Photoshop Allows Us To Alter Our Memories

Anti-Globalism writes "In an age of digital manipulation, many people believe that snapshots and family photos need no longer stand as a definitive record of what was, but instead, of what they wish it was. It used to be that photographs provided documentary evidence, and there was something sacrosanct about that, said Chris Johnson, a photography professor at California College of the Arts in the Bay Area. If you wanted to remove an ex from an old snapshot, you had to use a Bic pen or pinking shears. But in the digital age, people treat photos like mash-ups in music, combining various elements to form a more pleasing whole. What were doing, Mr. Johnson said, is fulfilling the wish that all of us have to make reality to our liking. And he is no exception. When he photographed a wedding for his girlfriends family in upstate New York a few years ago, he left a space at the end of a big group shot for one member who was unable to attend. They caught up with him months later, snapped a head shot, and Mr. Johnson used Photoshop to paste him into the wedding photo. Now, he said, everyone knows it is phony, but this faked photograph actually created the assumption people kind of remember him as there."

meh...

What's the point? PS (or the gimp for that matter) only allows more people to alter photographs, anything you do with software can be done, and has been done many times, in a dark room.
I've had enough of theese "film-was-way-better" guys already.

Re:meh...

Sure - but it is precisely the difference between it being a highly skilled task, and it being something anyone with a little experience using a graphics package can do, which is significant.

In the same light, you could hail email as being over-hyped since you could perform the same function with regular mail.

Making something a little bit easier can make it a lot more likely to adopted widely, and thus have interesting consequences.

Re:meh...

with conventional retouching techniques, if one kne what to look for, one could tell the image was retouched. As one who spent the better portion of 15 years digitally retouching photos, I can honestly say that there was a time when that was true for digital retouching, but no longer. I have seen images that I know were retouched, I sat in the same room as the person doing the retouching, but if I had not known what was being altered, even I, someone who digitally altered photos myself for a living, would never have been able to tell that the image had been altered. That level of alteration is not common, and its a lot harder than you might think, and no, your average Joe with GIMP is not going to pass off an altered photo to a pro, but with digital manipulation, it is possible for one pro to pass of an image to another pro in the field, and that was not possible with conventional retouching techniques.

Re:meh...

What i mean is that suddenly many old-time photographers point out to retouching as being the evil which will destroy "the essence of photography" when those techniques had been applied for ages.

Retouching IS an evil which destroys the essence of photography. It's about capturing reality, not presenting an ideal.

Thing is, most people don't care about the essence of photography. They just want to remember events in their lives. I think we're both in agreement that there is nothing wrong with this outlook. It's perfectly OK.

It's the same with anything that is artistic expression. The average person doesn't really care the type of paints or style, reproduction or original.... they just want a painting that looks nice on their wall. They don't care about vox-boxes and pitch correction and voice-doubling, they just want music to which they can work out or drive to work.

Let the purists have their purity, and let the pragmatists have their pragmatism. The nice part about technology is that both can coexist peacefully, ignoring a the artistic equivalent of "get off my lawn."

How to prove anything?

Let the purists have their purity, and let the pragmatists have their pragmatism. The nice part about technology is that both can coexist peacefully, ignoring a the artistic equivalent of "get off my lawn."

I agree with you as regards purely artistic photography. Plenty of the techniques there - fish-eye lenses, long or multiple exposures, colored lenses, etc - already distort reality for artistic purposes.

What I wonder is this: is there a way to take photos as reliable documentary evidence anymore? How can you prove that something has not been altered?

Re:How to prove anything?

What I wonder is this: is there a way to take photos as reliable documentary evidence anymore? How can you prove that something has not been altered?

I saw a policeman ticket a women in front of my office for using a handicapped parking spot. He used a polaroid camera - the kind which develops a print on the spot - to take a picture of her vehicle and where it was situated. For a second I was asking myself why he was not just using a cheap digital camera and then it dawned on me that answering your question was likely the reason. :)

It's obviously not ironclad, but it probably lessens the likelihood of the photo having been manipulated if it goes into the evidence bag at the crime scene.

Re:How to prove anything?

Nikon has Image Authentication software [nikonusa.com] that can detect whether an image has been processed or altered after having been taken. I would expect to see this used in cases where digital photographs are used as evidence in a trial.

