Have You Had Work Done?
Girl, you look hot. Wired’s story includes images of popstar Fergie retouched to various degrees. The colors indicate “intensity of alteration.”
In the future, you can request your fashion magazines sans Photoshop. Nah, not really. But a team of researchers at Dartmouth University has developed a computer model that can determine how much a photo has been altered and retouched.
Yowsa. Your secrets are no longer safe in the art department.
Hany Farid, an image forensic specialist (great title, eh?) at Dartmouth and doctoral student Eric Kee, developed the model after looking at nearly 500 sets of original and retouched photos. The computer rates each photo 1 through 5, with 1 being au natural and 5 signifying a heavy dose of Photoshop.
According to a recent story in Wired, Farid and Kee started thinking about the project in the wake of international outcry over the impact of heavily retouched images on the psyche. The British government is looking at forcing advertisers to label heavily doctored photos. And the American Medical Associations says advertisers and activists should set some standards for retouching.
“One criticism of the British legislation is that they were presenting a blunt instrument,” Farid told Wired. “Photographs would be labeled as retouched or not. Anybody knows that there’s different types. It’s an interesting scientific problem: How much is too much? That got us thinking about whether we could quantify this.”
You can read the whole story here. And then check Dartmouth’s nifty gallery of retouched photos and the warts-and-all originals. (JK, no warts, but plenty of dark under-eye circles, frown lines and unsightly budges.)
