Victorian Era photoshop and face tune....

[Dancefortwo]

Ok, so today we have a very unrealistic view of ourselves using face tune and photoshop.  But it's nothing new.  Here are a few examples of how the Victorians fixed their image to conform with the beauty standatds of the time. 

Almost every professional Victorian and Edwardian photographer had a shop in their back room (photoshop) with people who retouched photos.  V V



Here's another gal who had some work done. V V 



Some of the most photoshopped photos were of women's waist lines magically disappearing.  The waist was trimmed to conform to what the ideal size was.  This happened in most of the photos of high society ladies but many middle income people could afford to trim their waist and smooth out their skin too.   The original negative was scratched where the waist actually was and repainted to match the background. Some photographers were better at that than others.  You can see where her actual waist was.  V V 




The late Victorians and early Edwardians were the worst for removing women's waistlines.   This lady could not exist in reality.  Usually a lot of these photos had a blurry grey background so that the figure could be more easily retouched to the look of the time.  During this period, around 1903, the  S shape was the desired look for women so the photographer removed proabaly about 6 inches of her waist in the back to give her the S shape and pigeon front look.  She also probably has padding in the front of her chest to help give her that look    There is a slightly lighter grayish area in her lower back and that's where her waist really was.  Something weird is also happening to her right hand she's got behind her.  It's just odd looking.  This garment is called a "Day dress" V V



Here's a Tea Dress from 1907  (it's different from the day dress   ) and if you enlarge the photo on your touch screen you can see a little faint whitish line behind her waist. That's her real waist line. They probably did some reducing in the front of the waist too.  A corset will reduce the waist by maybe two inches but nothing like this.  V V 



So you can file facetune and photoshop as,  "nothing new under the sun" and thought it might interest some of you.

[Aractus]

Well it's not called photoshopping, it's called airbrushing or more accurately to what the Victorians were doing - using pencils on the negative plates to add definition or to soften the image. Here's a more modern example of airbrushing:



Different process entirely there. Anyway on these:



Black pencils have been used all over the image, and when scanned now it looks strange however printing that to positive in the Victorian era no doubt softened everything back to "normal".

[Dancefortwo]

Well it's not called photoshopping, it's called airbrushing or more accurately to what the Victorians were doing - using pencils on the negative plates to add definition or to soften the image. Here's a more modern example of airbrushing:



Different process entirely there. Anyway on these:



Black pencils have been used all over the image, and when scanned now it looks strange however printing that to positive in the Victorian era no doubt softened everything back to "normal".

Well, no the Victorians weren't using an airbrush.  You didn't read the whole paragraph correctly from where that photograph was posted. 

  Image manipulation has always been rife in photography. The airbrush tool is more than a whimsical reference to the past, an actual airbrush was commonly used on prints long before digital photography was even a glint in our eye. Welsh photographer Tony Richards recently shared with us some close up scans of old plates from his collector’s archive that reveal just that – the retouching of skin on portrait photographs.  

However, as Tony points out on his blog the manipulation has taken place using a pencil rather than an airbrush. On first glance it is difficult to discern any type of editing from the negative or resulting CDV cards but when scanned in high resolution it reveals a whole swathe of strokes.

Not a big error on your part but airbrushing came in later. The Joan Crawford photo was probably airbrushed.  It uses a small electric compresser device.  Most people use them to put on makeup these days but it's especially fun for Halloween makeup.  It has a really neat smooth, blended look.   I really like it and a makeup air brush isn't too expensive.    Isn't this fun?