Tue, August 30th, 2005 by Frank Lynch
Pictures never lie (yup!), but photo editors have their way. Hurricane Katrina apparently wasn't "true" enough (or rather, the photo editors of the major dailies thought they could do better). Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly offers an interesting comparison of the highlights and contrasts used on a single photograph. Kevin doesn't profess to be a photographer, but he did notice the differences.
New server!
August 30th, 2005 at 2:27 am
Meh... I don't think it's fair to imply that the newspapers were lying. Those differences seem to be no more pronounced than the differences you would see between peoples' various different monitors.
I think it's great to bring these types of things to people's attention, but in this particular case I'm not sure that I see anything of real significance here.
August 30th, 2005 at 7:19 am
According to AP guidelines, this sort of slight modification (cropping and "dodging and burning" as the AP calls it) is allowed, as it does not significantly alter the photograph and its meaning. As Brandon points out, there could be a ton of different reasons why one looks brighter than the other. I would be curious to see the images as they were printed -- I bet that would be the true test. Web display is a fickle thing.
Anyone remember when National Geographic flipped the pyramids at Giza to make room for type on the cover of the magazine? That sort of thing is not allowed. These look fine.
August 30th, 2005 at 8:36 am
I agree. These are modifications of the most benign sort. There's the cropping, which in my opinion, doesn't count at all. And the issue of it being "brighter" in one or the other doesn't even look like a case of selective dodging (or burning on the other end). The brightness of the whole image seems affected. The brightness on any photograph, whether film or digital, is (within reason) arbitrary, so even the "original" photograph hardly serves as a valid reference.
August 30th, 2005 at 8:56 am
Here is another thing to think about with these images.
It is most likely that the webmaster used the images that were already color corrected by the photo tech that was doing the corrections for the press (which is common practice in the industry) and flipped them back to RGB and simply re-sized them for the webpage.
If this is what happened there are a few things to consider:
1.) What sort of transfer function or preset was added to the photo for the particular press it was being run on i.e. color management.
This can vary from every print site out there.
2.) You have 3 different people doing the color corrections which means 3 different sets of eyes and 3 different perciptions of color, not everyone sees the same thing.
3.) As Brandon said, monitors, they may have been done on non-calibrated monitors or on a PC or a Mac. Macs have a gamma of 1.8 as to PC of 2.2 which is darker.
As far as any ethical lines being crossed there are none here.
The loose theory on the ethics of digital manipulation is as long as you do not add or subtract objects from a photo you really aren't breaking an "rules."
I don't agree with that, but that is a whole other discussion.
I work for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review as the Chief Digital Imaging Specialist and this is what I do, just to let you know where my response is coming from.
This could get to be an interesting discussion, I look forward to seeing the other responses.
Cheers!
August 30th, 2005 at 9:15 am
Gang, let's be clear, I didn't mean to suggest any sort of ethical line had been crossed, merely that photo editors weren't content with the image as it was and had their way. That's all. Like I've posted in other threads, it's interesting to see different approaches to the same object; here's a case where we see different approaches to the same photo.
August 30th, 2005 at 9:41 am
~Dean, you came to mind as I saw the images and the post, thought you might chime in here...
The loose theory on the ethics of digital manipulation is as long as you do not add or subtract objects from a photo you really aren't breaking an "rules."
You are right Dean, in photojournalism the only real rule that I would hope all would follow when shooting news photography/PJ is nothing is added nor taken away from the image, content-wise, color correction is not applicable for all news papers, magazine, etc. have their own methods for that...~
August 30th, 2005 at 9:43 am
I take your point Frank. But I'll say that I think the reason that people (myself included) have probed this in the way that they have springs from the suggestion that "Pictures never lie (yup!), but photo editors have their way." Of lying? And then the suggestion that "Katrina apparently wasn't 'true' enough."
I think to photographers, "truth" and "lying" when applied to a photo are pretty loaded terms. Given that, I'd find it hard not to infer a suggestion that an ethical line had been crossed from reading that.
But on your point: I agree that it is interesting to discuss the different approaches that people have taken.
August 30th, 2005 at 10:08 am
Frank, I didn't mean to imply that you thought a line was crossed, please don't take it that way.
As far as the photo editors thinking they could do better probaly isn't the case.
When doing print for newspapers (web offset) you are using a 4 color process CMYK starting with a 3 color image (RGB). You may have a beautifully executed image in RGB, but when you flip it to CMYK in Photoshop the color shift from 3 to 4 colors is not going to render the same color as the RGB image so you are going to have to make some adjustments, and that brings into play the statement I made above about the different people and the other variables that come into play.
