Pamela Anderson

This is Pamela Anderson, probably fresh from Canada and looking absolutely gorgeous. If what I read what was printed in her Playboy write-up right, she was only 18 years old when she posed for that august publication (February 1990).

Now there’s one thing I just don’t get. Take a look at this pic and compare with her recent photos. I could barely recognise the younger Pamela Anderson. Discounting the obvious age gap, I see absolutely nothing wrong with her body. She has a great figure, nice boobs, and an attractive face. Why she would want to go for surgical “enhancements” is quite beyond me. I felt she looked a lot worse after those procedures. Ugh.

Oh well, at least now we get to see Ms Anderson “in her prime”, so to speak. And she looked damned good!

This scan is released under my dScans WWSA series. As usual, you can grab the full-sized scan here. Now, this scan contains nudity, so those who are of a more delicate constitution consider yourselves duly warned.

For most folks, this lovely lady should be a familiar sight. She’s the featured model for a “bust enhancing” company in ads that run almost everyday in the free Today newspaper. Those full page ads are kinda hard to miss (for guys anyway).

She’s named Yako Rata (occasionally spelled Yaku Rata), an “international Japanese model”. She must also keep a fairly low profile, because my Internet searches on her pretty much turned up zilch. Or maybe she has an exclusive contract with this company :) Anyway, it’s good that they are not simply recycling the same few pictures in all the ads that featured her. The recent ones have her in a different hairstyle – I liked her much better with her hair down.

I think she’s hot, and she caught my eye the first time I saw her ad. Those dangerously low-cut dresses that she always wore in the ads most definitely helped . They more than highlight her bountiful assets :)

She’s definitely does not have that cutesy innocent look that seemed to be stereotypical of Japanese models. She has that kind of mature, smoldering sensuality that reminded me of Monica Belluci (now, THAT is a woman!).

Unfortunately, her ads do not seem to appear in any print media other than newspapers. So I had to make do with this full-page newspaper ad. And because of the low quality of the source material, I had to do a fair bit of work on it. If you guys know of any higher quality source, please do drop me a line :)

This scan of Yako Rata is released under my dScans WWSA series. As usual, you can grab the full-sized image here:

Her name is Xiao. That’s it. Short and sweet. And I think she’s pretty hot looking, though I’m not too sure about that slightly pouty look she has in all her shots.

Xiao also did a photoshoot for Newman magazine a few years ago with where she posed in her birthday suit with only a painted swimsuit covering her important lady bits. Now that was a smoking hot photoshoot. It certainly was different. I’ll have to get that scanned sometime.

I released 2 scans of Xiao for my dScans WWSA series. They are both double page spreads, so I had to join them up in Photoshop.

For the longest time, I was afraid to retouch double page scans. The trick, of course, was to merge the image seamlessly, or you’ll end up with an ugly line running through the middle of the scan. You also have to cut the pages out of the magazine. That usually involves splitting open the spine of the magazine and pretty much destroying the magazine in the process. And more often than not, you’ll still end up with missing bits, so that the 2 pages don’t exactly line up. That’s where the fun begins…you’ll have to do tons of cloning to “fill-in” those missing bits. Sigh, why can’t they just print it in landscape in the magazine and be done with it?

As usual, grab the full sized scans here:

Laurie Carr

I scanned this picture of the gorgeous Laurie Carr from a Playboy magazine about 10 years ago. Not too sure if I’ve ever released it, but I remembered that the scan was pretty small.

This was mainly due to 2 reasons:

Firstly, the abysmal quality of the print. Now, I’ve scanned plenty of images from magazines in my time, and I reckon that American magazines have just about the worst print quality. Tissue paper thin pages and half-tone patterns the size of golf balls, it takes A LOT of work to make the images look halfway decent. Playboy is by no means the worst offender, but they’re up there. Anyway, one of the tricks to improve quality is to down-sample your image, i.e. make your image smaller. If you scrunch your image small enough, even the lousiest retouch can look good. It’s sorta like how a low bit-rate movie file can look pretty good on your portable PMP but looks like crap on your PC monitor. :)

Secondly, big monitors were a rarity back then. After all, it made no sense of scan something larger than what your monitor can display, right?

And there’s another reason I didn’t mention….my skillz weren’t very good then, so that was the best I could do. Larger images really highlight any deficiencies in your retouching, and can be distracting (in a bad way).

