March 28, 2024

The Amazing Wonders of Photoshop II

It’s amazing what technology can do. We’ve talked before how images can be altered to say whatever we want them to say. Like the model, who even after giving birth would be retouched for a lingere magazine. Or the example of photoshop being used to make an average teen look like a super star.

Doctored PhotoThe latest one making the most news is the image to the right– a doctored photograph from the war between Lebanon and Israel. It seems that we’re in a war of information as much as we are in a war of rockets and planes. For the untrained eye (which mine is to some degree!) you only need to look at the cloud formation and that the left edges repeat themselves. This is the work of a “clone” tool– which copies the pixels from one point of the image to another. I, myself, am not a master of the tool– and neither was this image editor.

Reuters published this photo and then retracted it. The problem is– where there is one photo, there may be many. Should we be surprised that the terrorists may be manipulating the media into doing their bidding? I wouldn’t say so. It seems more and more that they know exactly what they are doing. They know Americans get their news from pictures. They know how to show a sympathetic people with questions about the war just the right thing to make them question their government’s actions.

We need to hold a higher standard– and hold our media to a higher standard. It’s coming the time that we cannot trust the people who are supposed to bring us the news to give us an accurate picture of it. We need to make sure and verify– and that’s not what we should be doing. It may be time for a clean house– or someone to come along (not the government) and hold these people accountable. Right now, the only way to hold them accountable is with our wallets and the time we watch them on TV.

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4 thoughts on “The Amazing Wonders of Photoshop II

  1. That is pretty pathetic. I think I could do better with about 2 minutes of effort. Heck, give me 4 minutes and I can put dinosaurs on top of the buildings too! Can I get a job at Reuters now?

  2. Of course it is not just the terrorists who will do this. Government are also pretty adept at using media imagery to make their points.

    An early example of this was a photograph of St Paul’s cathedral during the blitz, which a quick google search turns up on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

    This photograph was heavily retouched by artists who literally painted onto the glass photo plate before using in in the press the following day. It was one of the most enduring images of the “indominatble spirit”.

  3. Certainly people do this to bolster their side in the discussion– it’s propoganda. This is why it’s the right thing to draw attention to it rather than let it continue to persuade people that it is truth rather than the lie it is.

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