Comments on: Pictures never lie.

By: Anli

Anli — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 22:11:35 +0000

Very nice. Make me laughed.

By: DNVC

DNVC — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 22:09:37 +0000

That was great!

By: Brandon Stone

Brandon Stone — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: alex

alex — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Dean M. Beattie

Dean M. Beattie — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

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!

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: btezra

btezra — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

~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...~

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Dean M. Beattie

Dean M. Beattie — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

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