Photo retouching is a fact of life in the professional photography world. Just as an article wouldn’t go to print without being reviewed by an editor, a photograph isn’t published without first passing through Photoshop or equivalent editing tool. Yet, there is single level of photo retouching or manipulation that is universally considered acceptable.

Last year photo forensics experts accused the winner of the world press 2013 photo of doctoring the photo. Experts used error level analysis which led some to believe the image was a composite of multiple images. Even after the photographer later released the RAW file (a file generated directly from the camera’s image sensor), the debate continued on just how much editing was preformed. While the award wasn’t stripped the World Press decided make changes for it’s upcoming competition.  The debate continues, how much is too much manipulation?  What is the landscape of acceptable photo retouchings?

About six months ago I started conducting some unscientific polls to understand public perceptions of photo manipulations better.

Authentic Vs Idealized
The primary theme that came out of my discussions was that of authenticity or idealization. While photographers generally try to capture both truth and emotion, an authenticity view prioritizes truth over emotion, where idealized prioritizes emotion over truth.

In terms of personal photography, an idealized photo might try and showcase the best of a subject. As any teenager will tell you, some days are good acne days, others are not. An idealized view point may attempt to reduce the acne so that the photo appears as though it was taken on a good day. For those on the idealization side of the axis, this type of action is not altogether dissimilar to finding a flattering angle, removing objects out of the background, or even using makeup. Incidentally, some people on the far end of authentic would agree, and disapprove of these actions as well.

Acceptance vs Privacy
There was a secondary theme that began to emerge throughout the discussions, especially in context with online photo sharing (blogging, facebooking, instagraming, etc): that of acceptance and privacy.

The idea behind acceptance is that by display a photo ‘as is’ you are showing your acceptance of the subject matter. Someone who leans strongly into the acceptance side would argue that by editing the photo, say removing acne, you send the message that acne is bad and needs to be hidden. Such an action could effect the self esteem of not just the subject, but presumably others who may relate to the subject.

On the other side, some argue that editing a photo may allow the subject or the photographer to hide a piece of themselves they want to keep private when posted publicly, or even pseudo-publicly. For example, I can’t fathom caring if a naked baby photo of me ended up on the internet, but I would care if random strangers knew where all the freckles on my body were. For me, the baby photo isn’t an invasion of privacy, per say, but the revealing of such distinguishing marks is.

No One Right Answer:
Almost all individuals surveyed had limits on how much photo retouching was acceptable, however, those limits weren’t uniformly applied. Opinions seem to differ depending on the use case. Like all things, it depends on the context. Acceptable treatment for a photo kept privately differed from those intended for small audiences, and those showcased publicly.

Perhaps related, one key aspect in whether a treatment is considered acceptable appears to be intention behind the retouching. In the world press photo contest, and photo journalism in general, the idea is to inform. In these cases the retouchings were often viewed as deceitful because they can alter the viewer’s perception of world events. Fewer people took issue with whitening teeth, or removing wrinkles from personal photos, than from magazine editorials, even though such edits were perceived as more common in magazine editorials. No one like feeling tricked.

I’ve been making some rookie mistakes lately with my photography. Remember when I went down to campus for some DIY graduation photos and forgot to change my aperture? I confess it hasn’t been the only time. At home, I can always re-take a photo, so I don’t sweat it. It’s a learning process. Since I want to enjoy my first vacation in two years, and not make it all about photography, I decided to shoot in aperture priority mode. That way, at least the exposure would be “right”. That was my intention. I went from indoors to outside with little thought. The shutter speed was no match for the large aperture and high ISO and ended up with some really overexposed photos. Woopsies.

Luckily I noticed fairly early in the process and also ended up with some great vacation photos, but this left me a question of what to do with the over exposures. I wanted to see if I could do anything with them. I immediately thought of my previous attempt at editing a photo to give it the appearance of a drawing. The first step was to dramatically increase the brightness like an over exposure. I decided to give it another go, this time following this tutorial I found. The tutorial was for photo shop, but I was able to replicate the steps pretty easily in paint shop pro. (I rarely see anyone using paint shop anymore, so I didn’t bother including the steps in this post. If you have any questions feel free to email me.)

It was fast and simple, and I was happy with the results so I decided to try again with a few more photos. The correctly exposed photos turn out better than over exposed ones. (That’s usually the way it goes.) But with a few adjustments to contrast and brightness the exposure is correct enough that I can get something decent out of the photo. In some cases the glowing edges effect was too strong and I reduced the opacity, but overall the process did not involve much tuning. I was even able to finish this post during nap time.

