Altered vendor pics

I was wondering if you have ever decided not to purchase something because you thought that the vendor picture was not representative of the actual product. For example if it looked photoshopped. Is there a certain level of "enhancing" that you would tolerate?

softening jagged edges is about all i find acceptable...
if they are that good at PS.. why cant they make a better product?

I've never really encountered vendors that were touched up to the point where it was obvious. I*have* however decided against not buying an outfit becaus the vendor pic had so low quality and jagged edges, it was hard to get a good impression of the product. Months later i decided to take a chance and now I'm a devoted fan

I have experienced both situations

pics that were obviously retouched (hair that should be cutting into the body removed, airbrushing edges etc, which then makes me wonder what else they "touched up" so I pass

and pics that leave the image so blurred or jagged that I can not tell the quality of the work, so I pass

A photoshopped background I have no problems with at all.

Other than clothing, I generally will not buy something I can't see rezzed in-world regardless of how the photo on the vendor looks, good or bad, unless it is a freebie or fairly cheap. For scripted objects, if I can't play with them first, I won't buy them so, again, a good or bad picture, photoshopped or not, has no importance to me.

For clothing, a little softening of the edges to blend the model/clothing into the background is okay. Much more than that and I become wary of spending much of anything for something I can see is probably slicked up and not representative of the actual product and how it will look on an avatar in-world or in my home or whatever the product is intended for.

I've been disappointed too often by badly-fitted prims to trust Photoshopped images. I'd rather see the prim edges in the image and know what I can expect than to spend money on something I'd never wear.

So, yeah, if it's Photoshopped I pass. You'd have to be pretty good at PS to fool me.

B.

i would not buy these things that look PS, i am sick of buying things that do not do as they say or do not fit right like in the pic

I've never encountered something that I didn't buy because it looked altered, but as a merchant I'm careful not to retouch my own vendor images to alter the look of the product. The only thing I do is add the text, and often I darken the background behind the text to make it stand out. I only do that to the background though, it very rarely leaks over onto the product, and if it does it's minimal and not really noticeable. The only retouching I've ever done to the image of the actual product is fixing a stray white pixel here and there, caused by me being zoomed out too far for SL's feeble rendering ability, but unable to get any closer without cutting part of the product out of the image entirely. I've only done that two or three times though, and it made the picture MORE representative of the actual product

Clothing and textured items often do appear certain ways depending on your
graphic card, computer and settings but there has been items I bought that
looked totally different then in photo and I am not sure if it was my setting or the product.
Personally I don't alter my products photos but I do use the highest setting I can for photos of clothes.
I have never tried to sell prim related items in past even though few buildings or furniture items I thought about but most of my prim items are trees or flowers but if someone asked me to see product in world I would show them.
Use prims flat packaging to save prims so I understand why content makers do that.
I am not sure if asked the Merchant would show you the product in world, I assume most would if asked if it was going to land them a sell.
I assume though most would if it meant getting new happy fan of their products and customer, not every designer just wants the next L$ and doesn't care what the customer thinks.

I was searching for a pair of Ice Skate on XStreet today and found this

http://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=442163

This picture is so real that I don't think you can make this in SL

Well it 25L$ only.
Not everyone wants to charge tons of money for their products. If the person is good
with sculpties, textures and prims those ice skates are possible.
It is possible if you know what you're doing but I am not even that good yet.

I have seen similar things on xstreet where the pic is apparantly of a RL product, as if just to show "what" you would be getting, but not what the product actually looks like. I quickly move on.

I have seen RL pic on things too, including clothing.

I used to enhance my pictures, removing this or that errant piece of hair, or more often smoothing a lumpy shoulder or pointed elbow, or softening those little skin folds that look more like bent wood in my side. PSP has a feature that softens skin tones slightly (skin smoother), I used to use that, and backlighting, to make the model look better. I never touched my clothes, or blended seams, folds, wrinkles etc. in my clothing. But I have been told that just by trying to make the model look good, others might interpret the whole picture as being photoshopped, so I have lately decided to leave the jaggedy elbows and lumpy shoulders in.