Re:meh...

Retouching IS an evil which destroys the essence of photography. It's about capturing reality, not presenting an ideal.

"Reality" isn't necessarily what is directly recorded by a camera.

Retouching is only part of the issue. I spent years adjusting color in photographs of fine arts by increments as small as .005 stop, because film doesn't record most colors accurately. One must make decisions about what colors in a painting are important, and balance that with the overall impression in the photograph. Gold may be sacrificed for green, etc. This is necessary to make the image appear as "real" as possible, but much of that is subjective, and a lot of decisions have to be made in consultation with the artist.

I also spent a lot of time retouching prints to put back edges that disappeared from overexposure, fill in white spots left by grain or dust, etc. Again, this was necessary to restore "reality" to the image.

There are plenty of other techniques I used in traditional printing that distort the process in order to represent "reality" better—tilting the easel, altering contrast, burning/dodging with cardboard cutouts and colored filters, rubbing the print in the developer solution, et al.

A photograph is a flat, bandlimited model of something. It only represents a tiny fraction of the information that is there, and which fraction is the purview of the photographer. There is no simple, objective process that makes "real" photographs because reality is subjective. The reality in a photograph always depends on the photographer's intent, and no technique is "evil" if it serves that intent.

Re:meh...

"I highly doubt only digital manipulation is capable of also altering our memories."

As I will be able to recall many years hence, MemoryShop 2.1 CS Xtreme will have been doing this for a long time now... or so my wife, Morgan Fairchild, assures me.

Unperson

Didn't George Orwell warn us about trying to change our history? I'll keep my photographs as they are, thanks.

Been done before Orwell too

Look up Damnatio Memoriae sometime. They erased people from public records thousands of years ago, for a range of reasons that included:

- betrayal

- so others wouldn't be tempted to do something heinous just to get popularity (e.g., Herostratus)

- being really hated as an Emperor (e.g., Domitian. Though Caligula and Nero came this close to getting one too.)

- someone not liking the role you've played or the model you'd be for others (E.g., Hatshpsut was almost erased from history as a Pharaoh by her son, but he left her name and images alone where she was depicted/named as anything else than a Pharaoh. E.g., Akhenaten got his name defaced off most monuments after death.)

- some reasons ranging all the way to outright silly (E.g., the abovementioned Akhenaten, the pharaoh formerly known as Amenhotep IV, managed to almost erase his father Amenhotep III from history for the sole reason that the name contained the name of the God Amen/Amon/Amun/whatever-you-call-him. And Akhenaten had just gone rabidly monotheistic, even renaming himself the Servant Of Aten.)

Of course, nobody managed to really erase a Roman Emperor from history, because nobody had the resources for such a herculean task. It didn't stop the Senate from at least trying. And IIRC Hatshepsut was pretty much erased until very recently. It took a while to piece together that she's the missing piece in that chronology.

Methinks you're too optimistic

No one thinks that the government will ever have the power to do change history without everyone knowing and agreeing to it.

Except it did so already several times. Admittedly, not during the lifetimes of those involved, but 2000 years later you get a list of Pharaohs where Horemheb follows directly after Amenhotep III. (Hint: there's more than one missing there.) And you take it seriously. Heck, it doesn't even take that long. A mere couple hundred years after the fact, Egyptian historians themselves were compiling lists of Pharaohs with the same missing names and not noticing anything funny about them. I doubt that it was pure conspiracy and with everyone knowing that they're faking history.

Plus, I think that Orwell's point wasn't that you can get people to suddenly forget, but that you can get everyone to play along and shut up. And that they could and did before. Even if you're sure you saw Comrade Yezhov together with Comrad Stalin (to use a real historical example), you keep your mouth shut because you don't fancy a visit from the NKVD. A generation later, already kids are learning a history without Yezhov, and nobody bothers telling them otherwise. The Damnatio Memoria is now complete. Or conversely more than one dictator manufactured a revolutionary history for himself, and placed himself in photos of fights and protests he wasn't actually present at. A generation later, and maybe a purge or two of those who are actually in a position to say he wasn't there, and that has just become history.

