Software Rates How Drastically Photos Are Retouched

Software Rates How Drastically Photos Are Retouched

Dr. Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and a digital forensics expert at Dartmouth, has developed a piece of software that will rate the extent to which photographs have been digitally altered on a scale of 1 to 5.

The website for the research states, "In recent years, advertisers and magazine editors have been widely criticized for taking digital photo retouching to an extreme. Impossibly thin, tall, and wrinkle- and blemish-free models are routinely splashed onto billboards, advertisements, and magazine covers. The ubiquity of these unrealistic and highly idealized images has been linked to eating disorders and body image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children. In response, several countries have considered legislating the labeling of retouched photos.

"We have developed a quantitative and perceptually meaningful metric of photo retouching. Photographs are rated on the degree to which they have been digitally altered by explicitly modeling and estimating geometric and photometric changes. This metric correlates well with perceptual judgments of photo retouching and can be used to objectively judge by how much a retouched photo has strayed from reality."

“We’re just after truth in advertising and transparency,” Seth Matlins, a former talent agent and marketing executive, said. “We’re not trying to demonize Photoshop or prevent creative people from using it. But if a person’s image is drastically altered, there should be a reminder that what you’re seeing is about as true as what you saw in ‘Avatar’.”

It looks like the research has led to a company named Fourandsix Technologies to be founded, whose website states their first product is coming soon.
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6 Comments

Imperfections are more interesting. 

Here we go again - Kaspersky is finding trojan horses on this link
 

It is now considered politically correct to villainize the beauty industry as the source for western societies image problem woes. The typical human response to pass blame to an external source than to seek a solution from within.

It is absurd that anyone would think that altering the content of the beauty industry will by pure magic stop humans from finding reasons to discriminate against each other.

It is a sad day indeed, when we have to remind people  - with a warning label - that advertisment may be not totaly truthfull after all.
I will not even discuss these so called "studies" that link a change in a society to a product (in this case advertising) which is in on itself a reflection of this very change in society. It is impossible to state to any meaningful level of certainty, that images contribute to a harmful transformation of ones self-image, if there is no way at all to exclude the influence of the way this new "ideal of beauty" is handled in society.
I'm so glad that there won't be another case of anorexia nervosa as soon as there is a warning labeln on all glamour magazines.

I find it ironic that on the same page I see the ad for Portrait Professional with the beauty slider...

And the product is called FourMatch (sucky name) ... and it will cost (guess what) $890,-.
It will identify images with a red, yellow or green light. Red means the program is 100% sure the JPEG file is modified and green when the program is 100% sure the JPEG file isn't modified. The Yellow... well thats when it doesn't really know for sure if the JPEG is modified or not and most likely that will happen with most of the JPEGs when using this program..

Way to expensive for something that will most likely will only be used by... I don't know.... no one?....