MAKE UNDERS: SHED SOME DARKNESS TO FIND THE TRUTH

Ahhh, the refreshing honesty of tabloid photography. Gritty. Realistic. Catches those stars without tons of preparation, and in bad lighting, no less!

Here we see Gwyneth after a little "tabloid treatment" and we can see the actual skin tones she has. How one eye is a little higher than the other. How her head kinda bends one way. A little scalloping on the neck, there. If you look in the mirror, you'll see similar things, so don't be dancing on her grave just yet. We're all human, and we all need tons of makeup, lighting, wardrobe, and proper backdrop to look truly glamourous.

So how do we take another picture of Gwyneth Paltrow and make it look more realistic? Simple. First, we start with the glamour shot.

The key to this picture is the intense light. It's washing out all the color in the portrait. A few faint pinks and oranges, and that's pretty much it for color. So, I create a new layer by adjusting the levels. Basically, I set it so pixels at a certain level of darkness or below become darker. This way, I keep the all-white background, which does look nice. I just want to adjust her skin to look natural, not totally trash the picture... this time...

As it is, it's a bit too harsh, so I incorporate it into the original picture with a "multiply" blend and set the opacity to 52%. Looks like skin, man!

We can see plenty of variation in the skin, now, not just a uniform, featureless color. While natural, it's not glamourous, so I can see why whoever used the original picture bled it all to white. The original way, it's glamour. This way, it's a really badly-lit photo from a day at the beach.

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