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US Watchdog Bans Photoshop Use In Cosmetics Ads
MrSeb writes "In an interesting move that should finally bring the United States' fast-and-loose advertising rules and regulations into line with the UK and EU, the National Advertising Division (NAD) — the advertising industry's self-regulating watchdog — has moved to ban the misleading use of photoshopping and enhanced post-production in cosmetics adverts. The ban stems from a Procter & Gamble (P&G) CoverGirl ad that photoshopped a model's eyelashes to exaggerate the effects of a mascara. There was a footnote in the ad's spiel about the photo being manipulated, but according to the director of the NAD, that simply isn't enough: 'You can't use a photograph to demonstrate how a cosmetic will look after it is applied to a woman's face and then — in the mice type — have a disclosure that says "okay, not really."' The NAD ruled that the ad was unacceptable, and P&G has since discontinued it. The ruling goes one step further, though, and points out that 'professional styling, make-up, photography and the product's inherent covering and smoothing nature' should be enough, without adding Photoshop to the mix. The cosmetics industry is obviously a good starting point — but what if the ban leaks over to product photography (I'm looking at you, Burger King), video gameplay demos, or a photographer's own works?"
Interesting that the NADs would be protecting me from beautiful women. Hm.
I'm creating an analog version of Photoshop for beauty enhancement. I'm kicking around 3 names for it right now: 1) Flugrup, 2) Snibb, and 3) Makeup.
Table-ized A.I.
Since when did cosmetics, and most especially the advertisements thereof, have anything to do with reality? They are like real life photoshop.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
They're protecting millions of impressionable young girls who might be exposed to these ads.
Yeah I went there.
The ExtremeTech article mentions an Adobe product by name eight times but doesn't mention its competitors once. I haven't had a chance to read the regulation myself, but someone reading the ExtremeTech article might come away with the impression that people who use non-Adobe software might get off easier, even if the capabilities of non-Adobe software are GIMPed by comparison.
But who will I sell my "Circus Clown Photoshop Plugin Set" to now?! Who else could possibly need my patented "Whorify" brush?
My work here is dung.
Yea, I really wish someone in the government would make the fast food industry stop the clearly deceptive advertising. The pictured sandwiches are nothing like what you are actually buying. It is one thing to say "we took extra care to make it look good, positioned all of the parts perfectly, and photographed it under good lighting, it is quite another to photograph larger portions than the customer will ever get.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Ban clothes too! All they're doing is adding color to otherwise rather monotone skin color.
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I actually agree with this. I don't use clothes at home either (or when browsing Slashdot), and if the weather permits, why should I need to use them outside either? Besides, we can all agree that it's just nice to see good looking naked people.
A gal's perspective here. This is something that I learned as a teenager: Makeup is actually bad for your skin. If you care for your skin properly as a teenager and a young adult, and don't slather twenty layers of makeup on it daily, then your skin actually stays pretty nice looking through your thirties and forties. However, if you wear makeup regularly as a youngster, you'll need to wear makeup for the rest of your life. (Not smoking also helps a lot as well.)
I do wear light makeup on special occasions, but during the week at work I just don't bother. I use a clear combo gel/powder with sunscreen called MagicX instead of foundation on "bad skin days." That's all I need, even though the cosmetic industry thinks I need to have twenty different products on my skin daily. I splurge on good lotions and night treatments, but because I do that, I don't need makeup - or photoshop - to have a nice looking face.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Not to mention all of those souls being stolen by the devlish devices taking the pictures
You're right, but it still doesn't change the fact that cosmetics are practically real life version of Photoshop, and both are used to fake stuff.
Well, on the same line: everybody in this world would need to wear a uniform - after all, different clothing are faking the stuff underneath. Should I continue?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I'd rather marketers be over-restricted than under-restricted. Talk about lying: just the other day I got an ad in the form of a fake rebate check. It looks just like a real check, of course, and it says "REBATE CHECK" in big letters and "This is not a check" in very small letters. WTF? Can I sell a pill that says "CURES CANCER!" in big letters and then "Does not cure cancer" in small letters just below it?
(I'm not kidding. I can post a pic later if anyone wants to see proof.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Unless one wishes to cling to the trivially false illusion that humans are rational actors, who weigh all data inputs objectively, it seems fairly obvious that a gigantic picture asserting that Product X will make your face look like you've been born with perfect genes and then worked over by a talented retouch guy is a lie, even if accompanied by a 2pt flyspeck disclaimer that 'results not typical, you ugly hag, buy our product anyway or die scorned and alone'.
Of course, on that basis, it's hard to imagine much of the advertising industry being left(Note, this does not represent criticism of this basis, no not at all). So much of advertising consists of more or less blatantly false images and video, followed by a tiny text disclaimer.
