Picture Me Perfect: Magazine photos rarely tell whole story these days

Kim Kardashian has practically made a living off her curvaceous figure. But she was looking a little less shapely in Complex magazine in April, her body reduced about a dress size, her legs smoothed to near-perfection.

How did readers know? Complex accidentally posted a pre-Photoshopped image of Kardashian on its Web site -- before her thighs, arms and waist had been digitally sculpted. In a matter of hours the photo was gone. But in that brief time, those who spotted it got a little reminder that we should think twice about taking photographs at face value.

"My belief," said Scott Kelby, the president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals in Florida, "is that every single major magazine cover is retouched. I don't know how they couldn't be."

But don't stop there. Aside from U.S. newspapers, most of which do not permit photos to be manipulated, it's quite possible that the vast majority of images seen in the public arena have been altered.

(The Winston-Salem Journal does not permit photos that are published in the paper to be manipulated, unless they are labeled as a "photo illustration.")

Photoshop, the go-to graphics editing program that got a foothold in the 1990s, has become so ubiquitous that most of us gaze at faces, bodies and landscapes not even registering that wrinkles have been diminished, legs lengthened and the sky honed to a dream-like shade of blue. And, unlike its predecessor, airbrushing, anyone can use it.

But Photoshop's popularity has proved divisive. While some praise it for its ability to allow people -- and things -- to look their best in a photograph, others see it as a vehicle for feeding our culture's desire for uber-perfection.

"I think the perfect bodies we're seeing in magazines that are Photoshopped have a terrible effect on how women feel about their own bodies," said Montana Miller, an assistant professor in the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

One theory about retouching in advertisements is that it's done to create an aspirational concept of beauty that inspires women to buy more products. Miller has heard another: that the goal of showing perfect images is to make women feel bad about themselves -- also making them buy more beauty products.

Kelby, who writes a blog about Photoshop, doesn't believe it's a malevolent force; he sees it as practical and cites the example of singer Faith Hill.

In 2007, the fashion Web site Jezebel posted unaltered images of Hill that were shot for a Redbook magazine cover. In comparing them with the finished product, it appeared that Hill got a makeover, including erased crow's-feet, excised back fat and a slimmer arm.

The fallout was huge -- the Jezebel post generated more than 1.3 million views, and it was picked up by ABCNews.com, VH1.com, TMZ.com and a number of blogs. Many commenters were angry that an already attractive woman had her image altered to appear on the cover of a national magazine.

Redbook declined to comment for this story.

"If you met Faith Hill in person," Kelby said, "you would think she's absolutely beautiful. And when you take her picture, you will see every flaw that you never saw in person. Those flaws not only become visible, but magnified....

"If I were talking to someone, I'd look at their eyes, not at the blemish on the side of their face. But as soon as you open up that photo on a 30-inch monitor, you'd say, ‘Oh my gosh, where did that come from?'"

What the brain perceives in a still photo is vastly different from what it perceives in real life, according to Dr. Dale Purves, the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University. Up close and personal, "every second you're getting a series of images of a person that you're kind of blending together, and that would be a little more forgiving." What we're taking in, he adds, is a load of stuff, including clothing, personality and smells -- elements that don't necessarily translate to two dimensions.

When it comes to editorial photos for magazines, it's common for several different people -- photographers, professional retouchers, photo editors, art directors, publishers -- to have a say about an image. Although some editors insist that celebrities don't have final say on how images will be altered, "If they're big enough, they do get (final approval)" said Howard Bragman, the chairman of the Fifteen Minutes publicity and media company and author of Where's My Fifteen Minutes?

People may not think too much about Photoshop when scanning the magazine stand, but they do notice immediately when altered images of notable people go awry. Dane Cook, a comedian and actor, went off on his blog about his Photoshopped image on a movie poster for My Best Friend's Girl. "Whoever photoshopped our poster must have done so at taser point with three minutes to fulfill their hostage takers deranged obligations...."

Tennis player Andy Roddick was digitally enhanced for a cover of Men's Fitness in 2007 and posted this on his blog: "Little did I know I have 22-inch guns and a disappearing birth mark on my right arm.... I walked by the newsstand in the airport and did a total double take. I can barely figure out how to work the red-eye tool on my digital camera. Whoever did this has mad skills."

Kardashian blogged that Complex's slip-up didn't faze her: "So what," she wrote, "I have a little cellulite. What curvy girl doesn't!? How many people do you think are photoshopped? It happens all the time! I'm proud of my body and my curves and this picture coming out is probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect."

At Complex magazine, Noah Callahan-Bever, the editor in chief, said he tries to sit in on every cover shoot.

"I want to make sure that person is represented in a fair way," he said. "If their flesh tone ends up looking flat and dead, and it doesn't look true to who they are, then it goes back for more retouching."

Jeffrey Saks, the creative director at Ladies' Home Journal, said that magazines don't consciously manipulate images to foster readers' poor self-images.

"We're not trying to make women feel bad," he said. "We're trying to show women looking like real people, and whatever cleaning up we do is basically about the quality of the photograph more than trying to do plastic surgery."

Gigi Durham, the associate professor of media studies at the University of Iowa, doesn't buy that Photoshop helps people regain what they lose when going from real life to a flat page.

"We do see who people are in real life," Durham said. "We can actually see blemishes and weight and body shape, and most of the time we love them anyway. I think manipulated images are far from that, and have impacts that are more negative, because they're subject to far more scrutiny than we'd give them in real life."

With technology always evolving, no doubt such graphics programs as Photoshop will become more sophisticated and easier to use. If "to Photoshop or not to Photoshop" is the question, the answer lies in what retouching will ultimately achieve.

These days, being seen au naturel is almost a political statement. Last April's edition of French Elle featured eight European women, including Monica Bellucci and Charlotte Rampling, sans makeup and retouching. To many, it was as refreshing as it was eye-grabbing.