LOLage to the maximum. Not suprised that the conglomeration of photos in panel 4 contains Hot Shot. This is Walky after all, he has a mini-shrine to the guy.
Actually, most of those photos have very little retouching done in Photoshop. I've seen some of the completely untouched original photos (not any of these recent ones though) and Photoshop works basically amounts to removing any background elements and maybe adjusting the Levels and Curves to give it more of a deeper contrasty look. It basically comes down to two things. The paint used to handpaint the test shots (which gives more of a sheen) and the way the lighting is setup in the photo studio. The use strong overhead lighting to accentuate the molded details, some head on lighting to give it that nice sheen and a very diffused back light to make the shadows look deep and rich. Then when photos of the test shots show up on ebay, it obviously lacks the pop of the studio shot. Even some of the nicer fan shots are seen, it's using nothing more than either overhead or head on lighting and not pro studio lighting.
And how about the later-not-hand-painted stock photos? Like the two different Cyclonus photos. Both are official stock photos. One is super-shiny, the other one looks no different than a fan photo. Are those taken by two different studios?
Most likely, yes. EDIT: they also may not have done the levels/curves adjustments and they were usign different lighting. See my lighting adjusted example below. Left is original, right is my simply lighting adjusted version. No airbrushing, no color adjustments, just simple lighting and contrast to add more pop.
So in fact it may or may not look as terrible as everyone thinks right? Just some one took a crappy pic due to being lazy? And another Shortpacked over saturated with dialog . These ones just aren't funny IMO. I lose interest half way into it.
It could be a number of factors. Hasbro likely employs a number of Photographers. Photographers, like artists, have different approaches and styles. If you look at what I posted above, the image on the left isn't a bad image and represents the toy well, thus Hasbro approved it for use. A different Photographer may have gone into Photoshop and adjusted the curves and levels, etc. to give it a more saturated and contrasty look. The actual toy coloring is probably somewhere between the two images I posted.
So...complaining about something means you don't remember it happening before? "It's our fault for forgetting this isn't the first time this has happened"!? You're never allowed to complain about something more than once - especially when what you're really complaining about is that the same mistakes keep getting made? That's a small-minded opinion.
