Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: another classic episode. We're actually doing a follow up to
Speaker 1: last week's classic episode. This week's episode is Photo Editing
Speaker 1: and Manipulation, Part two. Originally published on September two, two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. Dylan was a guest host on this show.
Speaker 1: He is now a managing executive producer with I Heart,
Speaker 1: so he's stuck with us and has done incredible work.
Speaker 1: The guys very busy. But way back then we had
Speaker 1: him on as a guest to talk about photo manipulation
Speaker 1: and yeah, I hope you enjoy this classic episode. Images
Speaker 1: on computers, that's nothing new, We've had those for quite
Speaker 1: some time. I would argue that perhaps the pivotal moment
Speaker 1: in the post digital era would be nineteen eighties seven.
Speaker 1: That's when you have a PhD student at the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan named Thomas Noel who builds a program for
Speaker 1: the Mac Plus. He calls it display. Oh yeah, yeah, display.
Speaker 1: Everyone's using that these days, but they are They just
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, they just it's just not called that anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in he and his brother John Noel. John Noel
Speaker 1: was an effects expert a little company called Industrial Light
Speaker 1: and Magic. Yeah so a little, little known Hollywood effects studio,
Speaker 1: just one of the smaller ones. Yeah. So that they
Speaker 1: put their heads together and together they come up with
Speaker 1: an idea. They decided to rename display and they call
Speaker 1: it Photoshop, and they license it to a manufacturer of
Speaker 1: slide scanners, and the manufacturers called Barney Scan. So the
Speaker 1: very first version of Photoshop, which was not version one point, oh,
Speaker 1: it preceded version one point. It was version zero point
Speaker 1: eight seven. It was included with about two hundred scanners.
Speaker 1: So are about two hundred editions of Photoshop zero point
Speaker 1: eight seven out there? Wow, that's a yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen nine they would sign a distribution deal
Speaker 1: with Adobe, and thus the relationship with Adobe and Photoshop begins.
Speaker 1: Was also when we get a famous incident of photo manipulation,
Speaker 1: a huge slap. I would say, this was a TV
Speaker 1: guide cover. I don't know if you're particularly familiar with
Speaker 1: this instance. It is Oprah. Yes, so this was pretty awful.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, So, what what happened was TV
Speaker 1: Guide puts Oprah on the cover. That's not the egregious, nasty,
Speaker 1: horrible part. That's that's perfectly fine. Was a ratings champion
Speaker 1: absolutely deserved to be on the cover of TV What
Speaker 1: what she did not deserve is is the way she
Speaker 1: was portrayed. So what happened was they had cut her
Speaker 1: head off of one picture and then superimposed it on
Speaker 1: top of the body of Anne Margaret and a ten
Speaker 1: year old photo of Ann Margaret at that from nine yeah,
Speaker 1: nine seventy nine publicity shot of Anne Margaret, different woman,
Speaker 1: different race, and the it was immediately recognized by the
Speaker 1: fashion designer for Ann Margaret, the person who designed the
Speaker 1: dress and Margaret was wearing in that publicity photo and
Speaker 1: clearly was the same photo obviously the exact same pose
Speaker 1: and same body. It just had been manipulated so that
Speaker 1: it was supposed to like Oprah's body. This was not
Speaker 1: one of TV Guide's best moments, and it certainly was
Speaker 1: one of those that really brought the the this photo
Speaker 1: manipulation uh concept back into the public eye. Keep in
Speaker 1: mind that a lot of the manipulations we talked about
Speaker 1: in our first episode. For a really long time, we're
Speaker 1: not necessarily public knowledge. People weren't aware that a lot
Speaker 1: of this was happening, you know. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people still believed that when you see a photograph,
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is exactly the way it it rolled
Speaker 1: out in real life. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people now would still look at some of these photographs
Speaker 1: from like the eighteen sixties and not know that there
Speaker 1: was the ability to do manipulations like we're possible, right,
Speaker 1: So if you were looking at, say some of the
Speaker 1: spirit photography that we talked about in our last episode,
Speaker 1: you might be led to believe that somehow the photographers
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century had an ability to capture spirits
