January 6, 2012
Photography
Would you support a rating system that reveals how much a particular image was digitally altered?
This paper, mentioned widely in recent days, addresses the digital alteration of photographs. Eric Kee and Hany Farid are the authors of A perceptual metric for photo retouching, published by the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.
I found this passage and much that follows to be most interesting, "We propose that the interests of advertisers, publishers, and consumers may be protected by providing a perceptually meaningful rating of the amount by which a person's appearance has been digitally altered. When published alongside a photo, such a rating can inform consumers of how much a photo has strayed from reality, and can also inform photo editors of exaggerated and perhaps unintended alterations to a person's appearance."
You can image the ramifications of such a rating could be both good and bad. Thought the authors devote much of their focus to "...highly idealized and unobtainable body images," I can image particularly practical uses of the technology such as detecting the amount of retouching used in creating that mouth-watering photograph of a hamburger.
Interesting, the acknowledgements tell us, "This work was supported by a gift from Adobe Systems, Inc., a gift from Microsoft, Inc. and a grant from the National Science Foundation...".
It's a fascinating idea, and one we were talking about at the first thunder lizard photoshop conference back in 1994. However, I think the best option would be to teach more students how to manipulate images in Photoshop... the more they know what's possible, the less they'll believe when they see images in print.
And remember: Every image is "manipulated," whether it's in camera or in-computer.
Posted by: David Blatner | January 6, 2012 2:41 PM
This sounds like a good idea for fashion shoots and the like, but how about photo montages not intended to land in glossy magazines but in more "day-to-day" applications? Most images that my shop processes are montages of in-house shots with 2 to 5 different stock shots...
Posted by: Isabelle Picard | January 6, 2012 5:03 PM
Good point David.
I was talking this morning with someone about how ubiquitous mobile web devices are becoming -- that coming generations will increasingly treat web data as a part of one's own knowledge set.
True too with something like this. I grew up never questioning if a photographic image was true and real. In fact, in a somewhat naive way, it was proof that something was true and real. In just thirty years time many of us now view all photographic images with skeptical eye.
Posted by: chuck
|
January 6, 2012 5:19 PM
I'm thinking a rating system would probably take that into account. It would be interesting to know which parts of a montage were "true". I assume there would be categories for various types of "editorial" images as well.
Posted by: chuck
|
January 6, 2012 5:27 PM
Avoid ratings "systems". Ratings systems involve management, which usually involves outside influence. Whereby we'll get a system similar to music parental rating or movie rating or food classification: inept and run by people trying to enforce last generation's values. We are then, for example, left explaining to our children why "Cheese Food" is neither.
In teaching Photoshop, I coach towards "less is more, and don't mislead or disappoint the end user".
Posted by: Tony | January 21, 2012 11:03 AM