Here is the link to the YT playlist with my retouches - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp63vN333Ss5dwAX6ztQTSx9oocsT3PPk

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I take my son to kindergarten on my bicycle every morning. It is our special time together when we talk about everything. And every morning we were passing by one political elections poster on a bus stand that would catch my attention each time we’d see it. 

I asked my son if he thought that the man on the picture was feeling good or not. He said that the man looked afraid a bit. If my son, who was 4 at the time, could see it, than everybody sees it, why did they use this photo? The person on the photograph seems like a good man, but he is obviously uneasy in front of the camera, like many people do. I have photographed many people and I know few tricks for this problem, and I do not consider myself a professional photographer! The lighting and retouching was not really good as well. I got an inspiration to fix it....

If he had the identical twin brother, which one would you vote for, the one on the left, or on the right (below)?

I believe that the face on the right, the fixed one, radiates a different personality, a confident, calm person, the person you can trust. Still, I think that it is VERY difficult to spot the differences just by looking at these 2 photographs. The changes are very subtle. 

Not to make him look thin, young and Photoshop-Beautiful like we see around us very often. No cosmetic surgery, no Botox, no healing brush to erase wrinkles!  I did not want to have the result like on the picture above, this is tooo, too much, although it is not the worst use of photoshop I saw.

I decided to MAKE IT REAL. I’ll use Photoshop to make changes that could have been achieved without using photoshop! I’ll change his expression not more than what he could do using his facial muscles. And I’ll ad a little shadow that could have been done with one additional light from above. I’ll show HIM in a good light, on a good day, when he feels good and comfortable! Not somebody else, him!

He did not get elected, but I believe he would have been much better than the average politician who knows how to pose and lie. I admit I like the guy. Here's a face the whole world got to know recently, Alexis Tsipras. Here we have asymetry of the face, his right eye is positioned slightly lower than his left. I believe that it is not easy to see the changes, but the face on the right seems right, and the original, on the left, next to it seems wrong, although he is young politician with a sympathetic face.

I made a stop motion video of the changes, here's the link for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFxLaPuv-PA   

Greek Prime Minister Tsipras..

Here is one other politician. He is young, good looking, one may say - nothing to work on. If you look closer you may see that his face is a bit asymetric. His right eye is positioned a bit lower than the left one, his lips also tend to be asymetric. Symetricity is usually one of the key elements in the definition of beauty in nature! Even the bugs who are symetric can find partners easier. So, I decided to do that fixing, and I am sure that very few people would notice that. Again, all the changes I made are not radical ones, they are subtle, but if one focuses to the right, fixed one, and the to the original, left one, the right one is more pleasant to the eye.

This is my new work on this subject. Michelle Obama. Beautiful sympathetic first lady of the USA. Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy. High end professional work, no doubt about it! Can I do something to make her face even more sympathetic, I asked myself. Not easy, I think, but I gave it a try, here is the result!

Here is the original photo, I found it on Wikipedia...

Beautiful photograph of a beautiful sympathetic lady! At first, I thought, nothing can be done to improve her perfect image. It would be a crime to try something!

Well, I still dared. Here is what I did... 

I am not sure, but I dare to believe that I did make some small improvement, and it is not a FAKE change, it is her, the changes are REAL, she could have looked like this a fraction of a second before or after the camera recorded the original, official image. I did not do any of the typical photoshop corrections, did not make her thinner or younger looking, this is her! Here are the 2 images, next to each other...

Now I am going to show 2 politicians I DISLIKE, and I'll work in the opposite direction, not making them more beautifull only, but showing my vision of the (ugly) truth on these 2 faces....

Face FIX 2

 

I must say that I enjoyed making him look silly more, because I dislike him. 

Even with rather extreme changes, when one sees the photographs together, it is not easy to notice the differences. The stop-motion video show the changes I did. 

Face FIX 4 - no photoshop fixing used!

The person I show here is the Prime Minister of his country. He is a career politician. He is trained well for the job, he probably has a team of professionals working on him, teaching him how to behave, what to say... Judging by the results of the elections, he successfully created the image of a superhero – leader!

Ignore the retouched photgraphs, and instead,carefully chose and show the reality - his micro expressions, his real personality!

Here is a typical photoshopped photograph, showing this forty-something politician with a dreamy smile and a skin of a baby. My opinion is that this is SILLY, it is an obvious FAKE!

He is a career politician. Probably he has a team of professionals who work on his image. His actions, his speeches, his gestures, everything is carefully planned and executed to win sympahy from the population.

If the first case I showed here did not show the true image of the person because of his discomfort in front of the camera, here we have the opposite case. Here the pictures creates a false positive image. I am on the side of the opposition to his government and my decision here is to reveal his true image showing his micro expressions! Any photoshop intervention on the imegs would have been wrong, this is only about the selection of the right frames from the video!

 

Before, he did it more often, he was probably coached not to do it. When his tongue is not extruded, his concious effort not to extrude is, I believe, visible on his lips and muscles around the mouth.

Here is what I found on his tongue protrusion: http://center-for-nonverbal-studies.org/tonguesh.htm

Facial expression. 1. A momentary protrusion of the tongue between the lips. 2. A gesture of the tongue found in gorillas and other primates, in children, and in all ethnic groups studied.

Usage: The tongue-show is a universal mood sign of unspoken disagreement, disbelief, disliking, displeasure, or uncertainty. It may modify, counteract, or contradict a verbal remark. Following the statement, "Yes, I agree," e.g., a protruded tongue may suggest, "I don't agree." Tongue-shows can reveal misleading, ambiguous, or uncertain areas in dialogue, public statements, and oral testimony, and thus may signal probing points (i.e., unresolved verbal issues to be further analyzed and explored).

Culture. In Tibet and southern China, a brief tongue-tip show is used to show, "I didn't mean it" (Morris 1994:224).

Pediatrics. Infants ranging in age from 0.7 to 72 hours old can imitate adult displays of tongue protrusion (Meltzoff and Moore 1983).

RESEARCH REPORTS: 1. The tongue-show has been studied in both gorillas and human beings as a negative sign of aversiveness and social stress (Smith et al. 1974). A gorilla pushed from its favorite sitting place, e.g., or a man entering a roomful of strangers, will unwittingly show the tongue in "displeasure." 2. Staring, striking, or scolding another primate may release a tongue protrusion, which may be a fragment of the emotion cue for disgust (Smith et al. 1974). 3. Tongue between lips is a defensive sign children use when approaching strange adults (Stern and Bender 1974).

This (down) is an update with the same person. I made him a bit...sillier...or did I? Which one looks better, I am not sure...!?! Again, the original  photo is done by a very good, professional photographer...

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A bit more on the subject of tongue protrusion. I found it on this link:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=3244344

"Janine Driver has spent the past 13 years studying the subtleties and signals of body language. She has worked for the federal government, the US law enforcement agencies and Fortune 500 companies. She has trained more than 20,000 police officers on interrogation techniques, and has helped hundreds of men and women improve their personal lives through body language analysis.

He briefly stuck out his tongue, licked his lips. And then adjusted the way he was standing.

What did it all mean?

"These are signs that are indicative of someone who is possibly going to withhold the truth," Driver said. "Does it mean he is lying? No. You have to look for these clusters of hot spots."

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This is something new, another politician with the repeating tongue protrusion microexpression. In a short (4:24) clip he did it 21 times! Once every 13 seconds!

Here's the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mD_76gr9u0&t=7s

And here are the captured photographs:

Mission impossible! I tried to make the face of Donald Trump motre plesant. 

I made this video some time before I made the final retouching...