penkitten said:
if they are professional pics then you never know...
regular pics, you could probably tell... and not everyone has access to getting a pic airbrushed.
Heck, with just the packaged software that came with my Nikon digital camera, you can manipulate a picture quite a bit. I would imagine with something like photoshop or equilivant, you could do quite a bit more.
Bottom line, I've personally never found pictures to be very reliable for assessing true beauty. Some people just aren't very photogenic and the opposite is true as well; some people can take a great picture but look blah in real life.