Exactly. Kind of nasty, but not necessarily egregious. I’m sure we’ve all seen a lot worse. On the substance, though, the ad is still an unmistakable piece of trash.

As for specifically photoshopping the eyes, I can’t see anything like that when I use “difference” to compare the two images … the differences are global. Yes, they make her look worse, but it’s not like they specifically slanted her eyes.

However, the stretch seems bad enough.

This is getting ridiculous. I never had any intention on drawing this discussion out further (lord knows I don’t wish to be mistaken for Charles Johnson) but here we go…

This image contains my three versions of the photo. The first is just with the basic manipulations I first mentioned (downsampling + high-constrast Curves adjustment + Unsharp Mask). The second is the same, stretched 115% horizontally (per the numeric controls on Photoshop’s Options bar). The third is ArchPundit’s screen capture from the YouTube video.

For comparison here are the same three versions lined up horizontally. Note that the vertical scale is all but identical.

QED, no?

Finally, here is a screen capture of Roskam from the very same video compared against two versions of this headshot. The version on the left is unretouched, the version on the right is stretched to 115% horizontally (as with the Duckworth image).

I’d say it’s relatively clear that the image of Roskam seen in the video was not stretched in the same manner as Duckworth’s (as we would expect it to be had the entire video been stretched according to Davconn62’s suggestion).

Alright… I’m done.

Placing the original over the second image and scaling it to match shows no additional distortions or modified features.

I will give you the consideration that the reproduction has gained contrast and the over sharpening has added slight halos around edges which are a kind of distortion but that’s all.

I will provide a QuickTime movie clicking back and forth between the two if you’re curious.
david

Simply not true. The image is easily recreatable through the steps I note above: downsampling, applying a high-contrast tone curve, over sharpening and a little stretching. I’ve done this myself and would gladly share my images if anyone really cares enough to ask for them.

Eric: I’ve been teaching Photoshop at colleges for years and am considered an expert. This is, no question, a simple use of the smudge tool.

I would willingly match my Photoshop expertise against anyone’s and can say that, no question, the smudge tool is unnecessary here.

Daveconn62: …Also, the stretched-out effect? That’s easily caused by the different aspect ratios that exist in Broadcast TV. Standard television is broadcast in 4 by 3 ratio. It is possible that this image was transfered to another common ratio of 16 by 9.

You can see the source video for yourself right here. Sure looks like 4:3 to me (and stretching this to 16:9 would deform it far too much to match the above).

I won’t flatly contradict you, but the real test would be to compare it to the images of Roskam himself at the end (or even Ted Kennedy’s in the middle) to see if they’re stretched out at all. As it is, I’ve taken a screenshot of Roskam from the end of the video and compared it against a headshot of him found online, and can assure you that it hasn’t been significantly deformed, let alone to the degree the image of Duckworth has been.

Bob T.: I think her face has been “squeezed” vertically. I took the AP version and, using Paint Shop, I resized the image to 85% of height and 100% of width.

Stretching it to 115% horizontally as I did would be effectively the same thing as squeezing it to 87% vertically.

So, when it comes down to it, I think they deformed her picture. Ultimately, anonyquack is right, though. It’s about the substance of ad, not the teche surrounding the photo.

that bothers me, a lot.

I took the AP version and, using Paint Shop, I resized the image to 85% of height and 100% of width.

The size is identical, and the appearance of the squeezed image matches the one in the ad.

I learned how to do this in the first place because I wanted to take a few pounds off of a face I was using on a web site. Stretch the face just a bit, and voila! Ten pounds of weight loss!

At any rate, let’s be careful not to jump to conclusions lest we throw our credibility to the wind.

Indeed, they are a bunch of colostomy bag content.