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"Photoshop--and the retouchers who wield its power with their electronic airbrushes--has come under fire lately, with models&amp;#x27; limbs becoming casualties in a slew of international mags, catwalker Coco Rocha responding by pleading with them to stop, and teenagers petitioning their favorite magazines to let natural beauty shine through. But there&amp;#x27;s a bigger story with the image-perfecting process than meets the eye... BuzzFeed caught up with a professional photo retoucher last week, and said retoucher spilled the secrets of the trade (anonymously, of course!), dishing up a few surprises even for those of us who have worked at magazines for years. Here are the most interesting tidbits we learned: 1. The guy with the airbrush is only the messenger: &amp;quot;I have been asked to slim down a waist or make the legs a little skinnier, but not anything too crazy. There is a lot of body distortion, and sometimes directions &amp;amp;#8212; and they always come from art directors, retouchers never make these calls on their own &amp;amp;#8212; get me upset, but it hasn&amp;#x27;t been that bad for me...But if people are calling attention to distorted bodies, it&amp;#x27;s good. At least when an art director tells you, can you slim down this waist? it might become not such a normal thing anymore.&amp;quot; 2. There&amp;#x27;s pretty much no such thing as an un-retouched photo: &amp;quot;Absolutely 100 percent of what&amp;#x27;s in fashion magazines is retouched.&amp;quot; 3. Magazine editors may get all the flak, but ad execs are equally guilty: &amp;quot;There are probably more ads that are being retouched than magazine fashion shoots. Ninety percent of Vogue is ads so the complaints should also really go to the ad agencies. And nobody would really know who those ad agencies were unless they looked up who had what clients. But also their boss is the actual clients. If Chanel or some company like that is telling their art director what they want fixed, they&amp;#x27;re responsible for retouching as well.&amp;quot; 4. SURPRISE! Supermodels don&amp;#x27;t have perfect skin, either: &amp;quot;I work on supermodels, and people are always asking, what do you do to them? We do a lot of skin clean-up to make their skin look perfect, but I don&amp;#x27;t do any distortion of their bodies because these girls are really genetically blessed...the skin is another story: we completely remove veins and freckles and moles and bags under the eyes all the time. We often remove body hair, subdue wrinkles, whiten teeth, pop the eyes. We also smooth kneecaps and veins in the hands and things like that.&amp;quot; 5. Franken-models are pretty darn common: &amp;quot;Retouchers do things like cut out a head from one photo and put it on the body from another. I do that kind of stuff all the time. Let&amp;#x27;s say they do a photoshoot with a model and the body comes out well, but she&amp;#x27;s got a wonky look on her face. They might want to put this head on that body. Or they want to put an arm from one photo on the body of another &amp;amp;#8212; that&amp;#x27;s common.&amp;quot; Kinda interesting to learn how the whole process works, isn&amp;#x27;t it? Anything here that really surprised you? Discuss! PLUS! - Coco Rocha&amp;#x27;s plea to Photoshop-O.D.ing magazine editors - Health controversy: Kate Upton responds to pro-skinny haters who called her &amp;quot;lardy&amp;quot; - Tyra Banks says she&amp;#x27;d never make it as a model by today&amp;#x27;s weight standards Photo: Dimitri Vervitslotis/Photographer&amp;#x27;s Choice/Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/fashion/blogs/dressed/2012/07/5-things-you-never-knew-about>