Good Night cigarette and color maroon

When will our do-nothing congress pass comprehensive Photoshop manipulation reform? This handy but by no means exhaustive roundup of doctored news photos contains some surprises: Abe Lincoln's head on the body of pro-slavery stalwart John C. Calhoun; legendary Goodnight Moon illustrator Clement Hurd getting a cancer stick digitally knocked out of his hand; a Mike DeWine campaign poster that reverses the order of the World Trade Center attacks. (How desperate must you be when you have to doctor a 9/11 photo for effect?) Plenty of old friends and a few you probably haven't seen before, but between magical hijabs and Pottygate, there will always be spectacular new photos coming out of this horrific new world of digitally enhanced images. Besides, where else can you find a correction as poetic as this one:

The cover photograph in The Times Magazine on Sunday rendered colors incorrectly for the jacket, shirt and tie worn by Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor who is a possible candidate for the presidency. The jacket was charcoal, not maroon; the shirt was light blue, not pink; the tie was dark blue with stripes, not maroon. The Times's policy rules out alteration of photographs that depict actual news scenes and, even in a contrived illustration, requires acknowledgment in a credit. In this case, the film that was used can cause colors to shift, and the processing altered them further; the change escaped notice because of a misunderstanding by the editors.

Comments

[Talisman]

Have they taken the cigarette out of Paul's hand yet on the cover of "Abbey Road"? I heard it was coming.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

RTFA, Talisman.

[Talisman]

Actually, I did read it. Well, skimmed it for an "Abbey Road" item. Missed it because I didn't realize it happened three frikkin years ago. Time to "get hip" with that rock 'n' roll "scene."

[fishfry]

The jacket was charcoal, not maroon; the shirt was light blue, not pink; the tie was dark blue with stripes, not maroon.

Don't overlook the fashionista vote.

[dead_elvis]

When will our do-nothing congress pass comprehensive Photoshop manipulation reform?

Shhhhh!!! Don't give them any ideas.

[kelley]

My grandparents proudly displayed the Lincoln portrait in their home. They spent years trying to determine if it were it an original lithograph and therefore valuable. An expose in Parade magazine in the '60s, as I recall, revealed it was worthless.

[Robert]

Was your title meant to evoke a description of an aerial firework?

[Brian]

Two favs:

1) The digitally inserted black student.

2) "The photo of Harris, shown here, is not known to have been doctored."

[Della]

I noticed in the last presidential election particularly on election day that the footage of President Bush looked artificially saturated whereas the footage of John Kerry had the color down so low it was almost black and white. The difference was totally blatant and rather Stalanist. I have noticed in older footage that they performed the same trick on Gore too, although not quite to the extent where it stuck out like a sore thumb.

The purpose of this color alteration is to alter the perception of the voters, hightening saturation would make people view a video more positivly. Getting rid of the color would be an attempt to make Kerry look like a man of the past or viewed less positivly. To do this on an election day or the build up to an election is scandalous.

Even though it might seem a little silly to complain about changed colors there does seem to be people behind the scenes using color as a psychological technique to try to alter the results of elections. Changing the colour of clothes to make a politician look ridiculous is just an incrimental advance in the technology of this fascist technique, I have also seen political ads where the color of the face has clearly been altered to make a politician look zombiesque.

Another thing I noticed yesterday on the CBS evening news the cut the Clinton interview in a way that made him look like a total idiot, whereas on British TV it just looked like he had a difficult interviewer. The CBS version looked like it was a political hack job aimed at discrediting an important Democrat.

This sort of thing seems to be getting more and more common, you have got to wonder who is orchestrating all of this.

[joe]

"University officials said that they spent the summer looking for pictures that would show the school's diversity -- but had no luck."

Ha ha ha ha ha! :-))