Here We Go Again

Every now and again the subject of "photoshopping" is used as a verb. Recently the French have looked into legislation to limit how much retouching can be done to an image. This is an effort to present some form of realism to young impressionable people that for some reason they have to look like the pictures in the magazines. A while back Dove made a video to show the transformation of a model into a billboard advertisement image. The start and end pints are vastly different. Here is the link if you wanted to see it again. What the video shows is that everyone has flaws or I like to say special characteristics, and that hair and makeup works wonders, it is the art director that determines how much alteration is made to an image.

Every pixel masher has to determine to what level of manipulation is acceptable in their own eyes. In the photo journalistic world these are predetermined by a set of ethics. Basically color correct and sharpen is about all that can be done to a journalists photo. Moving anywhere from journalism goes into the realm of art and artistic impression. More or less what the artist thought they saw or wants to see. The pallet is wide open.

As for where I draw the line of "enhancement", I hope the following example will help show you where I draw the line. Below is an image of Megan Fox, a young actress that seams to be the heartthrob of many young men. In the first image she has your basic street make-up that most all ladies apply before presenting themselves to the public.

If you were to enlarge the image above you would notice areas of interest on an otherwise attractive woman. Taking a look at the image below, I have highlighted three different types of issues with the image. First is the lighter circles highlighting spot blemishes. The second area sown in yellow are areas of complexion or secularity caused by light reflecting off of moisture of oils in the skin. The third area shown in red are areas of her facial structure that could be reworked without completely changing her identity.

There are really two categories that post-processing falls into. Retouching and alteration! One simply applies digital make-up that could have been covered or tones with physical make-up. The other is altering the shape of the face, neck, or body. Generally this crosses my line of digital conduct.

The image above is an example of retouching while the image below is an example of alteration. The eyes have been enlarged, the nose bump has been smoothed, the neck stretched, and finally the chin, mouth and lower part of the nose has been lowered to elongate her face to a more oval shape. If you did not have knowledge of,  or have the image above to reference, you would still identify the image as Megan Fox.

Frankly altering a persons likeness crosses a line for me. I can understand minor movement of a bump here and there but changing bone structure I don't get into. I like digital make-up but not digital plastic surgery. If we need to make someone's hips look smaller, we didn't do a very good job of posing.

As far as digitally altering reality, there was listening to a podcast on this topic the other day on an airline flight. One of the participants said that photographers have been altering reality since the first click of the shutter. How the camera is positioned, angle, background, the entire composition is a reality the photographer creates by use of organic elements. So there is some latitude in digital alteration, but I can become a slippery slope.

The old saying of "Is it real, or is it Memorex?" can be replaced in the digital era with "Is it real, or is it Photoshop?"

Take care all... Doug