The initial photo I tried to turn into a drawing.

While the initial tutorial was for creating a black and white drawing effect, I found I could produce decent colored drawings as well. I tried two different approaches, (1) one where I skipped the de-saturation step and (2) one where I left it in and reduced the opacity de-saturation layer to let some of the original color show through.

When skipping the de-saturation step in approach (1), the dodge layer effect is a little too strong in my opinion. The tutorial is designed for a black and white drawing that where the pencil strokes show the texture and edges of a shape. Solid blocks of color in the photo (like skin) appear mostly white. This makes sense in black and white, but less so in color. To correct this I reduced the dodge layer opacity to 96%. Now the ‘white’ regions have a touch of color to them.

I prefer the result from approach (2), where the opacity of the de-saturation layer is reduced. The overall color feels more even, and looks more like I would have expected from colored pencils. For the curious, the opacity of the de-saturation layer in the above photo is 66%, however I find this number to be highly variable based on the original image.

A while back I wrote about editing Nicki’s photos to reduce the appearance of orange in her nose nose. I hesitated before sharing that post, knowing I’d be opening myself up to criticism should anyone ever read my blog. What kind of mom would care about the color of her baby’s nose? Worst.mom.ever, that’s who. I ultimately decided to publish the piece because I thought there might be others interested in doing something similar, and I wanted to be honest about the level of photo editing I do. My goal in editing these photos is to learn about photo editing, not (really) to change the image. Trying to keep the photo editing a secret feels like I’m sending the wrong message, like there’s something to be embarrassed or guilty about. Let me be clear here: I don’t think that there anything wrong with photo editing, nor do I think there is anything wrong with Nicki’s appearance. This is just the next step in learning to process photos, after color balancing and contrast/brightness adjustments.

The question I keep coming back to, however, is what level of photo editing is too much? In my mind if the photo edits are noticeable, it’s too much. If you can’t tell whether a photo has been altered, does it really matter if it has? (I have the same philosophy on real vs fake diamonds, for the record.)

Recently I’ve stumbled onto the field of photo forensics. I found fotoforensics.com and decided to have a go with my images. I use the full sized images (I only post small versions on my blog) since resizing them can affect the analysis.

De-oranging the nose: De-oranging is totally a word, by the way.

Screen Grab from FotoForensics.

No white patch, or higher ELA values around the nose! Looks like I can get away with this edit.

I also ran the analysis on the small (400 x 262) version I uploaded to my blog. Interestingly the nose appears unedited but the eyes show possible signs of being altered, where the above screen grab indicates they weren’t. I have brightened eyes before (using this tutorial), but not this photo. I double checked by going back to the raw file.

Removal of scratches:

At 7 months Nicki gave herself one heck of a scratch on her cheek at day care. (We referred to it as her daycare warrior battle scar). It was pretty pronounced for a while, and is still somewhat visible, although now it looks more like a blemish than a scratch. I’ve edited it out of a few photos where it was particular pronounced, like I would with baby acne and teething rashes. Although I’ve never been very good with teething rashes, they cover too much surface area.

The arrow shows where the scratch used to be pre edit. In this one I also brightened the eyes, but left the orange nose.

Nothing.

The birthmark:

Like the orange nose, I thought this one might be controversial. Nicki had a small birthmark on her left arm at birth. If it was a permanent birth mark, I would have let it be. Since it looked like something that would fade, and had the appearance of a bruise in photos, I removed it from some of her early photos. It was already fading by 2 months, but you can still see it in this instagram.

The arrow shows where the birth mark used to be pre edit. In this photo I didn’t completely remove the birthmark, just lessened it’s appearance.

Maybe? There’s a little bit of a lighter patch (higher ELA values) near where the birthmarked was removed, but it doesn’t stand out from other patches of skin that were unedited.

Other Photos

This is making me wonder if any of my edits would be detected. (Or, at least, detectable by me. I read the tutorials, but I’m no forensics expert.)

Bingo!

This photo was actually a composite of two photos. I took them early Christmas morning, when she and I were the only ones up. I can’t get Nicki to smile when I’m staring through the view finder, so I was singing and playing her while attempting to hold the camera level. The camera slipped slightly and the photo with the good smile was poorly framed. The nicely framed photo had lens flare on her face – over her left eye of all places! Eyes are the hardest to edit. What to do? Clone the face from the one photo onto the other.

It was fun running my photos through FotoForensics. Hopefully my analysis is not embarrassingly off. I want to learn more about forensics. And photo editing. And photo taking.