Speaker 1: in photographs. They weren't. They use double exposure. Double exposure
Speaker 1: is no longer a thing. So maybe that's part of
Speaker 1: the problem, because unless you're using film double exposure like
Speaker 1: you could, you could digitally create an effect that's like
Speaker 1: double exposure. You can overlay one layer and photoshop on
Speaker 1: another and change the opacity. Yes, but as far as
Speaker 1: putting two pictures on the same piece of film, it's
Speaker 1: not exactly the same. Yeah, yeah, it's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: you can you can fake it so that you get
Speaker 1: the same effect, But it's not it's definitely not the
Speaker 1: same process. Nine was when Adobe Photoshop one point oh
Speaker 1: would ship Happy anniversary Photoshop. Hey, there you go. I
Speaker 1: didn't even make them do the math because in English
Speaker 1: major don't blame me. So here's here's something that's hard
Speaker 1: to believe. Adobe Photoshop one point oh fit on a
Speaker 1: single three and a half inch floppy disk. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah. You think about the size of those those
Speaker 1: programs now, and well, first of all, we don't use
Speaker 1: sloppy disks anymore. You know, I don't know if Photoshop
Speaker 1: still I guess you can still physically, but most people
Speaker 1: downloaded from the cloud now right, Yeah, you get a
Speaker 1: digital download and it's sizeable. It would take many three
Speaker 1: and a half inch disks to hold it. Now, and
Speaker 1: that Photoshop one point oh contain several of the tools
Speaker 1: that would later become the standard features of Photoshop. That's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing to me. Yeah, the clone tool was included
Speaker 1: in Photoshop one point oh. Yeah, and you you you
Speaker 1: already had the ability to select certain certain parts of
Speaker 1: an image and human saturation levels or tones. Thinking since
Speaker 1: I never used one point. Oh, thinking back and imagining
Speaker 1: that that was possible back then already in some form
Speaker 1: is is pretty amazing. Although the great thing about photoshop
Speaker 1: was that in comparison to its competitors, it was it
Speaker 1: was easier, more intuitive, and that's the way it was marketed. Right.
Speaker 1: So keep in mind that when we talked about in
Speaker 1: Part one, those those those means of manipulating and editing photos,
Speaker 1: that was a specialized skill. Like if you were not
Speaker 1: a photographer, chances are you were unaware of how this
Speaker 1: this trickery or manipulation took place. And it's almost like
Speaker 1: you can almost think of it like a guild system.
Speaker 1: It wasn't formal like that, but it was this thing
Speaker 1: that if you were not part of that club, you
Speaker 1: were largely ignorant of what was going on in order
Speaker 1: for that stuff to happen. Uh. This approach meant that
Speaker 1: it suddenly became much more accessible. It's still had a
Speaker 1: barrier to entry. There was still a learning curve to
Speaker 1: be to be conquered, but it was much lower than
Speaker 1: say having to go and roll in classes in photography
Speaker 1: and all the chemistry and fault there was. There was
Speaker 1: no longer chemistry involved, and there was no chemistry in
Speaker 1: a photo which didn't need to have chemistry, and you
Speaker 1: didn't have to go into the dark room and stand
Speaker 1: there with the tools if you wanted to lighten a
Speaker 1: part of an image or dark end. Yeah. I loved
Speaker 1: and you're in the part one you talked about the
Speaker 1: experience of going into a pitch black room in order
Speaker 1: to manipulate a camera so that you don't expose the
Speaker 1: film to light, thus ruining the film because obviously the
Speaker 1: film is as photoreactive. You can't since its photoreactive, any
Speaker 1: light is going to make it react. And the idea
Speaker 1: of fumbling around in the dark that first time, where
Speaker 1: you're trying to build that familiarity, it made me think
Speaker 1: of every scene in every military movie where someone has
Speaker 1: to take apart a gun and then reassemble it. It's
Speaker 1: like it sounds like that, like that, like after after
Speaker 1: week five or six, you just confidently just you're not
Speaker 1: even thinking about it's no longer conscious thought. It's just
Speaker 1: muscle memory. Yeah, and that that's that's great, But it's
Speaker 1: also great now, as much as I love film photography,
Speaker 1: to do that on a daily basis is not as
Speaker 1: easy as taking a digital SLR and putting an SD
Speaker 1: card slot. Yeah, it turns out that you know, you
Speaker 1: can even do that with the lights song you can.
