The photographs of celebrities and models in fashion advertisements and magazines are routinely 1)buffed with a helping of digital polish. The 2)retouching can be slight―colors brightened, a 3)stray hair put in place, a 4)pimple healed. Or it can be 5)drastic―shedding 10 or 20 pounds, adding a few inches in height and erasing all wrinkles and 6)blemishes, done using Adobe’s Photoshop software, the photo retoucher’s magic 7)wand.
“Fix one thing, then another and pretty soon you end up with Barbie,” said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and a digital 8)forensics expert at 9)Dartmouth.
And that is a problem, feminist 10)legislators in France, Britain and Norway say, and they want digitally altered photos to be labeled. In June, the American Medical Association adopted a policy on body image and advertising that urged advertisers and others to “discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image.”
Dr. Farid said he became intrigued by the problem after reading about the photolabeling proposals in Europe. 11)Categorizing photos as either altered or not altered seemed too 12)blunt an 13)approach, he said.
Dr. Farid and Eric Kee, a 14)Ph.D. student in computer science at Dartmouth, are proposing a software tool for measuring how much fashion and beauty photos have been altered, a 1-to-5 scale that distinguishes the 15)infinitesimal from the 16)fantastic. Their research was published last December in a scholarly journal, the 17)Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Their work is intended as a technological step to address concerns about the 18)prevalence of highly idealized and digitally edited images in advertising and fashion magazines. Such images, research suggests, contribute to 19)eating disorders and anxiety about body types, especially among young women.
The Dartmouth research, said Seth Matlins, a former 20)talent agent and marketing executive, could be “hugely important” as a tool for objectively measuring the degree to which photos have been altered. He and his wife, Eva Matlins, the founders of a women’s online magazine, Off Our Chests, are trying to gain support for legislation in America. Their proposal, the Self-Esteem Act, would require photos that have been “meaningfully changed” to be labeled.
“We’re just after truth in advertising and 21)transparency,” Mr. Matlins said. “We’re not trying to 22)demonize Photoshop or prevent creative people from using it. But if a person’s image is drastically altered, there should be a reminder that what you’re seeing is about as true as what you saw in Avatar,”the science-fiction movie with computer-generated actors and visual effects.
The 23)algorithm developed by Dr. Farid and Mr. Kee statistically measures how much the image of a person’s face and body has been altered. Many of the before-and-after photos for their research were 24)plucked from the Web sites of professional photo retouchers, promoting their skills.
The algorithm is meant to 25)mimic human perceptions. To do that, hundreds of people were recruited online to compare sets of before-and-after images and to determine the 1-to-5 scale, from minimally altered to 26)starkly changed. The human rankings were used to train the software.
His tool, Dr. Farid said, would ideally be a 27)vehicle for self-regulation. Information and 28)disclosure, he said, should create 29)incentives that reduce retouching. “Models, for example, might well say, ‘I don’t want to be a 5. I want to be a 1,’ ”he said.
Yet even without the 30)prod of a new software tool, there is a trend toward Photoshop restraint, said Lesley Jane Seymour, editor in chief of More, a magazine for women over 40.
Women’s magazine surveys, said Ms. Seymour, a former editor of 31)Marie Claire and 32)Redbook, show that their readers want celebrities to “look great but real.” “What’s 33)terrific is that we’re having this discussion,” she said. But readers, she added, have become increasingly 34)sophisticated in understanding that photo retouching is widespread, and the 35)overzealous digital transformations become notorious, with the before-and-after images posted online and ridiculed.
“Readers aren’t fooled if you really 36)sculpt the images,” Ms. Seymour said. “If you’re a good editor, you don’t go too far these days. If you give someone a 37)face-lift,” she said, “you’re a fool.”
