Portrait Pros Airbrush Effect Possibly too Convincing

Steve Hall

Apr. 17, 2007
1 min read

We don’t really know what to think about this banner ad for Portrait Professionals but every time we see it we’re gripped with a warped, inexplicable fear. The girl at left doesn’t look bad now, but you have to experience the ad by accident to achieve the full effect.

The before image flashes alarmingly – maliciously, even – and is replaced by the after one, but not until after having destroyed an otherwise soothing browsing experience.

Plus, there’s something unsettlingly Dorian Gray about taking a mildly menacing photo and replacing it with a timid, disarming one. Suddenly we distrust all our hard-earned social networking friends.

Steve Hall

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Portrait Pros Airbrush Effect Possibly too Convincing

Steve Hall

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TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

There’s a last time your child reaches for your hand in a parking lot and you never know it’s happening until years later when you’re walking next to them and your hand is just hanging there and the absence of those small fingers is the loudest thing you’ve ever felt

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The loneliest people aren’t always alone — psychology says these 8 subtle signs reveal someone has no close friends even if they seem socially active and well-liked

Global English Editing

The cruelest thing anyone says to a person grieving their dog is that they can always get another one. Nobody says that to a parent who lost a child. The difference in response reveals exactly how the world ranks love — not by depth, but by species

Global English Editing

Behavioral scientists found that people with genuinely strong mindsets don’t tell themselves to be positive – they’ve learned to observe their thoughts without identifying with them, a distinction most people never understand.

Global English Editing

Psychology says people who feel more alive in a foreign country than in their own home aren’t rootless — they’re responding to the freedom of being unknown, which allows parts of their personality that have been suppressed by familiarity and expectation to finally surface

Global English Editing

The meanest thing you can say to a Boomer woman isn’t an insult — it’s “let me do that for you” spoken one time too many, because every offer of help is also an inventory of what she can no longer do and she’s keeping her own count and she doesn’t need yours

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