Speaker 1: That's great. So the cool thing also about Adobe Photoshop
Speaker 1: one point oh is it was being used for some
Speaker 1: really high profile, uh feature films at the time. There
Speaker 1: were actual effects studios that were using elements of Photoshop
Speaker 1: to work on composite digital shots of their films, including
Speaker 1: movies like The Abyss. So that's James Cameron's big movie
Speaker 1: that depending on which version you're seeing, you're dedicating about
Speaker 1: four hours of your life. Too. There's The Rocketeer, which
Speaker 1: highly underrated fantastic sci fi fantasy film. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember seeing that one of us really young. It's a
Speaker 1: great it's a great movie. Go check it off. You
Speaker 1: haven't seen The Rocketeer, youve got to see The Rocketier.
Speaker 1: So it's actually a really good superher Row film. It
Speaker 1: just didn't get adopted by a larger audience the way
Speaker 1: some of the ones today did. Terminator two was one
Speaker 1: of the movies that Phomshop one point oh influenced. James Cameron. Ye,
Speaker 1: so if you uh, if you you know, if you
Speaker 1: really want to celebrate give photoshop one point, I was
Speaker 1: very slowly descending thumbs up. And then one of one
Speaker 1: of a movie that I love despite its flaws, Hook,
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg movie. Yeah, the the Steven Spielberg Retelling of
Speaker 1: Peter Pan, where Robin Williams is a grown up Peter
Speaker 1: Pan and Dustin Hoffman's Captain Hook. Uh. Dustin Hoffman, by
Speaker 1: the way, phenomenal Captain Hook, one of my I loved
Speaker 1: his performance. I wish there were more Hook in the
Speaker 1: movie Hook, because every time he was on screen, I
Speaker 1: was happy. It's just pretty phenomenal. Yeah. It was a
Speaker 1: totally different style of Hook than I was anticipating, and
Speaker 1: I loved every second of it. Anyway, all of those
Speaker 1: had influence from photoshop. They were digital composites, and we
Speaker 1: talked previously in the earlier episode about composite photographs. In
Speaker 1: that sense, there were composites that were completely made through
Speaker 1: analog methods where you're literally cutting and pasting either in
Speaker 1: a negative form or print form and taking a new
Speaker 1: photograph whatever it may be. But you were putting together
Speaker 1: two or more images to create a new image that's
Speaker 1: a composite of those previous ones. Now we're talking about
Speaker 1: doing the same thing but using digital tools, which gives
Speaker 1: you a lot more freedom. It does, and in soon
Speaker 1: thereafter I think three point oh was the introduction of layers,
Speaker 1: which changes everything. Yeah, you have non destructive editing. Please
Speaker 1: can you explain what that is? Non destructive editing is
Speaker 1: a godsend because, uh, I guess when most people maybe
Speaker 1: open up Photoshop for the first time and they're messing around,
Speaker 1: you see things like the eraser things that kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense. Like maybe if you ever opened up a
Speaker 1: picture in MS paint and you thought, like, I can
Speaker 1: paint on this, But once you do that, you're you're
Speaker 1: you're limited by how many times you can hit the
Speaker 1: undue button. But with layers, um you can continually add
Speaker 1: on different elements, on on, different on. The best way
Speaker 1: to say is layers. So it's like putting pieces of
Speaker 1: paper over one another kind of or clear acetate as
Speaker 1: maybe and and so if you uh subtract from one
Speaker 1: part of that layer, if you still have a copy
Speaker 1: of that underneath, nothing's going to happen to the original
Speaker 1: part of that image you're and you're still going to
Speaker 1: have on the bottom layer. If you don't edit that
Speaker 1: layer the whole image. You're still going to have the
Speaker 1: whole image. So you have your original as the base,
Speaker 1: the foundation, yes, and then you lay other layers on
Speaker 1: top of it. That's where you can do your manipulation.