Most history books are censored to put their nation in a good light. Some times its only a slight bias; sometimes its not anything we'd ever recognize as history. In all cases, you can make sure that the writers, publishers, and school districts all know about the hidden bias and wouldn't even think of switching out a history book from a different culture/region into another's. It just wouldn't sell well.

Actually, I doubt that many people realize it as clear as you claim. Most people, especially from cultures which heavily faked history, just think that their version is right and everyone _else_ is biased or lying.

Look no further than the Eastern Bloc, where ancient border disputes were exaggerated and occasionally even fictionalized, to keep people's attention focused on those instead of on the present-day internal problems. You know, keep them thinking "OMG, country X is teh enemy because they took one of our provinces 1000 years ago!" instead of looking at who's having a more immediate and substantial impact upon their standard of living. _Especially_ countries which, honestly, had just gotten some province as reward after WW1 or WW2, invented elaborate layers of rationales as to why it was always theirs anyway.

I don't think most of those, even history teachers, actually knew that they're teaching a faked or biased history. Nor that they'd think, basically, "I wouldn't use a history book from country X because their bias is different from ours and it wouldn't sell." They thought more along the lines of "OMG, the people from country X are a bunch of evil liars! They still teach that province Y was originally theirs! They even print historical maps where it's painted as theirs!" (Never mind that at that point in history it actually was "theirs".)

Or as other examples, look at how the Crusades are perceived differently by different people. Or how Napoleon is a national hero to the French and almost an archvillain for some other people. Etc.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the whole point about having a bias is that you're unaware of it. You don't think "man, I'm from country X, I guess I have no choice but to be biased against country Y. Let's see which history books fit my bias." If you can think in those terms, you're already unbiased and rational about it. Being biased is more like already knowing something to be true, and looking for the sources that fit that pre-defined truth.

Dangerous precedent

This is from the same school of "reality" as those cosmetics commercials where the model has had 6 hours of makeup and artificial eyelashes in order to look like that.

The more we force life to look perfect, the more we'll be disappointed by what we actually get. There is a great Charlie Brooker skit on aspirational television and how believing that we should be as beautiful and stylish as the cast of Friends and Sex and the City is actually making everybody miserable.

I would also say that the bumps of imperfection are an important part of our humanity. Examples:

- Over produced music sounds rubbish because if we can't hear the strumming it doesn't sound like a human being was playing it.

- If you cook Chilli from a recipe it may come out "perfect every time" but it will also get pretty dull.

- A sunny day is a much greater joy in Scotland, where it's a rarity.

Bah, humbug.

huh???

You mean I WASN'T Scarlett Johansson's date to last year's Oscars??? Despite the picture I have of it??

There is real psychological truth to this

http://abcnews.go.com/technology/story?id=98195&page=1 [go.com]

I love to cite this study whenever a decision is being made on the 'memory' of, say, a result - rather than an actual record.

There is another study, which I can't promply locate, in which subjects were shown several colors and then a day or two later, when asked to recall which colors they saw, they picked colors brighter and more saturated than those they had been shown.

This, to me, shows why the 'golden age' phenomenon is so prevalent.

We only record what we want to remember

It's unlikely that you take photographs of every mundane aspect of your life. Some people do it, sure, but those aren't the pictures they want to put into photo albums, flash on their iPods, or hang on their walls. Selective history already plays a role in how we take and keep pictures, so this is just a natural progression of that: keep that photograph, but make it happier.

The Soviet Communists [famouspictures.org] were experts at this. But in Soviet Russia, photos erase you!

It's all big massive circle.

You know all those ancient statues and such and sculptures made or those paintings by artists? Do you honestly think that everyone generally looked as good as the painting/statues? We've always done this. If anything because, I as the king/rich person would lop off some artist/sculpture's head if they didn't make me look good.

Move forward a few centuries and you've got household publishing with the internet/office apps. I wouldn't lop off the wife's or the kids' heads if they didn't make me look good in the family website or photo album, but we'd all pick the shots and photoshop what we can get away with to look our best. (The wife and kids have been taught what we think is decent taste in picking out photos and better pictures from a set so they should know better than posting poor pics.)

It's sort of like the concept of dressing up for photos. No one ever actually wears that sort of crap. It's only used to make you look as what the current culture set thinks presentable for art/photos/pictures is and that's it. (It's all rented or thrown away after that single use because you'd never wear it again.)

