They also removed a beige-coloured sock on her right calf -- I guess they decided it wasn't sexy?

At least her hand was probably imported from another photo from the same shoot.

I've always wondered about how much say celebrities have in the presentation of themselves in the media -- if a paparazzo snaps an unflattering photo and posts it on TMZ, there's not a lot that can be done about it, but when someone agrees to do a photo shoot for an established publication, you'd think they'd perhaps have some kind of moral investment to ask the publication to keep their portrayal more true-to-life (especially when a lot of these pop stars are idolized by young people who can easily fall into comparing themselves to celebrities).

It's really stunning how much bad, amateurishly lit, awkwardly posed, sloppily composed photography gets into mags as big as Rolling Stone, let alone on the cover. Nothing can save an exposure this disposable, no matter how much the body's geometries are Barbiefied (which, IMO, makes it even more grotesque). A beautiful woman is not enough to make a beautiful photo.

But I guess it should be noted that post-exposure editing along these lines was just as standard before digital photography as it is in the Photoshop era. Now, it's merely faster and cheaper. The fan-blown hair/big cleavage/airbrushed body formula hasn't really changed in 40 years, and no adult celebrity will ever walk into such a shoot unaware of how it will be edited (they're only miffed when it's done unconvincingly).

Even so. Sometimes I wonder if people during the Renaissance privately whined that sculptures and paintings were setting an impossible beauty standard. So many attributes of the most revered works - from the muscular tones to the porcelain complexions - were all but improbable in their unhygenic, disease-riddled time. But seldom do we look back on the era and regard its aesthetic idealizations of human flesh as oppressive.

Yes, the original shot was awful.

Yeah, as a photographer, I'm really disappointed in the quality of that source photo.

Photoshop may be "convenient" but it's still way easier to make the proper adjustments in camera.

What's most incredible is that the changes to her body are either arbitrary or miniscule. The only real change is the color scheme and lightning which means that the paper basically hired a bad photographer with the intent to cover it up with photoshop. One has to wonder what kind of respect the editors have for their own magazine

I'm in advertising.

Evening out the skin tone is entirely normal, and in my opinion acceptable. The camera captures things that aren't caught be the eye in real life, and colour photos don't start out all that flattering. That's why black and white photos look so much nicer before retouching. The sock is arguable. Since the other one is not seen, it may have looked weird to the Art Director. I also have no problem with the stomach wrinkle smoothing, as that's another thing you wouldn't perceive if she were there in real life — they'd be constantly changing.

The stupid parts are how the pushed up her breasts and slimmed her thighs. First of all, that's sad and telling for the sociological reasons stated above. And as a superficial man, I'd like to point out that the "before" is actually much more sexy. The AD must not be a big fan of real live "T&A"...

I don't see her breasts as "plumped" but as "pushed up". They made them look more like they were surgically augmented - the original photo shows much more natural looking breasts, which isn't normal any more I guess.

The original photo was a bit underexposed, as it were ... so lightening it up wasn't a bad or unnatural choice.

Usually people think that this use of Photoshop is to repair images.
I think it is not the case. Photoshop is used to recreate an image to the visual pattern of current publications.
There is no man or woman alive who have the skin tone, skin texture, and volume of the body that fits the visual pattern of magazines today.
What Photoshop does is recreate a inhuman pattern from a human image.

I often wonder how individuals feel about these kinds of representations and the gap it creates between lived self (ie this is my material body as I experience it) and manufactured self. It must be really odd to be so different from your professional self that the gap between the two can dissociate to the point of disidentification. We criticise stars for plastic surgery, diet fads, botox, and a plethora of other body adjustments, but really we consume manufactured images and then expect flesh and bone to look the same - 'oh wow, he's shorter than I thought was' or 'she was much prettier in [some move or mag shoot]'. How odd for stars to see themselves in images and not see themselves - marginally or at all.

I understand evening out the skin tone, smoothing out wrinkles in clothing, and even softening lines like stomach wrinkles that look harsher in a photo than in person. I am totally fine with swapping the hand in the original with the more flattering hand pose in the after picture. I could even grudgingly accept a bit of photoshop slimming on an overweight person who could feasibly change their body shape to match, but that isn't the case with this picture. You know, I'll even overlook the reshaping of her boobs, because they could look like that in the right bra. It's her thigh that bothers me the most. What was so wrong with her leg? They removed her back thigh muscle. Can't have one of those, ladies! It might be mistaken for fat.

I hate that we are so used to this kind of thing (myself included) that it's hard to see just how messed up it is. It seems like no woman is good enough that part of her body isn't shaved off, no matter what shape she is in.

I also think some photographers have gotten very lazy and expect photoshop to make up for it.

The only change that really made me wonder was the bowl of shells on the bottom left, whats up with that? Was the other shell deemed 'too big'?

On the bottom right, dang it!

Interesting, the 'softness' around the stomach doesn't seem to be altered much (though the wrinkle is, her stomach and waist haven't been noticeably altered anyway). I noticed something similar in a magazine the other day, in which the model looked very photoshopped in most other respects, but still had a (very small, but still visible) amount of stomach pooch, possibly created by the type of shirt she was wearing, possibly not. It seems that the people doing the photoshopping have caught on: most complaints I've seen regarding this phenomenon has been about visibly/drastically reducing someone's waist or stomach. I guess since aside from skin tone, it's what's most visible...personally I didn't even notice that her leg had been altered until looking a few times, but comparisons of women who've had their waists nipped in significantly are obvious. IDK what this means, but it's something I've noticed.

Rolling Stone probably thought the removal of the sock was necessary to emphasize the fact that she is wearing nothing but undergarments. Makes sense.

What stands out most to me is that the cover looks like it would belong on Playboy, not on a music magazine.