Photo Editing

Photo Editing is the alteration of pixels (picture elements) in an image. These images can be altered by a computer software program or automatically enhanced by modern digital camera options. As computer software with altering abilities becomes more widely available and easy to use, more people have the opportunity to enhance pictures and to use the software creatively. Because it has become difficult to distinguish real content from edited content, there have been serious ethical problems surrounding photo editing. Additionally, with the ubiquity of photo enhancements there has been an increased interest in truth in photography.

Original photo is on the left with three edited versions on the right.

History

1860

The first notable edited photo came in 1860, not too long after Niepce invented the photograph. The photo below (left) places President Abraham Lincoln's head on the body of John Calhoun.

1864

In 1864, there is a depiction of General Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War. The three separate photos below and to the right were combined to create the final product (left).

1865

This stately scene shows General Sherman with all of his generals. However, one general was not present in the original photograph and was subsequently added to it at a later date.

1942

In 1942, Benito Mussolini had his horse trainer removed from the picture in order to appear more heroic.

1987

In 1989, Oprah's head was placed on a body from an advertisement for a gown. Neither the gown designer nor Oprah were notified about this before the ad went public.

2007

In 2007, the popular movie series, Harry Potter, released a promotional movie poster for its fifth film, The Order of the Phoenix, in which actress Emma Watson's chest was enlarged.

Basics of Photo Editing

Digital photos are stored on computers in the form of a grid containing elements known as pixels. Each pixel has its own information, and modern photo editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel's Paint Shop Pro are programmed to allow the users to change the information of each pixel individually or in large clusters. On a large-scale, this alters the entire image. These programs' algorithms have become so fine-tuned that if matched with a skilled user, it may be very difficult to detect any alterations of a photo.

Techniques

Cropping

Cropping is used to show only a selection of the picture. It is used primarily to focus the attention of a viewer on a particular portion of the image or to remove unwanted objects and/or persons.

Color Manipulation

Image editing software allows users to change the color of an entire image or the color of certain elements. For example, a color image of a person may be edited to appear in black and white with the person's hat remaining bright red.

Color manipulation is used in popular media to alter the skin tone of celebrities. It is used to lighten the skin of dark-skinned celebrities and make the skin of light-skinned celebrities have a tan or bronze glow.

This cosmetic ad lightened musical artist Beyonce's skin.

Liquify

The liquify filter is one of the most powerful tools in Adobe Photoshop. It allows user to disorts pixels without losing quality. This filter allows us to push, pull, rotate, reflect, pucker, and bloat the pixels of any image. Changeable properties with the liquify filter are Forward Warp, Reconstruct, Twirl, Pucker, Bloat, Push, Mirror, Turbulence, Freeze / Thaw Mask, Hand and Zoom. An example of the liquify tool can be seen in the 2007 Harry Potter example above, in which the artist bloated the chest area of the female actress.

Controversial Edited Photos

The original photo is featured on the left, and the edited photo is on the right.

University of Wisconsin at Madison

University of Wisconsin at Madison wanted to portray student diversity in one of its brochures by inserting an African-American student in the crowd of white students. The original photograph (right) was taken in 1993 and the additional student in the photograph to the left was added from a picture taken in 1994.

Lebanon War Photographs

In 2006, Reuters, a news agency in New York, was caught publishing altered photos of the Lebanon War. Reuters fired photographer Adnan Hajj, who used a software editing program to manipulate many of his war photos. CAMERA, a pro-Israel media watch organization, said that the alleged photographic manipulations were used as propaganda by the mainstream media in an attempt to sway public opinion and paint Israel as an aggressor, suggesting that Israel was guilty of targeting civilians. Manipulations included adding and darkening smoke to a building recently attacked and adding missiles to a picture of a fighter firing a flare.A film released on YouTube compares the two images, pointing out the striking similarities between the photograph used by Reuters on both July 24 and August 5.

2009 Microsoft Photograph

In 2009, an image in a Microsoft Corporation advertisement was edited to transform the face of a black man into the face of a white man. On the US Microsoft website, the photo features one asian, one black, and one white. In the Polish Microsoft website however, the black man was replaced by a white man. This alteration in the photo triggered an enormous amount of discussion in the online community. Online bloggers and commenters "wondered if the change was racially motivated, the result of poor judgment or both." Some people suggested that the Polish image was changed so that the man in the photo would resemble their own country's people more.

