After documenting the Victoria’s Secret catalogue Photoshop disaster, I had a weird idea. Since I mentioned in that blog posting that the pictures from the catalogue look so much like SL snapshots, I thought, well, why not reproduce those pictures in SecondLife? Idea was in my head, and it wanted out; so I just started.
I started by making skins that would befit the models. To create those, I used a skin resource pack of mine which I haven’t published yet.
Then, I photosourced some underwear – NOT from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue pictures, of course, but from some licensed resource photos I have.
Afterwards, I created a first pose for one of the pictures in Poser. Lots of trial and error here – if you ever created poses you’ll know that the hands of the avatar tend to disappear into the body (which basically has to do with avatar shaping).
Then, of course, I had to create an appropriate shape for my SL avatar. Oh and create a matching SL background because I wanted to photoshop as few as possible in the final shapshot.
Afterwards I went shopping, because frankly, if I would have created the hair as well, I would have spent more time than I wanted (which, at that point of time, were already ten hours on this fun project). I found hair that worked at ‘Truth’ – the ‘Megan’ hairstyle was almost what I needed, and it was mod, so I bought it, assumed the picture pose, and edited the hair so that it looked more like the one in the photo which I was trying to reproduce.
Plus, I bought a jacket, since I didn’t really want to photosource one. As I said, much time already spent. The jacket I found is by Cypher Ivory, called the ‘Yeti fur bolero’. The jacket, too, had to be edited so that it would fit the photo.
Then I could take my final snapshot, and edit that just a bit to add some more shadows and highlights. Well, just before I type my hands off, here’s the evolution of work I described above – with underwear, slighly changed / adjusted poses, skin, hair, etc. – all in all, eleven snapshots until I got it right; the last one is the final one, but not edited yet:
And here’s the final image edited a bit to make it match the original picture a bit more; side by side with the original image from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. Unlike that catalogue picture, however, I’ve just added a few shadows and highlights to my snapshot:
Just to prove that I haven’t cheated, here’s another snapshot of that final image (without the facial expression) from a different angle in SL, which I haven’t edited:
This is the first picture I reproduced; I’ll reproduce the others as well, one per day. In case you’re wondering, my skin and underwear can be bought nowhere, they just exist in my inventory since I made them myself. Maybe, eventually, I’ll release them.
Hope you like my RL-SL Victoria’s Secret transformation; if you do, stay tuned for updates
…in particular, learn what to *avoid* when photoshopping around on your SL skins and underwear.
Here are some very evil examples of photoshopping from the latest Victoria’s Secret RL catalogue.
This is a nice picture of a pretty woman wearing a bra. An airbrushed bra, as it seems. The strap on the left side doesn’t even have a shadow. This, by the way, is Victoria’s Secret’s new ‘Miraculous’ bra. It’s a shame that it’s obviously not pretty enough in RL so that they had to photoshop it the way they did.
Here’s another one of those photoshopped bras. Note that it’s not even producing a shadow on the breast on the left side. Plus, she seems to wear a slight SL breast enhancer with her RL skin.
Also, there’s something really weird going on with her hip bone on the left side. Maybe a broken pelvis at some point of time.
In case you ever doubted the existence of breast enhancers in RL (such that are nowadays often sold at SL skin shops), you should have a very close look at the above shown picture. The breast enhancer is very clearly visible beneath the no-shadows-causing airbrushed ‘Miraculous’ bra (is that perhaps what made them give the bra that name? A bra that causes absolutely no shadow would be a true miracle!).
Yet another breast enhancer beneath a no-shadows-over-the-breast bra. Also note the totally smooth elbow skin – girls, no matter how much we’d like to pretend it – NO human being, except perhaps up to three months old babies, has totally smooth elbow skin!
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the weirdest of them all?
Guarantee for total failure when photoshopping a Victoria’s Secret catalogue picture:
- Widen hip of anorexic model on left picture side; but totally forget to photoshop the shadow of the thumb in as well (yes, I do have strong doubts that this model has enough flesh on her hips for her thumb to press into it in a way that there’ll be a lighter ‘roll’ of skin coming over her thumb!)
- Blur hand on right picture side, but leave big areas of panties unblurred in the very same place.
- Panties: Why not make them look as if they were, like, *glued on* (I’m asking myself if what we see here is the fail whale of a color change?)
- Remove ass crack which *should* show through lace panties (another indicator that these panties haven been ‘glued on’!)
- Blur skin on back and smoothen elbow skin as if there was no dawn.
