Photo manipulation: Essay
Pre Introduction: I realised that after promising to post this, I never did – I also checked my rating on google, and my blog post about this essay is rated highly when searching for “photo manipulation essay” So I thought I better put this up.
Introduction
Photo manipulation often goes unnoticed today. The ability to create and digitally alter an image has become an invaluable tool to the media, photographers and digital artists around the world. It allows the photographer access to tools that can be used on digital images, as counterparts for techniques in the darkroom.
The darkroom allowed photographers to create compositions of multiple negatives, by cutting them up. Another technique was to use ink or paint to draw in the missing elements, or remove the parts of the photo that was unneeded. One of the earliest recorded photo manipulations was by Matthew Brady. The image created was a composition of Abraham Lincoln’s head, with the body of a lesser politician, John Calhoun’s body in 1860. A few years after another of his images was edited to add a missing officer to a photo of all of General Sherman’s officers.
As time passed and digital photography gradually replaced traditional photography as the main media, new tools had to be developed to allow the same kind of techniques for photographers as those found in the darkroom.
Chapter 1: “The Rise of a Giant”
Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard to manipulating photos, and a magnitude of other jobs. It began life in 1987, as a program for viewing images simply called “Display”. Its creator Thomas Knoll and his brother who worked for George Lucas at Industrial Light & Magic, worked on creating the first version of Photoshop for Adobe Systems which was released for the Apple Macintosh in 1990. When it was first released it gave users the ability to edit images digitally, using basic tools.
Photoshop is such a widely used program because it is very flexible. It’s used by many different people for many different tasks. It can be used as a photo correction tool, a layout design tool, an animation suite. The fact that it can be used for so many different tasks is key to its success as a graphic design forerunner.
To date there have been 11 Versions of Adobe Photoshop, each being the forerunner in the Graphic Design Industry. Each time a new version of Photoshop is relapsed new features are added increasing its uses exponentially. In the most recent version Photoshop CS4, a feature called “Content-Aware Scaling” was added that allowed you to crop images without removing key elements. The program would recognize which areas of the image needed to remain the same size, while cropping out areas of background to reduce the overall width or height of the image. Other revolutionary features that have been added though the previous versions of Photoshop would include the ability to edit the textures of 3D models inside Photoshop, without having to view the applied texture in another software, The Clone Tool and it’s variants (Spot Healing Tool, Healing Brush, Patch Tool and the Pattern Stamp Tool). Each of these allows a user to take a section of an existing image and fill it using another area of the image. These tools are often used for removing blemishes in portraits, lens artefacts in photographs, and other unwanted areas of images for example a person in the background of your photo.
As a user of Adobe Photoshop since Version 6, I have come to appreciate the changes over time, and the addition of new features. My favorite feature to arrive since I have been using Photoshop is “Actions”. It works similarly to a macro in most programs, allowing you to record a list of instructions that can be re-applied to any image. This is useful for processing batches of photos; “Actions” can also be saved and sent to other users of Photoshop, to allow them to use your Action on their images. Having used other programs since starting to use Photoshop, I personally believe it is the most powerful and intuitive program on the market and I find it hard to believe that anyone uses any other program for altering photos.
Adobe has been involved with several lawsuits with other companies over the user interface found in their programs. Macromedia Inc was accused of violating an Adobe patent over tabbed palettes (a interface element that allowed multiple sets of tools and options in the same space). I felt this was relevant to mention as it shows how other companies are eager to copy Photoshop’s intuitive user interface.
Chapter 2: “Thine Eyes Deceive”
Photo manipulation is widely used in the media and nearly every day you will encounter images that have been altered to fit a layout or altered to make the subject look skinnier or blemish free.
Photoshop is widely known to be used to touch up models and make them look more attractive.
Some campaigners in Berlin have actually vandalized posters of Pop stars by posting Panels from Photoshop onto the existing billboard advertisement to generate interest into their cause, and to poke fun at the producers of such adverts. In the photos provided by Gizmondo.com you can see the History Panel, Layers panel and the Tool Box. I love the attention to detail in the panels used, making sure that the History Panel was full of uses of the Clone tool, and naming the layers appropriately makes it much easier for non-professionals to understand.
