left arrow BackNext right arrow
< BACK TO Fresh Intelligence

L'Oreal Beyonce Ad Probably Just Got Too Much Sun

loreal_beyonce.jpg
Remember the L'Oreal ad which caused so much controversy last week over whether or not its creators had whitened up Beyonce? Well, at left you can see the version that ran recently in Essence. At right, it's the ad that ran in less pigmented publications. Asks Young, Black, and Fabulous: "Did L'Oreal darken it for the Essence ad?" Good question!


AND THERE'S SO MUCH MORE!

Heath Ledger's Dark Knight performance isn't Hollywood's first posthumous success

Industry insiders worry that rumors of Will Smith's ties to Scientology will hurt his box-office draw

Confronting the douchebag plague

The prices of celebrity baby photos are skyrocketing--or at least that's what the tabloids want you you to think

How man-eating model Carla Bruni went from rock 'n' roll ingenue to the fierce First Lady of France

Where I wouldn't put it past them. The side by side picture above looks like it's more likely that one magazine used a higher quality printing method that resulted in deeper tones (the other (right) one just looks washed out--which could just be cheap printing) In other words, cheap bastards use less ink.

another thing could be that the magazines themselves might run ALL ads through filters for consistency.

an easy test is to find other ads in those magazines and see if they are all darker/lighter

Posted by: envertigo on August 12, 2008 6:57 PM

I agree with envertigo, just look at the hair! It's pretty obvious that it's just the paper type/ink level and quality that differs in the images. The hair alone in the right picture looks a lot lighter too-- if they had been trying to 'whiten her up', they would have been careful to only hit her skin (unless they realized the potential blowback and intentionally kept it as is, but that's approaching conspiracy theory).

Posted by: archonwarp on August 12, 2008 8:22 PM

looks like they fiddled with the contrast more than photoshopped. on the left, where her hair is dark from the shadows.. on the right, it's brightened up, but by the comparative % of contrast.

in fact, all the shadows' contrast is softened, even the one under the arm.

Posted by: ohmemy on August 12, 2008 10:54 PM

Looks like the printer was off, not a photoshopped skin. The whole ad has a light saturation. Printing presses have individual personalities that need constant monitoring and adjusting., much like congress.

Posted by: amir on August 13, 2008 4:08 AM

Advertisement