I do think it would be a fascinating experiment, to see how different the pictures looked. I'd love to say "Do the best you can do, within the limitations of no airbrushing or photoshop" and see just how big a difference it makes.

Some of the commenters, though, did have a point. I have happy memories of a night spent in my dad's darkroom, with him narrating what he was doing as he burned and dodged the photos he had taken for the newspaper where he was chief photographer (with Peter, Paul and Mary singing "Blowin' in the Wind" as soundtrack).

Photoshopping has much finer control than anything you could do in the darkroom. There are masks that completely smooth out all pores, for instance, and techniques for removing rolls and curves.

Here's a Buzzfeed link to a couple of pictures from People where the subjects had no special makeup and weren't photoshopped.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/whitneyjefferson/zooey-deschanel-and-jessica-pare-photographed-with

Cheers for that. Glad that they did it!