I was actually surprised to hear that some clothing makers do photoshop wrinkles and folds and blend seams etc. on their ads. If they can do them on the ad, why can't they just do them on the clothes? I do my seam/wrinkle/fold/trim etc. matching in AvPainter before I upload the clothes, not on my ads after I do the photoshoot.

I used to think that the presentation of the ad was important because it was an example of our ability but now I am just going au natural. Except of course for putting the picture on a template background.

I would be deeply offended at even a casual suggestion that any of my items are photo-shopped. I have smoothed the edges of the avi to counter pixelation and see nothing wrong with that, it improves the over-look of the ad-board. If that is unacceptable to the customer I am sorry to say I won't be changing to suit them. My photos are representative of my goods- although I have been told the photos themselves are not the best- but it is the best I can do with what I have. Those that do buy my outfits must be pleased since I do see plenty of return business.

I would be horrified to learn an item had been touched up after the fact, though - in fact, I cannot fathom anyone doing that. Not just the dishonesty involved to your customers but how could you live with yourself like that? Crap is crap and no amount of cover up can change that. I have pulled stuff off the walls that after improving my skills no longer meets my standards and I am sure the more I learn the more I will do that in the future. Photo-shopping your ad boards fools no one- especially not you.

Yes, that has happened many times. Though I might give them the benefit of the doubt and find something super cheap just to make sure before moving on.

Ironically, and on a tangent, I always thought that Last Call's actual clothing looked better worn than on the ad board. As in, sometimes the actual product is better than the ad board.

I so miss Last Call. I imagine it would look better worn because there would be no soft focus.

I just remember that surprised moment when I noticed the clothing was better than the ads, but do not really remember the advertisments. Did the adboards use pictures with a soft focus?

I see a lot of hypermale or hyperfemale models. You know the type, meter-wide shoulders on the men, super boobs and butts on the women. Even if you think that looks good, doesn't it make sense to make the models look more like your customers?

I also see a lot of images with bad aspect ratios, obviously screen shots crammed into square vendor prims without any attempt at cropping.

I don't specifically recall, and most of the outfits did not come with a promotional picture. I'd have to look in my inventory for one to see if they used it but they probably did.

Unfortunately, a lot of them actually do that. I used to think that male av's who end up with short little arms were the result of noob tweaking. Crank the shoulder wayyyy up and not realize that, as a result, the arms end up looking stumpy.

When I saw guys like that on the ads of on what appeared to be an otherwise good-quality shop, I had to laugh. Maybe guys like their arms like that?

Same goes for the hyperfemmes, IMHO. Everyone has their own idea of "ideal" good looks.

Lexxi, the other thing may be the use of a facelight - possibly, the facelight washed out the contrast in the clothing.

Not to be rude, but isn't the whole point of digital maniplation the fact that it is pretty much invisable. If you can tell an image is altered, then yes, that person is lacking the skills to pull it off, if you don't even notice digital alterations, as most of you probably don't, then this whole conversation is probably pretty useless. I mean you don't walk into a magazine shop and say, hey, every cover in here is digitally manipulated, even though they always are.

And yes some people use a huge amount of post production, which is the actual word. Photoshop is a trademark, and professional graphic designers sort of dissaprove of the whole concept of 'photoshopping' and especially using that word.

But realistically, everything around you, all printed media is hugely altered in post, trust me, this is what I do for a living.

Do yourself a favor and save the 25L. It is crap. only the skate blades are prims, (with MASSIVE bling) the shoe is a system shoe. I just deleted it. Oh well.... 25 isn't worth crying for. But I won't be surprised if there's FREE skates somewhere that actually look good.

free skates and a whole lake to skate on ---> http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eaton/125/184/99

Hopefully not crap, I made them last year.

I do recall there was something of a faded look to the ads, while the clothing was first time I had really seen well done folds, and texturing to the clothing. Those folds, texturing being hard to see on the adboards.