Xref: utzoo misc.headlines:25803 rec.photo:20818 sci.electronics:19769 Newsgroups: misc.headlines,rec.photo,sci.electronics Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!xn.ll.mit.edu!xn!tonyb From: tonyb@titania.juliet.ll.mit.edu ( Tony Berke) Subject: Re: News photo contains "smart glitch?" In-Reply-To: stinnett@plains.NoDak.edu's message of 29 Apr 91 07:15:39 GMT Message-ID: Sender: usenet@xn.ll.mit.edu Organization: M.I.T. Lincoln Lab - Group 43 References: <5110@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <5130@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <10034@plains.NoDak.edu> Date: 30 Apr 91 13:21:58 In article <10034@plains.NoDak.edu> stinnett@plains.NoDak.edu (M.G. Stinnett) writes: In article <5130@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> packer@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov writes: >read out of a computer memory twice. The implication: the age of >computer-processed news photographs has definitely arrived. So why not mention the cover photo of last week's Time? The one where they used a computer to put bar codes on the nose of the fighter planes? Actually, Time processes lots of their covers. My favorite one (I witnessed this in person, was several years back, right after the Chernobyl accident. Let me make a short story long... (If you're in a hurry, skip to the bottom paragraphs). I was at a pre-press house in NJ (GS Litho) installing some software for a product that my then-employer was beta testing at their plant. GS Litho is a major customer of Scitex's (a big player in imaging systems) -- an employee of GSL claimed that GSL had more Scitex equipment in one place than anyone in North America. I was wandering around watching GSL's imaging artists retouch, stitch together, and otherwise enhance, images of all sorts. Much of the stuff they were working on was advertising material. I was (and still am) amazed at what one can do with this equipment. I started paying attention when I saw several pictures of Volvo sedans and station wagons lying around. It seems that Volvo needed some pictures of the new model year's station wagon in time to meet a press deadline, but hadn't built any yet. Not to worry -- the previous year's sedan was the same as the new wagon from the front doors up, and the new wagon wasn't changing in the back. So GSL was taking the two pictures, of two different color cars, matching the colors and lighting perspectives, and everything was copacetic. That one didn't bother me *too* much, but the BMW ad really pissed me off. This one was of a bright red car, shot from the side. The picture had come back from the ad designer's desk with circles and arrows (on the 8x10 color glossy photo, just like the Guthrie song!) on it, pointing to the chrome door keylocks. 'Visually distracting', said the markup, accompanied by instructions to airbrush them out. For pete's sake, if the keylocks are on the car, and they ruin it's lines, change the car, not the ad!! The previous two things paled compared to the Time cover. This was a cover photo, for an article chronicling the efforts of that famous American leukemia (I think) expert that went over to try to do bone-marrow transplants on some of the victims. The picture was of a very unhappy, hairless person dying horribly in an oxygen tent some where inside the USSR. The image had been taken on the sly, and was not particularly well composed. The cover had come back from the editor's heavily marked. The two things I remember clearly were that an IV tube was in the way and was to be removed, and that glare from the oxygen tent was obscuring most of the victim's face, and again was to be removed. Other minor elements were to be excised as well, but those are the two I remember. Perhaps I'm being a weenie, but I think photojournalists are making a serious mistake by allowing their images to be manipulated in this way. They may sell better in the short run, but I think it will damage the field irreparably. The manipulated Time cover was much better looking and had more impact post-airbrushing than before, but it was an artist's conception, not a photograph! I think anything that blurs the distinction between true photojournalism and the National Enquirer's "Saddam Hussein Wears Women's Clothing!"-type pasteups is a crime, and a disservice to straight photographers. We are very close to having commercially available scanning and film-output technology that operates at better-than-film-grain resolution. At that point, photojournalism will be dead if the public isn't convinced that responsible publications will make no use of the technology in any way that could affect the journalistic content of an image. Done Fuming For Now, Tony Berke (tonyb@juliet.ll.mit.edu)