As for the concerns mentioned at the end of TFS, I'm not sure I see the problem: this is arguably even more divorced from reality than cosmetics advertising, and the battle over pre-renders being pimped as "in engine"(recorded at 1FPS, with known-unusably-bugggy effects enabled with command line switches, on $10,000 workstation, played back at 30FPS, or just created by importing our highest resolution art assets into 3DSMAX...) in gameplay advertising has gone on for ages. As for 'photographer's own work', unless you assert that you, as a photographer, take 'pictures that objectively represent reality' rather than 'aesthetically pleasing pictures', why would photoshop be any worse than using a good lens or a low-noise sensor? In photojournalism, photochopping can be a serious problem; but in photography as art, you aren't making a truth claim, so it's pretty hard to lie...
As voluntary standards by a private industry body, this seems like an unimpeachable step. The issue would get a bit more dicey were the state to step in, you'd have to adjudicate the line between expressive free speech and commercial fraud through deception; but if the marketweasels want to clean up a small part of their slime trail, all the better...
Yeah, the trouble is, the people who want to walk around naked are generally the ones you'd least like to see undressed...
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I actually agree with this. I don't use clothes at home either (or when browsing Slashdot), and if the weather permits, why should I need to use them outside either?
Hm, good question. Let me think about that for a while...
Besides, we can all agree that it's just nice to see good looking naked people.
That's why most people shouldn't be allowed to walk around naked.
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That's why in the future they all wear full-body spandex (see Star Trek)
Which of course is why the pictures of food NEVER look like what they serve you. On the plus side, you wouldn't really want to eat what they took pictures of.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
In my experience, woman that use more than a minimal amount, tend to look worse. Makeup in almost all cases is *way* too obvious.
It does tell me something of their thought processes, so I'm not too bothered. it's a useful metric.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Note that Adobe is still allowed to Photoshop ads for Photoshop, since that's what they're selling
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
On some tv commercials you'll see "Screen images simulated, sequences shortened." So what you're seeing is fantasy compared to how the phone actually works. Its a bit much.
Power corrupts. Absolute power...is even more fun.
Women's use of cosmetics bordens with pure fraud. They're faking themselves better looks than they really have to fraud men and thus try to gain money, power or anything else for their own advantage. It just isn't defined as fraud because the scheme has been going on for so long, but in reality it's the same. They're advertising something which they don't have and take advantage of men.
Don't worry, that all stops once you're married.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
Well, you won't get individual burger chains voluntarily making their ads look like crap (it won't improve sales but it will make their competitors look better), the same goes with cosmetics companies, et al. Voluntary compliance simply won't happen.
Ok, what about the watchdog? Well, as the FCC found out when trying to impose rulings on network neutrality, the courts regard watchdogs as being not much more than mere advisory panels. In short, if a company took a watchdog to court, claiming that Congress had ruled these kinds of deceptive advertising to be non-protected Commercial Speech that they had First Amendment protections to be as deceptive as they damn well felt like, the company would almost certainly win.
Which means that if you honestly believe that there's a limit to the acceptable level of deception, Congress has to have some involvement. It needn't be a full-blown law, and that would likely also fail as UnConstitutional, but there has to be something that is at that level which clearly denotes that there is a difference between protected commercial speech (satire/parody, comedic representation, figurative representation, et al) and actual attempts to deceive a customer into buying something that never existed. And, no, what the US currently has is obviously not enough, or the cosmetics companies would be up the proverbial creek without paddle (or indeed canoe) via lemon laws. The product is, after all, "defective" when compared with what it's sold as. They aren't and the watchdog didn't even bother using such laws, showing the laws have no value or significance.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Since this is the involved industry's own 'self regulation' body acting, it is generally safe to assume that the issue is seen as quite serious, and that the risk of actual legislation has been pushed back by at least half a decade...
Your burger doesn't look as good as the one in the picture for a couple of reasons. One is that the artists making the picture are extremely good at showing the product in a flattering way, and that's not going to change. Another part of that is because some products simply can't sit under hot lights for an hour, so they don't even use the real thing. The only thing that removing digital alteration from the process will do is force advertisers to use non-digital means of making their products look good. Non-digital airbrushing is still effective, just not as cheap. The burger on the menu will still look like a team of professional artists worked to make it look at good as possible, and the burger on your plate will still look like it was assembled by a high school kid in a hurry.
The end product of cosmetics is an improved appearance. If an ad tries to sell cosmetics based on an appearance that the cosmetics themselves cannot deliver, that's fraud.
Put a disclaimer on the photo and provide links to the source images used. If you're interested you can look it up. :)
A few years ago in the UK they ran a Dove soap advert with real women. They ran it just about everywhere. After a week of looking at those real women on my morning commute, I longed for the fake photo shopped lie. I don't expect pictures of beer gut real men on the cover of men's health either. Real is grim, lets live the lie
You don't want to see me naked.
