Celebrities are in the public eye 24/7, whether they like it or not, and that requires professional sylists, PR coaches, image-consultants, and touch-up artists, among other busy-bodies. All this help keep celebs looking good, but when a celeb shows up in print, that truly becomes their time to shine. With a team of Photoshopping professionals, a celebrity can go from drab to fab without even trying — that is, if someone doesn’t screw it up. We’ve all seen more than our fair share of overly airbrushed celebrities — most of the time without realizing it — and our perception of beauty is skewed because of it. Here are the 15 most ridiculous examples of celebrity Photoshop disasters we could find.
Nia Long
Nia Long, best known for her roles in Big Momma’s House and Soul Food, is posing here for the PETA ad campaign supposedly banishing fur from her life. It’s an admirable cause for sure, but it seems like she’s missing some fur of her own. Or even a remnant of a crotch, or even a belly button. We understand that full frontal nudity wasn’t the goal here, but the art direction at PETA could have surely done a better job at making her bottom half look less like Barbie. That’s all on top of the fact that she’s obviously not really in a subway car.
Beyonce
Poor Beyonce. She conquered the music industry as a solo act, which is hard enough as it is, much less coming from a huge group act like Destiny’s Child. That aside, her impact on the film industry is something we have yet to see, and apparently the same goes for her real skin color. We’ve seen everything in print ads from a light beige to a nice mocha, but with so many possibilities, how can we really know what’s real? This is just a glaring side-by-side example of the same shot of her on two different magazine covers.
Brad Pitt
We understand why women, and even some men, tend to drool more than a little over Brad Pitt — whether it be for his movies or pectorals. Many liken his physique to a Greek god, but in this ad for Edwin Jeans, it isn’t the case. Everything below his waist is shrunken down to schoolboy proportions — which we’re sure is a disappointment to Angelina.
Nia Vardalos
Nia Vardalos shot onto the celeb B-list after her starring role in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Here is the Italian DVD cover for her follow-up flop My Life in Ruins, in which it looks like she has Elephantiasis. Her US DVD cover release looks normal, but this version, for some reason, renders her legs the size of logs. Which isn’t flattering on anyone, trust us.
Penelope Cruz
Gorgeous international starlet Penelope Cruz is looking a bit off in this picture taken from the L’Oreal website. It looks like she’s the spawn of a human and a giraffe. Or maybe she got a hold of those tribal neck rings, attempting to stretch her neck beyond the natural limits. The creepy hand coming from nowhere to hold her head up certainly doesn’t help matters. Either way, L’Oreal noticed and has since taken the picture down, and replaced it with a shot of an average model. All is well.
Heidi Klum
Heidi Klum looks amazing, despite giving birth to four children. We’re just going to chalk it up to to hard workouts, sound nutrition and the blessing of good genes. The March 2009 cover for GQ in Germany showed off her nude figure, but it just didn’t look like we’re used to. It seems that the art direction at GQ Germany opted to completely shave her butt off, along with making her look so smooth that it borders doughy. Just give us our old Heidi back!
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Academy Award-winning actress Catherine Zeta-Jones has captured audiences around the globe, and dazzled us in flicks like Chicago. She was named the face of the Di Modolo jewelery brand back in 2007, with ads appearing in Vogue, InStyle, W, and Town and Country. She’s a beauty, but we don’t understand why the jewelry she started fronting isn’t even on her. It looks like the pieces were just sloppily pasted onto her in post production.
Britney Spears
Britney Spears has had her ups and downs over the years, and we’ve followed her wherever she goes — be it bald and crazy or a bubblegum teeny bopper. In late September 2008, Spears released her sixth studio album, Circus, with positive feedback. It seemed like she was on the right track, but when the art for her single Womanizer was released, it looked a bit ridiculous. Here you can see her legs airbrushed beyond all rational belief, to the point that it looks like she’s sporting twigs instead.
Jessica Alba
We all know what starlet Jessica Alba’s body looks like. We’ve been given plenty of fuel to fire our imaginations, especially after Sin City. But after we saw this ad campaign for Campari, we knew something was very, very wrong. It seems like the art direction at Campari decided Alba’s body wasn’t good enough, and replaced it with some other model’s body. We noticed when we thought she looked like a bobble head doll. Not that the mystery model’s body isn’t hot, it’s just that we want Alba’s back.
Demi Lovato
Spawn of Disney, Demi Lovato, is best known for her music and role in Camp Rock. She usually has a cute little dimple in her chin, but in this promotional poster for Camp Rock, it’s been abducted by evil Photoshop pirates. In it’s place is one of the worst airbrush jobs we’ve ever seen. We couldn’t believe it, so we checked every version of the original we could find — and this is it. We don’t know why it’s like this, but art direction at Disney should stop using MS Paint.
Michael Phelps
Olympian Michael Phelps has been in the news quite a bit recently, after his run-in with drugs and partying. We still love him, but we don’t know what happened to this clip from TV Guide’s Olympic Stars to Watch gallery. It seems like the dreaded copy-paste monster attacked Phelp’s head, stole it, then placed it onto the body of a skin-covered steamboat. Or maybe it’s a flesh colored raft? Either way, this is terrible — but hilarious. We can’t stop laughing.
Christina Aguilera
Songbird Christina Aguilera looks innocent and cleaned up, which is a far cry from her Dirty phase. We like it, but there must be something wrong with her finger. Her dog is adorable, but look closer — her ring finger is twisted beyond belief. It seems that someone was trying to touch up around the finger and dog fur, but something went terribly, terribly wrong. It looks painful.
Adam Lambert
Singer Adam Lambert, who was the American Idol eighth-season runner-up, knows how to push the envelope. In November of this year, Lambert performed For Your Entertainment at the American Music Awards and shocked audiences with kissing, grabbing, and grinding on his male back-up dancers. We all know that this MySpace glamour-shot style album cover is appropriate for him, but it seems like someone cut off his shoulder. And that’s without even going into how ridiculous over-processed his face is.
Mandy Moore
Mandy Moore is America’s girl-next-door actress and musician. Though her career has faded a bit since the start, she still pops up every once in a while. Here, Yahoo! Music featured her and included several shots of the musician. All was well… except for that chunk of head missing. It seemed like one of those unbelievable mistakes, but in checking the original — and sure enough, it’s no joke. We don’t know what was so terrifying that Yahoo! felt the need to scalp Mandy Moore, but it must have been pretty bad to leave her in such a state.
Brittany Murphy
The late Brittany Murphy dazzled us with her natural beauty and talent, and her sudden death is a loss to the entire entertainment community. What we can’t understand is why anyone would want to airbrush all of her natural beauty into oblivion. Real people DO have pores, lower eyelids, and smile wrinkles. Brittany Murphy was flat out gorgeous because of her distinct looks. We hope for the day that art directors will realize that we want to see real beauty, and we all know how much it would help our younger generation. RIP Brittany.
