Retouching photographs is nothing new, but thanks to graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop, it’s become hard to tell what’s real and what some graphic designer created on a screen—unless they did a really bad job. Here are a few extreme examples of “digital manipulation.”
THE IMAGE: The official 2006 campaign Web site of New Orleans mayoral candidate Kimberly Williamson Butler featured a photo of her standing in the city’s famous French Quarter.
THE TRUTH: When close observers noticed some Mickey Mouse garbage cans in the photo, the campaign was forced to admit that they’d superimposed a photo of Butler onto a background image of Disneyland’s “New Orleans Square.” Butler’s campaign designer deleted the garbage cans, but that didn’t end the mocking from the press. So they took the same image of Butler and superimposed it over a photo of the real New Orleans. (She lost the election.)
THE IMAGE: The cover of the March 2005 issue of Newsweek magazine featured Martha Stewart emerging from between two curtains. The headline: “Martha’s Last Laugh—After Prison, She’s Thinner, Wealthier & Ready for Prime Time.”
THE TRUTH: Stewart’s head was digitally added to a thin model’s body. The only acknowledgment that it was fake came in the credits on page 3: “Cover: Photo illustration by Michael Elins; head shot by Marc Bryan-Brown.” After the magazine received a great deal of criticism, Newsweek’s assistant managing editor, Lynne Staley, said that they didn’t mean to “misrepresent the news” but had no choice because the issue was put together before Stewart was actually released from prison. “Anybody who knows the story and is familiar with Martha’s current situation would know this particular picture was a photo illustration,” she said.
THE IMAGE: In September 2009, a Ralph Lauren ad featuring 23-year-old supermodel Filippa Hamilton was created for a campaign in Japan. Although it’s no shock that fashion-model shots are manipulated (the skin is smoothed, the waist is drawn inward, the bust is drawn…bustward), Hamilton looked like a freak of nature in the ad.
The bacteria that live in your belly button can’t survive in your armpits The bacteria that live in your armpits can’t survive in your belly button.
THE TRUTH: Hamilton’s photo was altered so much that her waist was narrower than her head and her arms looked like string beans. (Google it—it really is quite disturbing.) As soon as the ads appeared, women’s groups cited it as perhaps the most outrageous example of the fashion industry creating an unnatural—and unhealthy—image for girls and women to try to achieve. The controversy took another turn when Hamilton appeared on the Today show to claim that the company had actually fired her for being “too fat” and for not being able to fit into the sample clothes that she had to wear. Ralph Lauren execs denied it, but they did admit to going too far with Photoshop: “We have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body.”
THE IMAGE: “Come have fun in Toronto and celebrate our diversity!” That was the message that the city’s summer 2009 “Fun Guide” was supposed to send with its cover photo of a mixed-race family leaning into the camera, arm in arm, all smiling. The mom and two kids appeared to be Hispanic, and the dad was African Canadian.
THE TRUTH: Earlier that year, the City of Toronto had issued an order that all of its official publications had to reflect the ethnic diversity of the area. But instead of finding a photo of a multicultural family, the designers found a picture of a black man on a stock-photo Web site and then Photoshopped it into a picture of a mother with two kids. The result is obviously a fake—the man is lit differently, his head is too small, and it looks as if someone cut his head out with scissors and pasted it on top of the original photograph. Kevin Sack, Toronto’s director of communications, defended the picture: “The policy doesn’t say ‘no Photoshop,’ the policy says ‘show diversity.’ And that’s of course what we try and do. Nothing wrong with that. You won’t find a more inclusive organization than us.”