--
BMO "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" - Airplane
"She that paints her face thinks of her tail" - Ben Franklin.
Besides, we can all agree that it's just nice to see good looking naked people.
Should I link to goatse? Or would you propose to euthanise bad looking people? Or lock them out of sight?
BTW: what about the eye of the beholder?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Do you consider makeup wearing persons a merchandise? In the last years, computer-mediated fraud is rampant: do you propose that we'd ban computers too?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I'd even go so far as to say I've seen what he's like on the inside.
Should I link to goatse? Or would you propose to euthanise bad looking people? Or lock them out of sight?
Yep, now you're getting it! Lock away everyone who isn't hot (besides me), and the world would look much better!
BTW: what about the eye of the beholder?
Well, beholders can fire a wide variety of pain and death from their eyes, which is why they're frequently a major hassle for the unprepared dungeon explorer, true, but I don't see how that relates to my entirely altruistic quest to leave only the hottest of girls... I mean, people... visible in public.
Advertising is a fantasy.
This is what this law intends to fix.
Get over yourself. Nobody needs that kind of help.
Wrong, if such advertising wouldn't work for a vast majority of the population, companies wouldn't use it.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Are you implying that women are free? Last time I checked we were pretty expensive to keep around...
I can refute that pretty well. With good, soft, even lighting, a flattering pose, and attention paid to the facial shape and blemishes of the model, a good photographer can make just about anyone "pretty." Add in some professional make-up and hair work, and you're well on your way to making someone look far different than they do in real life.
Ruling not about retouching photos. NAD doesn't care about using photoshop to remove models blemishes. This is about an advertisement that makes a specific claim about mascara increasing eyelash volume. The eyelash volume was made bigger using photoshop. NAD doesn't care if an advertisement for lipstick uses photoshop to make the eyelashes bigger.
After all, by your logic, cleaning yourself up is "fake" as well. Humans don't naturally smell "clean" without the application of soap and water. So, if you're going to argue that women who use makeup are "faking stuff", since they don't really look that way naturally, by the same logic, so are people who take a bath. Or brush their teeth. Or trim their toenails. Or cut their hair.
Not everyone wants to go around looking and smelling like this guy.
So the photographers and designers will be forced to use GIMP from now on? Poor bastards!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Instead of trashing all post-production work, which could put a lot of people out of a job, why not just change the mandatory notification size? Kinda like they did for cigarette packages: a minimum of 50% of the front and back packaging must be a health warning advert (at least, that's how it is here in Canada).
Make it so they have to describe exactly what they did (e.g., altered skin tone, corrected blemishes and enhanced eyelashes, lips, nose and bust size) and legislate that they must make the size of the description a minimum percentage of the total advertisement size (maybe 30%?) and use font size scaled to the advert size instead of using text so small one has to pull out the magnifying glass to read it on a 55" HD plasma. That way people can see clearly for themselves which ones are the incredible lying fuckwads, and which ones aren't. Wouldn't that be nice?
Well...we made the tobacco companies comply with this, I don't see why we can't do so with beauty product advertisements...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Yes, just like the Concealed Weapon License, we need an Exposed Weapon License!
I was under the impression that all digital photos have gone through some kind of post production even before they come out of the camera they are manipulated to achieve various qualities.
Also, lenses whose primary intended use is portraiture are slightly "soft". The degree of softness can be controllable as in certain lenses from Canon and Pentax. This is deliberate, so that the image can be tuned to catch sufficient details of a face (presumably occupying a good part of the photo) without showing the individual pores or small scale blemishes. It's hard to get an exact equivalent by blurring during postprocessing. But you're right about much of it being in the lighting, and most of the rest is setting and composition.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The difference is what's being advertised. NAD has long said, iirc, that if you are advertising a product than the product must appear unaltered if it appears in the advertisement. So cereal ads, notorious for splashing in a bowl of milk, had to be the same cereal out of a box that would be sold in stores. The milk, bowl, spoons, and everything else could be fake, because those weren't what the advert was for. So, milk got replaced by glue and water, because it has that better shine and texture.
Burger joints claim their ads aren't for the specific burger, but for their store. As long as that's the case, the burger can be fake. Once it's an ad for a specific burger, then it has to be real. But take the best line cook at any of those chains, and give them the instruction to make the burger look nice, and remove the 'have it done in 20 seconds or your fired' alarm, and they can construct a nice burger. But, yeah, the cheese isn't being advertised, so expect plastic.
For make-up, this should have been an open/shut case. They were advertising a product, and faking the results. Advertising law doesn't allow for that, their own regulations don't allow for that. No amount of disclaiming the results should let them get away with that.
I had a female friend who knew how to use makeup. I could watch her put it on, and when she was done I could look from fairly close and not be able to see anything that stood out as makeup.