Speaker 1: And then you decide, maybe you decide, you know, I
Speaker 1: took that balloon out, but I actually kind of want
Speaker 1: that balloon back in. Now that I've done these other edits,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go back re add that one layer or
Speaker 1: undo what I did on that one layer. And now
Speaker 1: it's as if by magic we get the balloon bag exactly.
Speaker 1: And and I'm sure a lot of people have noticed
Speaker 1: that you have at the top of your your application
Speaker 1: you have different tabs on them is like adjustments, and
Speaker 1: you can go and you can change the contrast, the saturation,
Speaker 1: things like that. Well, with adjustment layers, you can add
Speaker 1: that on and then you can you can turn off
Speaker 1: that layer and the effect goes away. If you do
Speaker 1: that through the file menu at the top, it changes
Speaker 1: the picture permanently. If you can't, if you don't have
Speaker 1: the back button, if you don't have undo, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: as long as you or or if you avoid saving it,
Speaker 1: you still have your original. But then what's the point
Speaker 1: of doing all the work. Yeah, it's a great point.
Speaker 1: I mean I've often wondered because as someone who has
Speaker 1: only casually used these editing tools myself, Uh, it took
Speaker 1: a while for me to figure out what layers were.
Speaker 1: And um, like I remember specific quickly using them to
Speaker 1: do things like if I wanted to take an image
Speaker 1: but remove, like remove an image on a white background,
Speaker 1: like let's say it's a stock photo of something, and
Speaker 1: I want to put that image, the image of that
Speaker 1: thing on some other background and not have a big
Speaker 1: white box behind it. That's when it was it was
Speaker 1: useful if that was a layer itself, like I could
Speaker 1: take the layer that had the object and leave the
Speaker 1: white background behind, so I could actually put that against
Speaker 1: a different background and have it look like it meant
Speaker 1: to it was meant to be. There another huge breakthrough
Speaker 1: his masks. And if use layers and masks together, you
Speaker 1: have so much control and and it's you can go
Speaker 1: backwards or forwards as much as you want in your document.
Speaker 1: With with masks, you can select a certain part of
Speaker 1: the image and then you can mask out the rest
Speaker 1: of it. So you just have that that part selected
Speaker 1: and then you can use the paint brush to paint
Speaker 1: and or paint doubt to kind of clean up the
Speaker 1: lines that you just selected. If you want more of
Speaker 1: that layer that you just blank part of it out,
Speaker 1: you can you can erase part of it and you
Speaker 1: can bring it back in. So layers and mass I
Speaker 1: think we're big game changers for photo editors and photo
Speaker 1: manipulators who either used as an art or they used
Speaker 1: it to deceive whatever you want to use it for.
Speaker 1: Photoshop was making it possible as we as we have
Speaker 1: said many times on tech stuff, it's not the tool
Speaker 1: that's necessarily the issue or the problem. It's the way
Speaker 1: the tools implemented. And the purpose of these tools was
Speaker 1: to give greater freedom to people who work in images,
Speaker 1: and what you do with that freedom is up to
Speaker 1: the choice of the individual, and in some cases it
Speaker 1: was to make art. In some cases it was just
Speaker 1: to clean up an image so that the point that
Speaker 1: the photographer wanted you to focus on was in fact
Speaker 1: the most notable element of that image. Like if I'm
Speaker 1: taking a photo of something and i think like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's this great background, and I've got a wonderful subject
Speaker 1: in the foreground, and I'm really concentrating on my subject,
Speaker 1: and I don't notice that there's some jackass twenty feet
Speaker 1: back who's you know, waving maniacally into the camera. And
Speaker 1: then I think, I really don't want that guy there.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, just pop open a new layer
Speaker 1: and photo shop and clone stamp them out. I like
Speaker 1: the way you think, well, when you see that guy
Speaker 1: on the street, like I clone stamped you exactly, he
Speaker 1: doesn't know what you mean. Maybe there's a good chance
Speaker 1: he has no idea how what what a sick burn,
Speaker 1: which is essentially saying like I did what I did
Speaker 1: to you what Stalin did to the commissar, only in
Speaker 1: the photo sense. Though, you're free to go. We'll be
Speaker 1: back to talk about more photo editing and manipulation in
Speaker 1: just a moment after this break. So some other instances
Speaker 1: of photo manipulation, some of which were not necessarily meant
Speaker 1: to be uh taken as a representation of the actual person,
Speaker 1: some of which it's arguable. Texas Monthly Magazine had a
Speaker 1: great image of Governor Ann richards on a Harley Davidson.
