Xref: utzoo misc.headlines:25834 rec.photo:20920 sci.electronics:19844 Newsgroups: misc.headlines,rec.photo,sci.electronics Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!uw-beaver!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: kph@cs.brown.edu's message of 2 May 91 03:09:20 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: 2 May 91 14:26:34 I think a few people misinterpreted my comments about image manipulation and its implications for photojournalism. First of all, I don't think there's anything wrong with electronically manipulating images that are used for art. I have occasional access to sophisticated equipment for doing just that, and have absolutely no qualms about hanging a picture on my wall that has been jazzed up in any way that my skill, equipment, and time allow. That's what burning, dodging, contrast control, and many other essential darkroom techniques are all about, and I certainly don't have any problem with them either. I really think things are different when you are talking about news photos. If I had picked up a copy of Time in 1987 and saw a political cartoon depicting Gary Hart partying with a non-wifely babe on a boat, I'd laugh. When the world saw some photographs of the same thing, our country's political situation changed overnight. With current technology, it'd be about a one hour job to fabricate the photo that ended Hart's political career to a level that you could *never* detect by eye. The FBI or someone could probably detect evidence of tampering in the negative, but I think in a few years a clever individual could make even that pretty difficult. Here's a real example (from another business trip). For fun, a Scitex operator took a Polaroid of me, scanned it, and in about ten minutes he had rubbed out my hair (I look really wierd bald!), changed my clothing color to a dark blue, and placed a white rectangle near the bottom of the photograph, with a series of digits incribed inside of it. This was only a ten minute job and wouldn't stand up to careful scrutiny, but what would my political future be if a more convincing prison mug shot were published of me on election eve? Once the hardware gets good enough to prevent the detection of tampering (you NASA JPL types might be able to convince me that that is never going to happen), I don't think it will take too long before the public no longer believes that an image has to represent truth in any form. While this might not affect People magazine, I think it will have a very big effect on *real* news photography -- who'll want to risk getting shot taking front-line combat photos if the paper down the street is pasting them up from stock photos, and no one can tell the difference? The editors of magazines and newspapers need to come up with some very strong ethical guidelines for these technologies, soon. Once they come up with them, they need to follow them, and make sure the public knows about it. Still Fuming (I guess), Tony Berke