PS鉴定术
时尚广告及杂志上的明星模特照片被加以数码美化已是例行公事。这种润饰可能很轻微――提亮色泽、梳理散乱的头发或是去掉粉刺；也可能很夸张――减掉10或20磅体重、增加几寸身高或者抹掉所有皱纹和瑕疵，只要使用Adobe公司的Photoshop软件这支修图师的魔杖，就能轻易完成这一切。
“问题逐一修整后，马上你就能修出一个芭比娃娃了，”汉尼?法里德说。他是达特茅斯学院计算机科学教授，也是一名数码鉴证专家。
然而来自法国、英国及挪威的女权主义立法委员认为这是一个问题，并希望对经过数字处理的图片加以标签。去年六月，美国医学协会正式通过了一项关于个人形象及广告的政策，强烈要求广告商及其他人士“劝阻过分不实的修图行为，以免大家对外表形象产生不切实际的期望”。
法里德博士称，他在欧洲阅读了这份关于照片标签的提案，对之十分感兴趣。他说，把照片分成“处理”或“未经处理”这一做法似乎过于一刀切了。
法里德博士和达特茅斯学院计算机科学博士生埃里克?齐提议使用一种软件工具，它可以测量时尚美容照片经过多大程度的修改，从极其细微到极大修改共分为一至五级。他们的研究发布在去年12月份的学术期刊《美国科学院院刊》上。
广告和时尚杂志盛行对图像进行理想化及数字化的处理，这一情况引人忧虑，而他们的研究工作意在提供一个技术手段来对抗这一现象。研究指出，女士们，尤其是年轻女性，出现饮食失调及对体型的担忧，与这些大量润色的照片不无关系。
前演员经纪人及销售主管塞思?马特林斯说，达特茅斯学院的这个研究可以是“极其重要”的工具，能客观地测量照片被修改的程度。他与妻子伊娃?马特林斯（女性网络杂志《Off Our Chests》的创始人）正尝试在美国获得立法支持。他们的提案――《自尊法案》――将要求对“蓄意修改的”照片加以标签。
“我们只是追求广告的真实度和透明度，”马特林斯先生说，“我们并非想将Photoshop妖魔化，也不是阻止有创意的人使用它。但是，假若一个人的照片被极度修改，那么理应提醒人们眼前的东西的真实度可能与你在《阿凡达》影片里面看到的一切相当。”《阿凡达》是一部科幻影片，片中有许多通过电脑模拟产生的角色及视觉效果。
法里德博士和齐先生创造出的运算法则从数据上测量出照片中人的脸部及身体被修改的程度。研究中出现的许多前后对比照是他们从职业修图师网站上采集而来的，修图师们利用这些图片来展示自己的技术水平。
这个运算法则意在模仿人类的理解能力。为此，研究者请来了几百个人在线对比一系列前后对比照，按照 最细微的调整到完全改变划分出一至五个等级。人们给出的这些分级方式就被用来测试鉴定软件。
法里德博士称，他的鉴定工具是一个理想的自律手段。鉴定出的信息及揭露的细节足以刺激降低照片修改的程度。“比如说，模特们可能会说：‘我不想要一张修改度为五级的照片，我想要一张只有一级的，’”他说。
然而，即便没有这款新软件工具的刺激，限制使用Photoshop的趋势亦势在必行，《More》杂志总编莱斯利?简?塞莫尔如是说。《More》是一本针对40岁以上女性的杂志。
塞莫尔女士曾是《嘉人》及《红皮书》两本杂志的编辑，她称女性杂志调查显示，读者希望明星们“看起来很棒但真实”。“最棒的是，我们正针对这一问题展开讨论，”她说，但她同时表示，读者已经越发见惯不怪，明白修图这一事实广泛存在，外表的数码大变身已经声名狼藉，毕竟网络上发布的前后对比照及恶搞照比比皆是。
“如果你真的对图片大动手术，读者是不会被愚弄的，”塞莫尔女士说。“如果你是一名好编辑，今时今日的你不会做得太过分。如果你给某个人的照片拉皮整容，”她说，“那你自己就是一个笨蛋。”
标签：Photoshopped Tool