The “Girlpower” website has gone into detail about how each part of the female figure is enhanced using Photoshop. It shows how the eyes, face, hair, waist and all other parts are enhanced in Photoshop, and the change is very impressive from an artistic point of view; however changing women’s appearances in magazines leads to low self esteem in young and teenage girls.
“Hook me up with a great photographer, a clever stylist and an expert retoucher, and together we create a beautiful illusion.”
- Heidi Klum
I think that this part of photo manipulation has only recently gained exposure in the media, when newspapers caught on to the “Size Zero” scandal and have been neglecting to publish pictures of size zero women. I think that in the future there will be limits on what can be edited for an image to be published in the mainstream media, allowing for a more truthful representation of women in the media. This kind of influence in the press stems from all types of advertising, magazines, newspapers and television.
Chapter 3: “Smiling Politely”
In politics photo manipulation is a touchy area. When it is discovered it can often leave a party candidate or government with a very awkward explanation as to why the image was originally altered. An example of this was in 2008 when the Iranian government released images of a missile site, with a clearly cloned missile. This was later explained by the Iranian government as an attempt to hide the unfired missile and launcher. Another recent example of Political distress caused though photo manipulation would be an image of Sarah Palin, a vice-presidential candidate in America’s 2008 election. A picture of her wielding a hunting rifle in her stars and stripes bikini was discovered as a composition created by an unknown artist, Propaganda like this can attribute to lost votes and embarrassment for the candidate.
Throughout history photos have been altered for political reasons; most notably in countries with a totalitarian government. You can find many examples of altered images from the former USSR and from Nazi Germany from during world war two. Hitler and Stalin were known for having people removed from photographs when they died or were no longer sympathetic to their cause. A famous example would be a photograph of Stalin and Commissar Yezhov stood near the Volga Canal. Yezhov is removed by inking in a wall and repeating a section of the canal by combining two negatives. During this time all media was controlled by the government in these countries and therefore was regulated into propaganda. Today however the media is much more a free tool, and even when some sources are one sided in what they display the other side of the argument is still being heard.
Currently anonymously posting propaganda is rather easy on thanks to the internet. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Photoshop can upload anything to a forum or to youtube.com. This means the lines between journalists and the public are blurring. Things that are reported on the internet as images or videos are not necessarily the truth, and could have been manipulated.
I’ve included a poster campaign by a Russian radio station “Galaxy FM” The artist has used images of Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao to create a humorous campaign. I think these are particularly good photo manipulations as they only look edited because of their funny appearance, if you were unaware of the figures in the images they would seem very believable.
Chapter 4: “Painting is Dead”
Photo manipulation could be referred to as an art. There are many digital artists who incorporate altered photos and images in their work. Many who use these techniques exclusively without any traditional art based media. Digital Art, like traditional art comes in many styles, and there are many techniques and programs which are used in sync to create final pieces. Some artists use “Fractals” which are complex computer generated shapes, some artists like to paint, only using a computer and many like me like to use photographs and edit their content to change their meaning. Many artists use photo manipulation to enhance their drawn images and create compositions of mixed media.
RAW is a new format, developed for use with digital cameras. Raw is often referred to as a digital negative, because once taken from the camera it can be edited like in a darkroom. You can change the exposure, brightness and contrast, white balance and other attributes that can be affected by the settings of the camera when the image was taken. This is very useful for artists as light and exposure can play a pivotal role as to whether your manipulation looks realistic or not.
I think that without the introduction of Adobe Photoshop, Digital art would still be a developing art form, and not something anyone could jump into without a degree of training.
Conclusion
First I want to mention a new tool that is being developed for Adobe Photoshop. It is known as the “Clone Detection Tool” and it has the power to tell where areas of an image are recurring, allowing the user to spot if an image has been manipulated. I think that this is a brilliant advancement, as so far there have been very few tools to detect photo manipulation and this should help stop manipulated images appearing in the press.
I think that as an art form, photo manipulation should be unregulated and artists should be free to express themselves as they will, however in published works especially the news there needs to be strict rules over what can be published, as it will save a lot of people time and money.
There is already a code of ethics written by the National Press Photographers Association, which has one rule regarding the altering of photographs taken for the press.
“Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images’ content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.”
I think that this is a good start, but more specific rules need to be created to regulate what makes its way onto the front page.