into the "cultural" style of beauty that they see fit as an interpretation.

The photoshop part is simply not needed for this project as all of the images are way over cooked and poorly done by a long shot as many have mentioned.

If she would have approached it by letting a team shoot her though, it would be an interesting ode with a touch of Cindy Sherman mentality. It would also be a much closer representation of any interaction with culture as she puts it. just my .02 cents.

reminds me another project, Degenerate Art Ensemble:



In this case, Degenerate Art of Photoshoppe

It is a very low way to stand out for people writing such articles...
The thing is if she send this image to serious retouchers or studios over the world, this post would never get 145K 'likes'.

If someone send me this link personally, I would have been offended.

Wow every single one of these are terrible.

I think the only thing the article proves is that if you pay nothing you get pure crap results.
For a real understanding you would need to travel to all the countries and work with top notch teams that include all the jobs of doing a glamor shoot.  You have to include clothing designers, MUA, Hair stylists, photographers, art directors and retouchers as well as anyone else that particular society deems necessary.

The results of this experiment seem fishy. They're all the same level of awful.
I smell bullshit. And the jackass from Morocco? Please.

Every day I find many new interviews, articles and discussions about it, everyone shares it on social networks and discuss about it as if it was really worth something.
In my opinion this thing doesn't even deserve consideration, I'm really surprised by its huge popularity!

Seriously awful retouching...  yikes!

Only Ukraine nailed it.

The whole comparison is rather funny.
I would find 25 retouchers from one country who would produce more retouching styles than it is presented here, each of them according to their personal sense of beauty which may have totally no correlation with their culture. Excluding one photo with added clothes here, there is no way to tell that in some particular country one will retouch the photo in some particular style.

At least journalist should have catch skilled retouches from different countries to make it real and effective.