The ad pulled by P&G

This article came into my radar the other day, and it strikes me as being pretty damn obvious: an advertising watchdog is calling for a ban of photoshopping in cosmetics ads.

Because really – have you ever seen a mascara commercial or magazine ad that doesn’t have fake lashes? Yeah, I don’t think so.

It occurred to me that it might be helpful if we stated our policy on Photoshopping. Yes, we do it, but we keep it to the bare minimum.

Photoshopping that we do:

• Adjusting the lighting level
• Eliminating bad acne and eczema spots (because, frankly, I don’t think you’d want to see that stuff in a close-up)
• Adjusting the color balance. I have pink toned skin and that can throw the entire picture waaaaay off. I change the color balance for the entire photo to bring my skintone back to normal -  I don’t alter individual aspects of the eyeshadow
• The occasional stray eyebrow hair or eyelash. I never alter the entire eyebrow or eyelash, but sometimes there’s an obvious eyebrow hair that I forgot to pluck. The same for the occasional way-word eyelash – sometimes I think to myself “how in the hell did I not notice that when I was applying mascara?”

We don’t apply filters, or work to eliminate every pore seen. I mean, professional cosmetic ads do that and everything looks pretty and smooth, but we’re definitely not the mainstream beauty industry, and face it – we all have pores. You kind of need them to be human so it would look silly to photoshop them out. Some days you can’t see them as much because I wear heavier foundation, but I typically wear a light mineral foundation. Would it look better if I applied a pretty filter and made my skin flawless? Sure. But you can’t apply that filter every morning that you apply your makeup, and I don’t want to give the impression that that is the norm.

Sometimes I think I need to learn all of the fancy photoshopping techniques to make my photos look more professional and my skin and makeup application flawless – but that’s not reality. I don’t doubt that my pictures will get better when I get a better camera, but that’s because it won’t be a three year old camera that I scored off Amazon for $100.

If we start doing more editing to our photos I’ll update this page, but this has been our policy since we’ve opened up shop.