Photoshopping Ads

Photoshop is a very powerful tool. It can restore tattered old photographs, correct contrast and colour imbalances in an image. It can manipulate, add or remove features inside an image, cut out and place images on top of each other, or remove them from their backgrounds. You can use Photoshop to create stunning special effects, make ads, posters, collages, different artwork and more.

We used Photoshop to change, brighten and make colours look more natural in food products, wedding photos, product photography, and fashion shots. We used it to take our favorite image and place it in a different background for an ad, a campaign, a service, and a community event. That is the bread and butter work of Photoshop users. However some have taken Photoshop to a different level. Some have gone from using Photoshop to enhance photos to replicate realism, to changing photos to be surrealistic.

Photo retouching is a standard means of enhancing photos before they get shipped out into the advertising world. I believe we need it. Without it product shots, fashion shots, and especially photography of food would look dull and not as flattering. The camera doesn’t lie but the camera is not perfect. The human eye can see many more colours in the world’s spectrum than a camera can capture at one time. On the web we see images in RGB which has a higher spectrum of colours when ads go to print they get converted to CMYK which has a lower spectrum of colours it can replicate. So initially that great piece of artwork that we saw initially would not produce an end result as desirable without some good consideration and thought put into the process of capturing it. So I believe it is the photographer’s, designer’s and retoucher’s responsibility to replicate an image they are trying to convey with the best means necessary. They should make the image as realistic and desirable as possible and use Photoshop as a means of doing so.

The key is realism and while I mentioned earlier some users use Photoshop as a means of changing the look of a product from its actual appearance. In the event that you would shoot a pair of fruit in bowl and would want to promote how fresh and juicy the fruit is. If the camera didn’t quite capture the proper lighting of the fruit or if there was a colour cast making the strawberries look green or blue then by all means correct that with Photoshop to project the image we are trying to convey. Photo retouching is good to use in a situation like this when we are trying to change an image into something that it is supposed to be that will be more sought after. The idea is that these really are fresh fruit and fresh strawberries and we are trying to emulate their appearance on print.  FYI it helps to have a proper photograph to start with. However if the product, in this case food, was actually rotten or not ripe making the strawberries green, then changing their colour to red to falsely promote how ripe they are would be misleading. What makes photo retouching right is if the product you are retouching really has the desired outcome you are advertising it to be.

Now let’s move into another area such as fashion shots. Photo retouchers go to work on models making their skin glow more and be smoother, add contrast in certain areas, help eliminate excessive pores, make contrasting effects, and make colour corrections. In that case I am also on board with those changes. Though if a retoucher goes and manipulates the actual forms on a figure such as the face, specifically the lips or cheeks, or change the thighs, or the but, then your going into shady territory. On some models they might like it if they were to look lightly slimmer, but to slenderize an already skinny figure into unnatural appearance is setting a bad picture if the end output is to promote beauty with these models. I believe many people have the same opinion when it comes to changing the appearance of models to sell beauty.

When it comes to beauty and fashion I believe magazines should not alter the shape and form of their models. More brands should advertise like Dove and promote natural beauty. When some girls look at the covers that have a figure on certain fashion magazines they may be looking of the end result of a Photoshop Maestro.

All in all Photoshop has its uses in retouching and in advertising. Moreover, what I believe is that the image of the product that is being retouched must replicate the real product that is out there being promoted. When selling a product or promoting a person I believe that a high percentage of the time it should be literal. The exception would be to sell you on something that is a fantasy concept in which case exaggeration and surrealism is accepted.

Provoking Ad Campaign for the Mic Mac Mall

This advertising campaign was for the Mic Mac Mall in Dartmouth Nova Scotia and was executed by an agency in Vancouver, British Columbia. The agency is called Suburbia and their tagline states: “We get Shoppers”.

So what do you think of the ads? Well personally I find it amusing when an agency’s tagline states “We Get Shoppers” gets such a negative response for their advertising campaign by the very consumers that were at the mall. Some denounced the ad ads as sexist, insulting and demeaning towards women. The most direct way to interpret the message of some of those messages is that women want to replace school with shopping. Another way to see it is that the ads push the message that women are obsessed with shopping and are not very bright. Either way I can see how many would be offended by the ads. What doesn’t help the advertising campaign’s case is that the ads only depict women, which contribute to how people interpret the message negatively. Patricia Parsons, communications professor at Mount Saint Vincent University, said she thought the campaign was tasteless, a bit sexist and humiliating to women.

Are you curious as to how the ads interpretation was meant to be?

Marketing Director, Rebecca Logan wrote: “The intent of this campaign was to generate awareness and excitement for back to school shopping. The concept was to correlate school related subjects to shopping and our strong social media presence in a humorous and light hearted manner.”

With some that response didn’t sit well. Rachael-Dawn Craig. A Dalhousie neuroscience graduate, with several published works to her name wrote: “If there wasn’t a daily struggle for women to establish themselves…maybe it would be funny. Oppression is not funny. Sexism is not funny. For those of us fighting this every day, it’s not funny.”

The management at The Mic Mac Mall felt the campaign was fine to run but I would have not run the ad campaign. I would see right away that the ad would be seen negatively by its residents. The root problem of the ad is that it enforces a negative way women are depicted. There is a struggle for some women to establish themselves and be accepted for their interests in science, social media, engineering, chemistry etc. There are young girls who struggle to be accepted by their peers if they have other interests such as sports or educational interests and these ads don’t help their cause. The ads got so much attention because they are based on a negative point of view that women should be interested in shopping much more than other endeavors. This almost follows a 1950’s point of view that women should shop and take care of the house and not have the same pursuits as men. If they depicted all men instead of women it would really seem out of place or actually seem ironic because there is a general belief that men are more interested in social studies, science, and educational interests in general, than shopping. If the ads depicted women and men that would be interesting because it would clash the way how we are perceived but I still believe it would receive complaints.

Since it was all women the message of the ads are demeaning because they enforce a message that women would rather shop than focus in some field of study.

About the design of the ads themselves I find the illustration art very impressive. The font also matches well with the illustration. The fact that the ads were more artistic instead of using live photos meant that the message was to be interpreted lightly and humorously.

Back to main concern, the concept of the ad.
What happened as a result of all the complaints of the ads was that they were removed and Mic Mac Mall issued an apology and a $5000 donation to an organization that offers year-round sessions for girls interested in science, technology and industry. It was definitely a strong move that helped reverse the damage of the ads. The ads were in the mall for only about one week.

On the other hand the Mic Mac Mall’s Facebook page and website landing page ads are fine with a slogan named “It’s a good day to shop.” Or “It’s a good day to shop and win” which does not mix in with school priority and won’t get people offended.

So in hindsight, “an ads concept is very important.”