Did Nature Made Turn a Eurasian Pharmacist European With Computers?

[McCamy Taylor]

This is in the Lounge because it is not important. Just interesting to me. There is a Nature Made ad for fish oil with a "John Probst" pharmacist who looks computer generated---i.e. fake.

Go to this YouTube site and freeze the frame at 4 secs

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Now compare with the much more realistic looking image of John Probst at 24 secs in this ad:

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In addition to the obvious "airbrush" style computer alterations in the first image---no shadow line over the medial aspect of the left eye from his nose, neck artificially lightened from its natural flushed appearance, lack of left nasal-labial fold shadowing from the nose, left side of nose over shadowed to emphasize the shape of the nose even though the light reflects off the center of his eyes---it also seems to me that double eyelids have been added which changes him from a Eurasian look in the second, more natural looking image to a completely European (but weird) look in the first image. The computer "surgery" to add double eyelids takes away from his almond shaped eyes and narrows them to slits. Plus, I think they thickened his lower lip.

To me the result of all the tinkering is to make a nice looking Eurasian dude look like a freakish European.

Anyone else want to comment? Anyone else care? I care, because I am an artist and I do a lot of portraits and it is important to me to figure out what makes a face look "real" and what makes it look fake. I know from experience that you can not draw a face from a fashion magazine, because no matter how precise the rendering, the fact that the shadows have all been changed will make the result look like a cartoon. On the other hand, a precise rendering of an un-retouched photo of a face will look "real" to the eye.