- Totally ignore the fact that her left thigh is wider than her right thigh after applying the liquify filter.
- Also totally ignore that after applying the aforementioned filter, her lower arm is wider than her upper arm.
- Blur hair same way as hand on right side. In case anyone asks, pretend this is deliberate and ‘motion blur’.
Breast enhancer, total fail whale:
IF your arm is pressing like THAT against your breast, then your breast will have NO shadow beneath it because, let’s face it, it’s been pressed FLAT. Also, blurring the line between arm and flat-pressed, yet-and-still-shadow-having breast doesn’t really help.
Also, panties – again! – have the problem of looking ‘glued on’. Note that the hip curve on the left picture side does have a very noticeable shadow on the skin, however the panties don’t show ANY sign of having a shadow there (well, maybe they’re ‘glow’ panties?)
And now… everybody return to their regular schedule. Nothing to see here. And of course, Victoria’s Secret makes wonderful underwear, pays the most beautiful models and therefore their catalogue designers don’t have any need to photoshop anything in their catalogues – right?
Then again, of course, Victoria’s Secret does have a history of photoshop disasters…
Edited on the 8th of November to add the following:
Apparently, some people love crying ‘content theft’ so much that they cry it every time they’re browsing blogs.
Like, for example, this gem from the interwebs, whose author happened upon *this* very blog entry of mine. Which I only discovered because from time to time, I look over my web statistics.
Of course I wrote a proper reply to that author. In case said proper reply won’t make it through her censoring approving process, here it is for everyone to read:
“I find it unbelievable funny that you link to my blog, basically question my ethics and thereby trash my article without ever having TALKED to me. Also, you’re obviously too much a coward to actually comment on my article.
Great. I love cowards almost as much as I love people who cry ‘STOLEN!!!’ without having any idea what they’re talking about.
That having said, here are a few links for you.
First, you’ll want to get comfortable with http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/ – that’s another site questioning heavy photoshopping in advertisements.
Then, when browsing the site, you’ll eventually stumble over this article:
http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/2009/10/ralph-lauren-how-to-turn-photoshop.html
You’ll of course definitely WANT to wikipedia a ‘Streisand effect’, and everything involved with one.
That having written, I’d like to add another term to the ones that have already been mentioned – ‘fair use’ being the one MOST mentioned – in the previous comments, and that would be ‘humor’.
Because, frankly, YOU might find the photoshopped pictures “pretty”, but I just think that they’re a VERY humorous depiction of human bodies. As I’ve written in my article, NO human looks like that in real life – not even the models that were photographed.
And now, go ahead and bash my latest article, which also has to do with those Victoria’s Secret photos. And, of course, you probably won’t mind that I’ll link from my article to yours – and I’ll include this comment in my article, in case it doesn’t pass your moderation
Best wishes,
N. Wunderlich”
Imagine this.
You’re on a nudist beach. No clothing allowed. However, you don’t WANT to be nude.
Or this.
You want to take pretty snapshots on a beach without being nude. However you don’t want to wear clothing either.
What do you do? Unsolveable problem? Not really, because here’s the solution:
The Rolled Sand Bikini!
Looks as if you’ve rolled around in sand. Sticks to all private parts (and some more). Covers your private parts without wearing fabric. Looks sexy without looking cheap.
The Rolled Sand Bikini consists of 16 clothing items, meaning four different sand tones (modifyable) on shirt, undershirt, pants, underpants, socks and glove layers, so that you can wear them together with your favourite skin and, in case you wear those, tattoo layers.
Here’s a picture comparing the sand tones on various skin tones:
A watermarked demo pack for the sand bikini is, of course, also available at 0L$.
The Sand Bikini and the demo version are, as usual, available by the main entrance of my main store and also in the ‘Skin’ department of my main store:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ZoHa%20Islands%20E/208/122/22
Also, they are of course available on XStreetSL.
Full version: https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1846539
Demo version: https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1846529
Hope you like them 
October 14th,2009
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I’ve released the ‘Empress Elisabeth Hungarian Coronation dress’. It’s a copy of the dress Empress Elisabeth of Austria – also known as ‘Sisi’ or ‘Sissi’ – wore when she was crowned as Queen of Hungary.
Some general pictures first – a painting of the Empress wearing the gown; another one showing the gown in SecondLife:
The gown comes with quite a few options for wearing, all of which I’ve described (hopefully comprehensive!) in the following picture (click to show a larger version!):
Color options for this gown? Why, yes, as usual – many of them; all behind the cut – together with some information on the hairstyle, which I also released seperately :-)
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