There's a story making the rounds about how the UK Advertising Standards Authority is banning certain cosmetics advertisements including Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington, because the images are way too Photoshopped. The ASA says that ads can't mislead, and the makeup company (in this case L'Oreal) did not provide enough evidence that the digital alterations did not, in fact, mislead.

Now, this story was interesting on its own, but what made it even more interesting is that another makeup firm, Estee Lauder, seems to be in a legal dispute, for the exact opposite reason. Ima Fish recently alerted us to the news that model Caroline Louise Forsling had sued the company for the following advertisement: She claims that the photo was just a "test shot" before any makeup was applied, and was for a different product. She claims that the showing of her untouched-up face on the left has 'irreparably' damaged her career. Of course, in suing over this, she effectively admits that the image on the left is the untouched-up image. She could have just as easily told people that the right-hand side was the "real" image, and the left-hand one was digitally altered, and gotten on with her life.

Either way, it should be noted that in both of these stories, they're about supposed "anti-aging" products, and I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that digitally altering images is how such products are advertised, rather than showing any actual before and after shots, because I imagine "real results" are likely to vary from what's seen in any of these ads.