Digital Image Processing—Reality’s Solvent

Traditional photography is experiencing a relentless assault that has already transformed the profession. Like other mass communication technologies, some folks suggest digital imaging’s evolution is outstripping society’s ability to ensure truth in content. It’s not that film photography has not had its share of fraud and forgery. It’s just that digital imaging is now so pervasive and provides immense precision to move, eliminate, add, alter, and shuffle image content virtually undetected and without trace.

Since digital imaging often eliminates negatives and paper, there is no archive negative, print trail, fingerprints, or footprints to verify authenticity. And, it’s a foregone conclusion that tampering with photographs is now inevitable. Consider the Hollywood term zipper head where a star’s face is pasted on an alluring model’s body to create stunning movie posters. One famous 1989 TV Guide cover image fabrication reportedly involved placing Oprah Winfrey’s head on a very detailed sketch of Ann Margret’s body—detected only when Ann Margret’s husband identified Ann’s unique ring on one finger. Now, the same technology, once available only to Hollywood special effects studios and elite advertising agencies, is pervasive—producing equivalent illusion perfection.

To demonstrate this technology’s dramatic potential, Fred Ritchin, a New York University Tisch School of the Arts professor of photography, visited the Scitex America headquarters in Bedford, Massachusetts. Before departing that day, he and the Scitex staff created a convincing composite color image for a November 4, 1984, New York Times image manipulation article by combining images of:

• the Manhattan East River skyline
• the Eiffel Tower
• the Statue of Liberty
• San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid

In the process, the team digitally:

• Increased the Empire State Building’s height and moved it several blocks
• Removed the Chrysler Building
• Added an East River pier
• Reversed the Citicorp Building
• Removed a smokestack
• Added traffic around the Eiffel Tower
• Removed buildings wherever desired

This was an academic exercise. On the positive side, digital imaging techniques allow frantic families to construct likely facial appearances of long-kidnapped children for posters. It shows sun-worshipers how the sun may age their skin. But on numerous other fronts, some folks feel technology practitioners are out of control. A quick Mead Data Central NEXIS full text search inquiry requesting references discussing digital imaging and ethics produced dozens of citations discussing the subject. The National Press Photographers Association is mentioned many times because it became concerned in the late 1980s regarding the dangers of fabricated news images. Here are a few examples of what the group is concerned about:

• Christopher Harris, professor of photojournalism and director of Middle Tennessee State’s Digital Imaging Lab, contends the Orange County Register won a Pulitzer Prize with a digitally altered Olympic image that turned the sky blue. This newspaper reportedly has a long history of past “reality enhancements” including closing a young celebrity boy’s open zipper in a photograph and removing red and yellow (i.e., smog) wavelengths from the sky—providing sparkling “Register sky blue” skies. The Orange County Register seemingly abides by its slogan “We’re on Orange County’s side” with little probable opposition from local chambers of commerce.
• John Long, past NPPA president, reported an NPPA Press Clip contest winnercalled to ask whether he should send the out-of-focus original photograph to the News Photographer Magazine for contest result publication or the digitally sharpened one that won the contest. This situation alerted the NPPA to potential sharpening ethical abuses which never existed until digital image processing introduced them.

There is some real danger here, and technology’s advance will soon make it possible to fabricate video footage in real time. Don Tomlinson, associate professor of journalism at Texas A&M, has coined a word for this development—digitexed—where digital images are created and passed off as authentic. He reports that Tom Pettit, NBC News vice president, observed, “...With the highly sophisticated editing of videotape, we can reshape reality with great ease.” Walter Porges of ABC News Practices observed, “...I can create pictures and sounds...that never happened. And that creates all kinds of ethical...problems for everyone.”

Major television networks deny fabricating video footage. But, in 1989, ABC was embarrassed after airing an electronically manipulated staged photograph of one man passing another a briefcase. The individual receiving the briefcase supposedly appeared somewhat like Felix Block, a diplomat suspected of espionage. After the nature of this image was revealed by others, ABC stated its inadvertent failure to identify the image as a “simulation” was an oversight. Ben Blank, ABC News art director, then reportedly halted routine image manipulation to, for example, fix rumpled jacket creases.

But some digital manipulation motivations are completely transparent. In 1990, Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate John Silber was videotaped railing against working mothers. His political opposition obtained a videotape of the outburst, reportedly manipulated the footage by distorting Silber’s image to make him appear more menacing, and used it in negative television campaign ads. Another example of alleged image manipulation occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, where a city council candidate’s ethnic features were reportedly accentuated. A libel suit was filed and quietly settled in closed proceedings. In September 1997, a former female student at the Citadel filed a harassment suit against the school alleging, in part, that male cadets digitally altered an image of her and posted the obscene image on the Internet.

Unaltered image of Gordon Joyner, candidate for Atlanta City Council.

Digitally altered image produced by political opponents