Tuesday, May 13, 2008

How to spot Photoshop chicanery:

After a New Yorker profile implied that "king of the photo touchup" Pascal Dangin had airbrushed photos taken by Annie Leibovitz for Dove's high-profile "Campaign for Real Beauty," the company issued a statement last Friday explaining that Dangin had only removed dust and performed minor color corrections. Is it possible to determine whether the Dove photos were retouched?

Maybe, but it would be very difficult. Amateur retouching can leave seams where two different images are spliced together. But in the case of an expert retoucher like Dangin, visible signs would have been diligently scrubbed away. Additionally, since images can be distorted when they are compressed into other file formats (PDF) or printed in a magazine, any apparent smudges or irregularities in one of the Dove photos might well be artifacts of the photo's reproduction, rather than signs of tampering.

1:01 AM