H&M

H&M, a popular clothing store , has recently been under fire for their clothing ads. H&M has been using computer-generated bodies and using real models' heads. This head-body disconnect was noticed by a Norway company, Bildbluff, a site that identifies photos that have been edited. H&M has since admitted to using computer-image bodies and converging them with a model's head. They maintain that they used this questionable practice to steer their customers' attention away from the model and towards the articles of clothing.

H&M recently issued a response, defending its decision to use digitally-generated bodies. They do not regret their decision, instead comparing the use of virtual bodies to using mannequins in retail stores.

Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren photoshoppers severely edited an image of model Filippa Hamilton. The public has severely criticized the company for its extreme use of digital manipulation on Hamilton, who is five-foot-ten and only 120 pounds. . This advertisement campaign sparked much controversy because it presents a distorted body image view on an already thin woman. It gained a lot of media attention, particularly because Hamilton's waist was edited to be a smaller width than her head. Ralph Lauren's actions can have negative implications on women and young girls and their perception of their bodies and body images. They have since fired Hamilton for reportedly being too fat .

Romney

It doesn't matter who we are... what matters is our plan. No one cared who I was until I put on the mask.

Photoshop is also often used for hoaxes or jokes, often being outrageous enough to be recognized as fake. One example was a photoshopped image of Mitt Romney dressed as the character Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, mocking his time at Bain Capital.

Ethical Implications of Photo Editing

Photo editing can have all kinds of ethical implications. It can either be used to recover an important image that has been distorted, or it can be used to purposely distort reality. Any alteration on reality has dangerous implications, because it will create cognitive dissonance with reality. Photoshopping (another term for photo-editing) has become so advanced that most people cannot tell if a photo has been edited, and some people may be influenced to strive for and/or believe false information that the edited photo is displaying. Visual memory is the human mind's strongest memory component, meaning people are more likely to recall an event based on visual proof versus auditory story telling.

Photo editing can be harmful because it's a powerful tool that can be used to deceive people. The most apparent issue with photo-editing comes from the magazine industry. Celebrities, typically women, who grace the pages of media publications are usually photoshopped into the extreme ideal of perfection. In most women's magazines today, all of the models on the covers and advertisements are portraying a world with no blemishes, even skin tones, small waist, large breasts, highly whitened teeth, and no body-fat. This type of content sets a standard for women that is impossible to maintain. Such physical representations can have negative psychological effects on women, and especially young women. By applying the theory of social comparison, people will compare themselves with an edited photo of their favorite celebrity or model which may result in decreased self-esteem and body satisfaction.

Photoshopped images are already impacting many people today. Currently, 7 million women in the United States suffer from eating disorders alone and 50% of girls between the ages of 11 and 13 believe they are overweight. . Having more photoshopped images could pressure more women and young girls to develop further eating disorder developments and increase the pressure to match the perfect body that mass media displays.

Even when it is known that a photo has been edited, which is often the case when photos are used to mock individuals, the consequences can still be ethically questionable. For uneducated audiences, altered photos may take on the appearance of truth. This has the potential to cause problems when people use what they have learned from these pictures and apply it to real life situations. This type of photo editing is often times used to slander various religious groups, ethnic groups, and the LBGT community.

Photo editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop and other image editing programs within photo taking equipment, such as cameras, also have privacy implications. Unknown to many users, photo editing cameras and other programs are able to embed certain information within pictures and movies. For example, if a person were to take a picture with a camera, certain information about the owner can be put within the photo. If one were to get a hold of that picture, that person find this embedded information within the picture. This could leave to compromising information of the user being put into the public domain. This same thing occasionally has been found to occur in photo editing programs as well. When a picture is edited, information about the users is put within the photo. When this picture reaches the public domain through online sites such as Flickr and Facebook, other people can find and interpret this information. This leads to information of the owner being released, without the owner knowing.

Taking A Stand Against Photoshop

Recently, several groups and companies have vocalized their discontent with photoshopped images. In response, they have come out with magazine covers, photo editorials and clothing advertisement campaigns featuring celebrities, models and people who are not photoshopped.