Anyway, I hope that I’ve improved some since then. :)

This scan of Laurie Carr is released under my dScans WWSA series. And yeah, it contains tasteful nudity. So for those of you who are offended by this kind of stuff, consider yourself duly warned.

Grab the scan here.

Stacy Yang

I got this hand-me-down issue of Torque magazine from a buddy recently. For those unfamiliar with the magazine, Torque deals with everything that is even remotely automotive related. I’m not a car fan, so this magazine usually goes under my radar. What I do like, though, is that there is usually a scantily clad cutie that accompanies the cover story. And those ladies are usually pretty hot looking, too. Pretty girls and expensive cars seem to go hand in hand. They sure know what guys like, heh.

This kinda made me wonder why the local editions of Maxim (now defunct) and FHM do not plump Torque’s sources. The girls are hot and seemed to be local models, judging from the write up inside.

All the pictures inside were 2 page spreads, and all of them have way too much text crowding the image. I had to do a whole lot of cloning to hide the seams and get rid of the text. The one saving grace was that the print was of fairly high quality, even though the paper was kinda thin. Other than text and seam removal, it was a pretty simple retouch. I left the background plain to make the subject matter stand out. Compared to American magazines, local magazines are a cinch to retouch. The half-tone pattern used in American printing are the size of golf balls! They need a LOT of retouching to make them look half-way decent.

Although I named the scan Stacy Yang, it’s by no means certain that this was actually her name. The model was, unfortunately, uncredited in the photo-shoot. They seemed more interested in mentioning the sponsors of her clothing, the photographer and the make-up artist than the model name. Shucks. I got the name from a one-line blurb in the article. What the hell, I’ll just use the name Stacy Yang rather than leave her anonymous. If anybody knows her name, do feel free to drop me a line :)

I have released 3 scans of Stacy and that what’s-its-name car for my dScans WWSA series. As usual, you can grab the full sized scans here.

Maggie Tan - Maxim Singapore, August 2007

Introducing Maggie Tan – model, actress and all round hottie.

Some of you guys may recognise her – she was the girl holding briefcase No. 4 in the local version of the US TV Game Show, Deal Or No Deal (Season 1). I don’t usually watch TV Game Shows, but perhaps I should, especially if they feature girls like her :) Click the wiki link to find out more.

This scan is from the August 2007 issue of Maxim Singapore. Maggie was also the cover girl. It was a smoking hot cover btw, and that was what attracted me to buy that particular issue. Sadly, Maxim Singapore is no more. It closed just as it was finding its footing.

I have released 2 scans of Maggie Tan from the Maxim photoshoot to my dScans WWSA series. There were more pictures in the magazine, but I felt these 2 were the best ones. Check out the bikini scan that I posted here: that’s an awesome lookin’ body and oh that sexy belly button! Smokin’ baby! Maggie has a longish face, and she should really smile more – it really makes her face light up. Not that I’m complaining about this come-hither look shown in the pics. LOL

Rachel Nichols - Maxim June 2001

Well, I just watched the GI Joe movie. I enjoyed it. Checked all the right boxes for a blockbuster summer movie. Big explosions, spiffy special effects, great fight scenes, a truly awesome car chase sequence, nasty villains, beautiful women and of course, square jawed heroes. Oh yeah, a way over-the-top plot to tie everything together. All black and white, good vs evil. No ambiguity here! And the good guys won (sorta). You do know a sequel will be coming along, right? :)

For a supposedly kiddie movie, the body count was surprisingly high - the bad guys seemed to have no compunction killing people, collateral damage be damned! And some are pretty graphic, like the part where the pretty blond female soldier got skewered right in front of her CO by the baddie from behind. But hey, it's all good if you don't see any blood right? :)

I know some reviewers are totally savaging the movie, but I liked it. It was more satisfying to me than the 2 hour snoozefest that was the latest Harry Potter movie (which the reviewers seemed to like). But hey, I'm not a movie reviewer, so what do I know? :)

The 2 leading ladies looked very good indeed. And talk about misleading advertising...Rachel Nichols only appeared in that black skin tight combat suit for only a couple of seconds near the end of the movie - shucks.

As promised, here are the Rachel Nichols scans. I've released 4 for my dScans WWSA series. Hope you like them! As usual, grab the full sized scans from either my Yahoo Groups or Google Groups.