DailyDirt: Fixing Photos And Fooling Folks

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Dec 7th 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Photoshop has pretty much become a generic verb for altering a digital image. It's so common to use software to fix flaws in photos that it's a bit difficult to find unaltered photos now. Well, software will come to the rescue for that, too, and it'll help people determine which images have been touched-up. Here are just a few examples of some cool photo-enhancing tools.

Adobe presented a photo fixing feature that can almost magically un-blur digital images. That video could use some "enhance" capabilities for itself. [url]
Xerox labs has created software that can predict whether or not a photography will be aesthetically pleasing. Beauty is still in the eye of the beholder, but now there's an algorithm to help predict it. [url]
Virtual fashion models are about to replace human models in advertising. H&M has already started using completely computer-generated lingerie/swimsuit models on its website. Some people are complaining about being tricked by the fake people, but fake people aren't going away anytime soon. [url]
Maybe you can fool some of the people some of the time, but there's software that will point out photoshopped images. "It seems the scientific community is very aggressive about beautifying its images." [url]
To discover more interesting photography-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: blur, digital images, lingerie, photoshop, swimsuit
Companies: adobe, h&m, xerox

15 Comments

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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 7 Dec 2011 @ 5:49pm

If Telling Lies With Still Photos Is �Photoshopping� ...
... what�s the term for telling lies with motion video? �Videoshopping�?

For example, this, this and this.
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- TtfnJohn (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 6:53pm
  
  Re: If Telling Lies With Still Photos Is �Photoshopping� ...
  Japanese censorship
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 6:57pm

Manikins
Virtual fashion models are about to replace human models in advertising. H&M has already started using completely computer-generated lingerie/swimsuit models on its website.

Right Mr Ho has never walked past a clothes shop before in his entire life.

They are called Manikins or "dress manikins", guess what they replace REAL models in advertising and have done so for so many years now...

Get out much ???

Why is it these "tech innovations" are so damn OLD ????

All these things have been around for years and years !!!!
And you only have just worked out they exist ?

Xerox labs has created software that can predict whether or not a photography will be aesthetically pleasing.

Did you know that there is also software that does the same thing for music ? that can determine if a song will become a smash hit or not !!!
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- Jay (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 7:38pm
  
  Re: Manikins
  I'm marking this as funny because obviously, the AC here has no idea how innovation works.
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- Rose M. Welch (profile), 8 Dec 2011 @ 1:02pm
  
  Re: Manikins
  They are called Manikins or "dress manikins", guess what they replace REAL models in advertising and have done so for so many years now...
  
  Mannequins didn't replace living models.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 8:05pm

That Photoshop thing looks a lot like things like picturesolve.
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abc gum, 7 Dec 2011 @ 8:42pm

This looks shopped.
I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time.
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- Rose M. Welch (profile), 8 Dec 2011 @ 1:02pm
  
  Re:
  I make my own shops at home.
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  - abc gum, 8 Dec 2011 @ 5:57pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Lol
    http://xkcd.com/331/
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Rekrul, 7 Dec 2011 @ 9:19pm

Virtual fashion models are about to replace human models in advertising. H&M has already started using completely computer-generated lingerie/swimsuit models on its website.

What took them so long? James Coburn was doing this with moving CGI models back in 1981!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/
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Bob Webster (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:32pm

Doctored Images.
It's a whole lot easier to deblur an image when it has been synthetically blurred. Caveat emptor.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2011/10/18/adobeclarifies
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- abc gum, 8 Dec 2011 @ 5:31am
  
  Re: Doctored Images.
  Yep - that reminds me of the creep who used swirl on photos to blur his face and then taunted the world only to find out that the swirl can be undone.
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- Michael Ho (profile), 8 Dec 2011 @ 2:09pm
  
  Re: Doctored Images.
  Nice find. I was wondering how much of the demo was staged to maximize its "blow your mind" effect.
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- Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 9 Dec 2011 @ 12:14am
  
  Re: Doctored Images.
  Whether the blurring is �synthetic� or not, it can still be physically modelled and undone to some extent. Remember the early days of the Hubble Telescope, when the images it was producing were so crap? I was at a talk given by one of the researchers who developed algorithms to try to undo that crappiness. They were able to produce some quite usable images, even before Hubble was given its COSTAR �glasses�.
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  - abc gum, 9 Dec 2011 @ 5:28am
    
    Re: Re: Doctored Images.
    IIRC - The Hubble images contained information that required correction because the mirrors had been ground incorrectly. There was plenty of information in these images that needed to be rearranged and the mechanism (incorrect mirror grinding) was well understood.
    
    In the case of TVland enhance, enhance, enhance there is not enough information available from low res video surveillance cameras to perform such stunts. Hence, the much laughed at mockery.
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