What Zendaya & Willow Smith’s W Cover Could Have Looked Like

When the latest cover of W Magazine was revealed this week, there were oohs and aaahs at the cool-girl combo of Kiernan Shipka, Zendaya, and Willow Smith. But they were quickly followed by complaints that, whether by lighting or Photoshop tweaking, Zendaya and Smith were made to look lighter-skinned. One of those keen-eyed observers was Jumah Eid, and he wasn't content just to tweet out his observation. He edited the photos back to what he thinks the actress-singers might have looked like if their skin tones had been left alone.

"I re-toned their skin from samples of non-edited photos of these women," he wrote. Eid later posted sample colors of the adjustments he assumes were made. "Sometimes you need to put pictures side by side to really notice it," he told Buzzfeed of his posts. "It only really takes, like, three minutes for me. Three minutes can show exactly what people are doing to these pictures." Perhaps someone misguidedly — ignoring centuries of history and years of magazine gaffes — thought to overexpose the cover photo for a cool, futuristic goth effect; or perhaps there was something more insidious afoot. The magazine and its cover stars have yet to comment on the matter. If and when such a thing happens again, Eid told Buzzfeed he'll have his Photoshop at the ready again. "There's a demand for it," he said.