On the other hand, there's that yellow gold necklace which has
white metal posts and apparently some white metal soldering in the
original, but it's all retouched to yellow gold in the catalog
image. Now _that's_ dishonest. Still, the catalog images are
dazzling, so that's why I wondered if anyone here did that.
Considering how often we see catalogs that show items that won't
actually even be available, so the customer then is offered slightly
more costly goods, or lesser goods at the same price, or stuff like
that, or even the mass marketers offering cheap goods at inflated
prices and pretending it's good value, it seems to me that a bit of
retouching or downright faking of the images in catalogs isn't that
much of an honesty issue. The point to the catalog is communication
of what style and look the customer will expect to buy, and they're
not using a loupe to be sure the grainy, halftoned print image
exactly matches the real thing. Some of that dramatic retouching or
swapping of a canned diamond in those images might be just so it at
least partially survives being half toned, and reduced in size to a
typical catalog image, and still vaguely suggests a diamond. The
needs of a printed (or web based) catalog image are not at all that of
a high quality high resolution photo, and one needs to adjust for
that. Remember too, the catalog exists to help sell the stuff, not to
purport to be totally honest. We ARE, after all, talking about
advertising here... (grin) And I've seen plenty of ad copy that
doesn't even start with a photo, but just uses a nice artists sketch.
This too can be effective, and I don't really see much difference, or
ethical issue, if the communication to the customer of what to expect
is achieved. If a totally honest image is used, the half toned and
printed in a one inch wide newsprint catalog, the diamond set
section will appear as just a vague blurred smear, rather than
clearly showing that there is a row of diamonds set there...
Peter
