Time Magazine cover blunder

Maybe you saw it and didn’t notice, or maybe you read about it on the Photoshop Disasters blog. Either way, it’s a lesson in Photoshop work. The lesson is “stop and look at what you’re doing.” In their hurry to put together their election cover for Time Magazine, the designer clipped out an election booth and added a fake drop shadow to finish it off. Never mind that the shadow is done poorly, with the cast shadow being a solid shade with hard edges. They should have used a gradient from dark to light, with the lightest part of the shadow being the point furthest away from the object. They should have also added some noise to the shadow to soften it against a white background, and perhaps feathered the edges a bit. The real problem is that when you fake a shadow, it has to actually touch the item it is being cast from where the item meets the floor.

In the cover artwork above, you’ll notice that the voting booth has three legs holding it up, two in front and one extending in the back, and some sort of middle brace extending straight down. However, the shadow of the back leg and middle brace never touches the actual booth legs where they meet the floor. I’m sure the designer had to shrink the shadow vertically to make room for the black type just to the right of the voting booth, but in his hurry to “fix” it, he completely ignored the fact that the shadow is ignoring laws of gravity, professionalism, and pride in the designer’s work. When you’re cloning, removing or adding things to photos in Adobe Photoshop, you really need to step back once in a while and look at your work. Ask yourself if you “believe” what you’re looking at. Did you pay attention to the small details? There’s not a whole lot going on in the Time Magazine cover, the designer should have caught this problem and fixed it. It would have taken just a few minutes, and saved himself and Time Magazine a whole lot of embarrassment.