Photo manipulation
Photo manipulation refers to the process of altering photographic images to depict something different from what was originally captured. This practice has roots dating back to the early days of photography, with notable instances occurring as far back as the 19th century. While traditional methods included manual retouching and darkroom techniques, the advent of digital photography and computer software has revolutionized photo manipulation, making it accessible to everyday users through various applications and programs.
Historically, photo manipulation has been employed for artistic expression, advertising, and political propaganda, raising ethical concerns about the authenticity of images. Notable political figures, such as Joseph Stalin, have famously used manipulation to erase rivals from photographs, illustrating its potential for deceit. In contemporary society, the widespread use of digital manipulation—especially on social media platforms—has contributed to discussions about mental health, body image, and the pressures of unrealistic portrayals in media. Critics argue that such alterations can lead to negative self-perception, particularly among young audiences. Ultimately, photo manipulation is a multifaceted topic that intertwines technology, art, and societal values, prompting ongoing dialogue about its implications and responsibilities.
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Photo manipulation
Photo manipulation is the act of changing a photographic image so that it depicts something other than what was originally captured. In the past, this was accomplished by manual retouching or by various photographic and darkroom techniques. Since the advent of personal computers and digital photography, digital photo manipulation has become the norm, with numerous computer programs and smartphone applications available to facilitate the process. Throughout history, photographs have been manipulated for the purposes of art, advertising, and political propaganda, among others.
Overview
Photography was invented in the early nineteenth century. Though some early attempts, such as Thomas Wedgwood’s camera obscura and Nicéphore Niépce’s experiments with bitumen, met with limited success, the first practical method of photography was developed by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in 1837 and announced to the Académie des sciences in Paris in 1839.
The history of photo manipulation dates back almost as far. In 1846, in what may be the earliest recorded instance of photo manipulation, Welsh artist and mathematician Calvert Richard Jones removed an unwanted figure from a photograph of Capuchin friars in Malta by painting over the figure on the negative. In a better-known example, in the 1860s, a famous photograph of US president Abraham Lincoln was created by placing Lincoln’s head on the body of South Carolina politician John Calhoun.
Photo manipulation has often been used for political and propagandist purposes. When Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, he famously removed his political enemies from photographs in order to make it seem as though they never existed. Other dictators, including Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong, did the same, although to a lesser extent. Photo manipulation is also commonly used in both advertising and journalism, where it has raised significant ethical questions regarding the extent to which advertisers and journalists can claim to represent reality when that reality has been altered.
Before computers, various techniques were available for photo manipulation. One simple method was to combine different negatives in order to make a composite picture, as with the Lincoln photograph. This method was commonly used in the early twentieth century to create family portraits when not all family members could be gathered for a photography session at the same time. Another popular technique was airbrushing, in which air flow is used to spray nebulized paint or ink onto a photograph; this is the method Stalin used. The term “airbrushing” remains common in digital photo manipulation, where it is used figuratively to refer to retouching, or more specifically to a tool that mimics the effect of a physical airbrush. The use of airbrushing in advertisements to enhance images of people or products has often raised controversy. Other techniques include manipulating the development process in the darkroom, creating double exposures, and scratching negatives to achieve an artistic effect.
One of the earliest methods of digital image manipulation was SuperPaint, a custom-built computer system developed by Richard Shoup in 1972-73. Digital manipulation gained popularity in the 1980s as personal computers became more common, eventually supplanting manual photo manipulation almost entirely, though the latter is still employed for aesthetic or novelty purposes.
In digital photo manipulation, the source of the image being manipulated is either a digital camera or a scan of a physical photograph or negative. The image is then edited using any of a variety of computer programs. Though numerous such programs exist, including Corel’s PaintShop Pro and Photo-Paint, ACD Systems’ ACDSee, the freeware Paint.NET, and the free and open-source GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), by far the best known is Adobe Photoshop, to the extent that “photoshopping” has become a common synonym for photo manipulation.
As smartphones became ubiquitous in the early twenty-first century, numerous apps were developed to aid in manipulating digital photos produced on smartphone cameras. Thus, photo manipulation moved from the realm of professional editors and retouchers to everyday users as social media became commonplace, and users could easily apply filters to platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram to alter their images with the click of a button. Such filters allowed users to make themselves appear thinner, make their skin look more "perfect," and remove other perceived imperfections, thereby presenting images wildly different from reality. Further, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) likewise impacted photo manipulation and the ease at which edits could be applied, creating new challenges in being able to recognize whether images were real or AI-generated.
Critics of photo manipulation became increasingly vocal in the twenty-first century, especially given soaring rates of mental health issues among young people. Many experts warned that the widespread use of photo manipulation has led to unrealistic expectations and negative body image among viewers of images. Studies pointed to a rise in eating disorders and other mental health concerns, especially among teenage girls, as a result. Celebrities also became more vocal in their disapproval of the release of airbrushed images of themselves presented to the public as though they were accurate portrayals. Actors such as Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt published unaltered images of themselves to protest the widespread use of image manipulation software. Photo manipulation made headlines in other ways, too. In a highly publicized scandal involving an image of Catherine, Princess of Wales, with her children following an abdomen surgery in March 2024, several international agencies retracted the photo after concerns were raised that the image had been manipulated.
Bibliography
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