Dove Releases Photoshop Action That Undoes Retouching On Models

Unilever, the company that markets Dove soap with the "real beauty" campaign, launched a clever device to draw attention to the way professional photographers retouch photos in Photoshop to make models look skinnier, less wrinkly, and more muscular than they are in real life.

They posted a Photoshop Action — an app that you can use in Photoshop to apply an effect to an image with a single click — on Reddit, claiming it "helps to enhance skin tone and gives skin a beautiful glow while hiding all the imperfections."

In reality, the action (titled "beautify") undid all the existing retouching work on the image, and posted a message on the photo that said, "Don't manipulate our perceptions of real beauty."

Not everyone was impressed. The Verge labeled it "ineffective."

The Reddit post had close to zero responses.

And this photographer complained that it wasn't posted to "/R/Photography, the largest of the photography-related subreddits," where he's an admin. He also noted that lots of people use Photoshop in everyday life, not just advertisers and models. Brides in their wedding photos, for instance.

Here's a video of the effect in action (below).