Also, there are probaly target values that have to be met to get good color reproduction, so that factors in also.
I realize the may be a little off topic, but is probably a good explanation as to why things are looking different.
Cheers
August 30th, 2005 at 10:09 am
It was not my best articulation.
August 30th, 2005 at 10:24 am
Frank said:
> It was not my best articulation.
Heh, I'm often a victim of my own poor articulation, so I try to give people the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. Don't sweat it, Frank.
August 30th, 2005 at 10:32 am
Also, for anyone who's interested, we've just recently had a similar discussion in the Photoblogs Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/photoblogs/browse_frm/thread/dfe80a9889be7e11/
August 30th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
I would just like to second Dean's explanation. The printing process from one publication to the next varies great deal and the apperance of the on-line images reflects that. Many print publications don't only take into account the specific press they are printing on, but also the kind of paper they are printing on, the rate of ink absoprtion, blah, blah, blah... There is actually a cool little trade book called Pocket Guide to Digital Prepress that explains many of these things. http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0827371985/qid=1125418427/sr=8-8/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i8_xgl14/701-1489550-2271526
August 30th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
Wow. That sure was a lot of comments about nothing on Kevin's site. They all look like pictures of a hurricane to me.
August 30th, 2005 at 11:49 pm
Dean's right on the money -- CMYK conversions make a huge difference, a subject I dealt with painfully today. This is a great discussion -- it's nice to see it here on the main blog, instead of just in the Google group, where sometimes things get lost.
Cheers!
August 31st, 2005 at 2:52 am
This is interesting.
I worked for a newspaper for a bit, and yes I agree, the conversion from RGB to CMYK does result in some shifts in color.
However, I don't think it's as dramatic as a shift as what these photos show.
The next question is, how much editing should newspapers be able to do? White balance adjustments? Color adjustments? Leveling? How much before the integrity of a picture is "destroyed"?
August 31st, 2005 at 10:47 am
I would like to think that there are general guidelines, but that there is no clear line. I'd like to think that people in responsibile positions have the wisdom and good judgement to know what crosses the line and what doesn't.
Most of the time that's probably correct, although there are a few dolts.
For example, I don't think that slightly darketing a storm photo crosses the line. There's a story to be told, and we can be reasonably confident that Katrina really did happen and it was a terrible storm. It's ok to work with the narrative a bit.
But think way back to the OJ Simpson trial. There was a scandal then when a few different magazines ran the same cover photo of a headshot of OJ. One of them ("Time," I think) had darkened the image to give OJ a more sinister look. Considering the trail was not yet over, that could arguably be stepping over the line, or at the very least, it shows and unequivocal bias in how the photo was "editorialized."
In that case we're dealing with a person, with a life, and a reputation etc. Now, I'm no OJ defender, but I don't think it's right for a magazine to pass judgement on someone before the trial is over.
But a hurricane? We can easily pass jugement on a hurricane. It's not like we're going to ruin it's reputation or anything. Not like it's gonna sue us. There is no potential for damage to the hurricane.
Potential for damage to the "truth," perhaps, but is anyone arguing that Katrina was not a dark and fearsome storm? Is anyone arguing that one photograph is the "truth" of a hurricane?
This small amount of tinkering is no more of an editorial statement than is a newsreader raising his voice slightly when reporting on the force of the storm instead of staying deadpan.
*Whew!* Sorry that was so long.
August 31st, 2005 at 1:28 pm
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V114/N28/time.28w.html
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=15422
Here are few links about the Time cover of O.J.
Now I am not condoning their poor judgement on this cover, but they did cover their asses on this on the inside of the cover in small type it is labelled "photo-illustration."
Which is a chicken shit way around their out right bias of the situation.
August 31st, 2005 at 10:52 pm
The use of "photo-illustration" was also done by Newsweek, most recently (as I can recall) when Martha Stewart was released from prison.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:12 am
I also remember that Ann Coulter complained about how she appeared on the cover of Time earlier this year, due to either a lens or post processing.
September 1st, 2005 at 12:10 pm
The only thing worthwhile about this whole thing is the comment from redacted about nine comments down the list.
September 1st, 2005 at 10:23 pm
OMG Rob. I wanted to say the same exact thing. I laughed like a little kid when I read that.
August 5th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
That was great!
August 5th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Very nice. Make me laughed.