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Excessive Photoshopping Called-out by Pop Star Trainor
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This week Massachusetts native Meghan Trainor who won the Best New Artist Grammy award complained of excessive Photoshopping of a music video for her most recent song titled Me Too. The complaints led to the retouched video being removed from circulation and replaced by one that doesn’t include Photoshop-like effects being used on Trainor’s body. The before and after images of Trainor show Photoshop-like effects were used, with her waist being made to appear thinner, her hair adjusted, and her dress smoothed. The before image is on the right side, with the image after editiing showing on the left side.
Trainor said she saw screen captures from the video on social media in which her body appeared distorted. She demanded the excessively edited video be removed and replaced by one that accurately reflects her actual shape. In an interview after discovering the excessively edited video she said "I'm the poster child for no Photoshop."
While Photoshop retouching is often blamed for any type of image alteration, video effects typically involve using different tools such as Premiere Pro and After Effects. “Post-production tools allow for editing, filtering, and application of effects on video more efficiently than Photoshop,” according to Christopher Smith, president of American Graphics Institute which offers Photoshop classes and also provides After Effects training. “Photoshop can edit individual frames from a video, or even small portions of a video. But for larger-scale adjustments, this type of edit was likely performed using a tool such as After Effects,” said Smith. He added that courses teaching Photoshop retouching and similar effects always include a discussion on the ethical considerations surrounding altering an image. There are even places where edits are covered under a Photoshop law, he noted. "Photoshopping has come to mean any type of excessive retouching, even if Photoshop isn't used," he said.
Trainor drew a line between retouching to remove stray hairs or skin blemishes and Photoshopping to completely change the shape of her body and making her waist appear slimmer. Once she realized that her body shape was changed, she complained to management at her recording label, Epic Records, insisting that the edited video be replaced by one without the Photoshop-like effects.
When the revised version of the video was placed online, without the excessive Photoshopping effects, Trainor posted on Twitter, "The real #metoo video is finally up! Missed that bass. Thank you everyone for the support."
About the author
Jennifer Smith is a user experience designer, educator and author based in Boston. She has worked in the field of user experience design for more than 15 years.She has designed websites, ecommerce sites, apps, and embedded systems. Jennifer designs solutions for mobile, desktop, and iOT devices.
Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors.She has served as a Designer in Residence at Microsoft, assisting third-party app developers to improve their design solutions and create successful user experiences. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern UX Design, and worked closely with major tech companies to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including XD, Sketch, Balsamiq, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blend for Visual Studio. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.
Jennifer is also an expert on Photoshop, digital image editing, and photo manipulation. Having written 10 books on Photoshop, and having consulted and provided training to major media companies and businesses around the globe.
Jennifer is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices. Jennifer holds the CPUX-F certification from the User Experience Qualification Board and assists others in attaining this designation in leading a UX certification course at American Graphics Institute. She is a candidate for a Master’s degree in Human Factors in Information Design.