Tina Fey

American comedian Tina Fey has advocated for a middle of the road approach to photoshop, writing in her memoir "Bossypants:"

“I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society…unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.”

She goes on to say that several magazines with a sensible approach to photo manipulation, like Bust simply make it look like one was photographed in great light on a great day. She contrasts this appraoch to more extreme examples, like her recent InStyle cover in which a noticebale chunk of her torso was removed in an attempt to make her slimmer.

British Law

After a beauty ad showing a wrinkle-free Twiggy, the British lawmakers announced that they wanted to ban the use of photoshop for image retouching on ads that were geared towards those under 16. "Today's unrealistic idea of what is beautiful means that young girls are under more pressure now than they were even five years ago. Airbrushing means that adverts contain completely unattainable perfect images no one can live up to in real life. We need to help protect children from these pressures and we need to make a start by banning airbrushing in adverts aimed at them."

Keira Knightley

In 2004, Knightley's breasts for the movie Pirates of the Caribbean were digitally enhanced. She was quoted in an interview saying "Those certainly weren't mine," for King Arthur in 2006. In the next Pirate's movie, The Duchess, she told the producers that she will not have her body altered in anyway for promotional movie posters.

Domino's Pizza

Domino's has started a Totally Real Talk Campaign, that exposes the process of what pizzas have to go through before getting photographed for promotional materials. Some companies have staged their photos with nails, blowtorches, or steam guns on their pizzas before shooting. Dominos has announced that they are only going to be photographing pizzas that come straight from their ovens, with no staging or altering.

Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

In 2004, Dove launch a marketing campaign titled Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. The purpose of the campaign was to help build self-esteem for women to be comfortable with themselves and to celebrate the female body no matter the shape or size. Dove released a commercial showcasing the power of photo editing and stating "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted" in the video.

An underwear ad as part of the campaign remarked as being photo edited.

Some of the pictures that were included in the campaign were argued to be believe as photo edited. A spokesperson from Dove replied to the controversial statement,

“We have made the commitment not to distort any of our images to create an unrealistic or unattainable view of beauty. As we have said, this does not mean we do absolutely nothing to the images to make them suitable for printing. There is always something that needs a bit of adjustment to meet professional standards - even in the best run photo shoot with the best photographers. Removing or correcting these things does not mean that people don't see the woman as she really is and does not change our commitment to real women.”

Dove eventually elected to end their campaign due to a sharp decrease in sales growth. This is a strong indication on actual consumer attitudes toward photo manipulation, suggesting that there is a strong expectation and desire for highly exaggerated depictions of the effects products will have on physical beauty.

Public Response

While the general public has been accepting of Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign, feminist sites and groups have exclaimed backlash. Many groups see Dove as not promoting "real" beauty but instead a socially scripted version of beauty. Some criticize Dove for a contradiction: putting more curvaceous, authentic looking models on their advertisements and yet producing a product that "firms" body parts. As Jennifer L. Pozner from WIMN (Women in Media & News)writes:

"Dove's attempts are profoundly limited by a product line that comes with its own underlying philosophy: cellulite is unsightly, women's natural aging process is shameful, and flabby thighs are flawed and must be fixed … oh, so conveniently by Dove's newest lotion."

Richard Roeper, columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, reacted fearfully to these women. Referencing these "chunky women", Roeper found "these Dove ads a little unsettling. If I want to see plump gals baring too much skin, I'll go to Taste of Chicago, OK?". The backlash continues.

Glamour Magazine

In a recent past issue, Glamour Magazine decided to run a unretouched photo of model Lizze Miller. At a comfortable and healthy size 12-14, Miller sits photographed nude with curves that every woman naturally has.

The response has been huge and extremely positive. One woman from Georgia exclaimed: "the most amazing photograph I've ever seen in any women's magazine". Another from Massachusetts said: "his beautiful woman has a real stomach and did I even see a few stretch marks? This is how my belly looks after giving birth to my two amazing kids! This photo made me want to shout from the rooftops." It is unclear whether Glamour Magazine will continue to include photos like these, but this photo continues to pour in enthusiastic responses.

External Links

• Photo Forensics Software
• Before Photoshop: 7 Photo Edits That Literally Made History
• L'Oréal Lightens Beyoncé Up Again
• Top 15 Manipulated Photographs

References

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