Speaker 1: That's a great one, and she liked it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she looked great. But if you actually looked in the
Speaker 1: credit page of the magazine. They they indicate that the
Speaker 1: motorcyclist was a stock image, and so if you were
Speaker 1: to take the trouble of looking at the at that
Speaker 1: credit page, you would see that they don't hide the
Speaker 1: fact that this was a manipulation. And that's almost become
Speaker 1: common practices for manipulated covers. Maybe if it's someone's head
Speaker 1: on someone else's body, yeah, which is a big thing,
Speaker 1: that it will have a small disclaimer either on the
Speaker 1: credit page or very small on the bottom of the
Speaker 1: cover that that it is illustration. Yeah. Yeah. And ninety
Speaker 1: three that's when photoshop would come to Windows. So finally
Speaker 1: Windows users were able to stand side by side with
Speaker 1: Mac users with sixteen bit support. That was that was
Speaker 1: the big thing that year, I think for Windows. UH.
Speaker 1: Here's a famous instance of photo manipulation that was a
Speaker 1: big controversy. This was during UH just in the in
Speaker 1: the wake of O. J. Simpson being arrested on the
Speaker 1: charge of murder, and two magazines came out at the
Speaker 1: same time, both using O. J. Simpsons mug shot. Newsweek
Speaker 1: had the unaltered mug shot as the cover. Time magazine
Speaker 1: had a altered version of that mug shot. Yes, they
Speaker 1: manipulated it to make him appear darker and more menacing,
Speaker 1: which is I would argue bad photo journalism, and yes, yes,
Speaker 1: both of those things. It is I would argue indefensible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that they show you
Speaker 1: a most photography history of photograghy classes or yeah, saying
Speaker 1: quite pointing at that and saying, do not be this person. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's bad idea. It says a lot. It says a
Speaker 1: lot of really ugly things about not just the mentality
Speaker 1: of uh, the editors of the magazine at the time,
Speaker 1: but also their opinion of the American public and perhaps
Speaker 1: even by extension, the overall dominant opinion of the American public.
Speaker 1: Like all of that none of that comes out well
Speaker 1: in that in that instance, to say that this would
Speaker 1: be seen as a reasonable use of photo editing and
Speaker 1: that it would be accepted and that you that's all
Speaker 1: of that is just ugly and it's unfortunate. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's good that Newsweek ran the same picture,
Speaker 1: which is something that I think is is uniquely pre
Speaker 1: internet kind of saturation, is that that would happen every
Speaker 1: once in a while that Newsweek or Time would run
Speaker 1: the same image on their home on their front almost
Speaker 1: that homepage. Yeah, well, the same image of that world.
Speaker 1: I will often end up referring to old media with
Speaker 1: new media terms. And then I realized, like, I've been
Speaker 1: in this business a while now, and this is this
Speaker 1: is reality. Now. That's so weird. I remember before there
Speaker 1: was a worldwide web, um showing my age. All right,
Speaker 1: And I've got one more specific when I want to
Speaker 1: talk about, and I'm sure you have some more examples too,
Speaker 1: But the one that I was thinking of immediately that
Speaker 1: it kind of ties in in a way, and that
Speaker 1: has to do with race. Um. So the time image
Speaker 1: was racist image that was like, again, just terrible photo journalism.
Speaker 1: The one I was going to mention was an attempt
Speaker 1: by the University of Wisconsin to demonstrate that they had
Speaker 1: a diverse student uh population by showing a group of
Speaker 1: football fans at a game that included a black student
Speaker 1: in the middle of to the side of several white
Speaker 1: students all cheering on a football game. The only problem
Speaker 1: was it was a composite photo. The black students photo
Speaker 1: had been taken a year apart from the football fans photo,
Speaker 1: and then the black student had been inserted into the
Speaker 1: picture in order to perpetuate this idea that the University
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin had a diverse student body. Yes, and it
Speaker 1: is bad. And I mean, like the photoshop itself is bad.
