Can a $1 picture say a thousand words?

An old paradigm goes: you need to spend money to make money. No matter how tight your budget is, you can't do without spending on marketing to achieve growth. The trick is to spend wisely.

Let's say you sell beauty products, you'll need a simple but elegant website, printed flyers, probably a catalog, a blogs, e-mail campaigns, sales presentations, brochures, ads. Which means you'll need beautiful pictures so hat your brand is perceived correctly.

Hiring a photographer costs $80-150 an hour and many small business owners have taken this matter into their own hands by figuring out how to use their digital cameras as we reported some time ago. See our post on how to set up the lighting for a home product shoot.

Now, there is a new trend that we have observed among our customers: small business owners purchase stock photography at $1/shot and then send them to PhotoHand for alterations and merging with other images - mostly home made photos - to produce editorial-level ads for products or services.

I this example a professionally-shot image purchased from a stock photography website was altered several times to present different variations of a beauty product. These images were further combined with amateur shots of the branded containers. The total cost with the volume discount - $5.95 per ad.



In another example, a stock photo was converted into an illustration to the company's business model by changing the background, adding some graphic elements and incorporating the company's product pictures. The total cost of the ad production - $16.95.



To create such ads the agency way would have cost at least $300: You would have to pay a photographer, a model, a stylist and still use a photo retoucher. Be smart! A penny saved is a penny earned.

Glamor with a Disclaimer

To fight self-esteem problems experienced by girls and women who feel pressure to fit the standards set up by advertisers, British and French lawmakers are pushing for laws that force the Advertising industry to disclose when retouching is used on models. According to the proposals, all ads where retouched images of models have been used should carry a disclaimer stating that changes have been made.

You would think that in our day and age, everyone knows that ad images are artistic interpretations. They are decorative. Let's be honest, you wouldn't want Calvin Klein ads to feature "guys from work".

I personally think "feel-good" movies are more damaging for the psyche of young women. And, if we continue along the disclaimer path, they should run a marquee warning during romantic comedies and Cinderella-plot movies saying this is just wishful thinking and no one should fall for this delusion.

As for photo retouching, it has become a natural part of the process of developing an image for publication. It puts fixes where the photography failed. You always do the bare minimum checklist:

- Improve lighting
- Adjust colors
- Remove flyaway hairs
- Remove glare
- Remove shadows from faces
- Even out skin tone
- Cover up temporary skin imperfections
- Correct smudged make-up
- Fix clothes

These are the basics of photography post-production that have nothing to do with manipulation of the public conscience.

And if you still consider this an illusion than the illusion starts from the production stage. There is a crew of workers besides the photographer at any proper fashion or celebrity shoot. If you have ever watched America's Next Top Model then you should know how a good make-up artist, stylist, and lighting specialists can improve the outcome and make the photo look glamorous, the way you (let's face it) like it.