Speaking of fake

this faked photograph actually created the assumption people kind of remember him as there."
.

That sentence kind of creates the assumption of making sense.

Everything old is new again.

I think it's actually interesting to note that this trend of altering photographs actually has deeper roots.

Think about portrait paintings that were all the rage for many hundreds of years before cameras were invented. The portraits were not usually exact recreations of what the painter saw. Usually, the subject was altered slightly to make them look 'better' (more conforming to the beauty ideals of the time period). The person was usually given clothes, jewelery, and surroundings that were prettier than reality (possibly more extravagant than they could really afford). These portraits were not really meant to capture reality: they were meant as a statement (usually "look how important I am", but perhaps also "this is what's meaningful/important to us").

Old photographs were mostly "staged" (especially really old ones where people had to hold still for them), so it's not like they were faithful reflections of reality, either.

Digitally altered images are similar. People are altering the photos to capture something. Not reality. But rather a statement they want to make, like "look how much fun that day was" or "look how beautiful I am" or "look how much I love you" or whatever.

I'm not going to pass a value judgment on whether this trend is "good" or "bad". Rather I will note a few things:
1. As computer power increases, automated "adjustment" of photos is likely to become more common. (Everything from relatively benign red-eye-removal and HDR [wikipedia.org] tweaking, to more drastic things like automatically making people look prettier [slashdot.org].)
2. It may be that only for a thin slice of history were the majority of photos "real"--in the time period where photography was fast and cheap enough to snap "candid shots" but before photo-manipulation was fast and cheap enough to alter them.
3. Despite all this modification, I'm sure plenty of "real" photos will remain--journalists, historians, and even normal folk will still be inclined to archive unmodified pictures. Especially with storage costs dropping, keeping the raw image files (before manipulation) will likely continue. In fact I would hope that future image formats would maintain an internal undo history, where the original photo-data remains.

Retouching is an old artform

I've worked with old school reproduction work and retouching, as well as photo retouching and digital restoration of antique photos. Analogue manipulations just went digital, that's all there's to it.

Vanity always ruled. Even in real life we try to improve ourselves in order to please the senses: We wear makeup, fake "body" smells, garnments, footwear.. all to make a visual statement. *That's* the naked truth: We all cheat on reality. There's mankind for you.

Scan in an old sepia photo of your great-great-great grandmother, and study it in detail. Very often you'll find lines added: Eyelashes, "eyeliner", sometimes contours of nose and nails were enhanced in the darkroom, engraved modifications right onto the plate. Partly done to improve a poor shot, partly to enhance the subject. Coloring was also done, long before the first experiments with photographic color techniques were launched.

If "photoshopping" is somehow morally questionable, is black-and-white photography also questionable? It certainly doesn't reflect reality. But who ever said reflecting reality is the perogative of photography? All means of portrayal is artificial. Enter: Art.

Even a photo right out of the camera was and is tainted. Parameters are set for sharpness, contrast, hue and colors - be it by choise of analogue film and development etc. - or by digital options - basically mimicking the features of analogue cameras and traditional darkroom processes.

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

Re:Flamewar!

Holy crap... you want me to try and do image editing with EMACS?

Clearly Vi would do a much better job of it ;)

Re:Flamewar!

So you are proposing a flame war between the emacs/vi people and the PS/GiMP people?

"Our longstanding animosity is longer-standing than your longstanding animosity!"

Re:Digital vs. analoge photo's

It's a shame apostrophes don't cost money.

Re:Digital vs. analoge photo's

Personally I find that the ability to take a lot of pictures at absolutely no cost has actually done a lot for photography. People aren't worried anymore that they are wasting film, or developing costs, so they just take a bunch of pictures. I know that I have a lot of the really nice pictures I have, simply because I could take 20 pictures without having to worry about the 19 that didn't turn out well. When I look back at my old family albums, there aren't a lot of pictures, and of the pictures that are there, a good number of them are somewhat bad quality. When I look back at the albums I have for my kids, there's a lot of really great photos.

Re:Photoshop is not a verb

Photoshop is not a verb

I know! Thats why I've been gimping stuff for the past few years.