Speaker 1: It does not look like that person is not the
Speaker 1: same place. There was a publication in Toronto. I think
Speaker 1: it was for uh. It was like come to Toronto
Speaker 1: and they were trying to show on the on the
Speaker 1: cover at a family and so they did the same
Speaker 1: thing that they did with the Wisconsin cover. And it
Speaker 1: hits me on two levels, both of these covers that
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's it's not good practice, and it
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been with all the effort and time
Speaker 1: that you went through to get those photographs, you could
Speaker 1: have gotten an actual photograph number one that would have
Speaker 1: probably been less time consuming just to get a group
Speaker 1: of people together and say hey, let's let's take your picture.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pose you here, and if there's a game
Speaker 1: and we don't take a picture. So it's not very ethical,
Speaker 1: it's not very well done and like in good taste.
Speaker 1: And then also like the editing is really bad. You
Speaker 1: look at it and you know, yeah, I mean even
Speaker 1: with an untrained eye. It definitely does not look like
Speaker 1: these photos were taken on the same day because they weren't.
Speaker 1: They were taking a year apart. And uh, you know
Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin. What they said was they said,
Speaker 1: we do have black students in our student body. We
Speaker 1: didn't have any photos that represented the diversity, so we
Speaker 1: made one. Yeah. And and not to get on that
Speaker 1: soap box, but if you want diversity, do it. Yeah, Like, like,
Speaker 1: don't create the illusion of it by manipulation of photographs,
Speaker 1: but put the effort in to get the photograph, the
Speaker 1: real photograph, get the real diversity of the campus. Things
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I agree, it's because because all it takes,
Speaker 1: even if you do it really really well with the
Speaker 1: photo manipulation, all it takes is someone who has any
Speaker 1: knowledge of what's going on to say, yeah, it didn't
Speaker 1: really happen, and then everything unravels and then you have
Speaker 1: a pr problem that's way bigger than the perceived lack
Speaker 1: of diversity. Um. So definitely agree, address the underlying problem
Speaker 1: of diversity before you start worrying about Uh, you know
Speaker 1: the brochures you were handing out. That's that's definitely I'm
Speaker 1: on the same page. Yeah, and and I've all of
Speaker 1: a sudden thought of like, um. There a lot of
Speaker 1: examples of of people who have pointed out photos in
Speaker 1: this this post digital era, people who have experience with photoshop,
Speaker 1: who work with digital photography fairly extensively, who very quickly
Speaker 1: can point out when, um, when when less than professional
Speaker 1: manipulation has taken place, like in some cases, in some
Speaker 1: cases it's it's fairly obvious even to the casual viewer,
Speaker 1: and in some cases it takes a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a trained eye to start noticing the indicators. If
Speaker 1: it's done really, really well, then theoretically you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to tell like you you you what you could say, well,
Speaker 1: it's possible that was manipulated. It's also possible that that
Speaker 1: wasn't manipulated. Some of the well done ones go viral
Speaker 1: so quickly that it can make the rounds everywhere before
Speaker 1: someone comes out, even if it's like three hours later,
Speaker 1: it's already had all the news, you know, and they
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, hey, I just opened this up a
Speaker 1: photoshop zoomed in, and I can tell you where they
Speaker 1: where this picture ends, and this picture begins, and this edit,
Speaker 1: this is definitely manipulated. Yeah, I suppose if you were
Speaker 1: to take the greatest pains possible and go pixel by
Speaker 1: pixel and you had lots of spare time on your hands,
Speaker 1: you could perhaps create an image that was essentially unbeatable, undetectable.
Speaker 1: But it's a huge amount of effort in order to
Speaker 1: do that. You can probably get past a large percentage
Speaker 1: of the viewing public with a with a decent manipulation job.
Speaker 1: But they're always going to be those experts out there
Speaker 1: who are like, they know what to look for, and
Speaker 1: there's always going to be Now in two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: there's gonna they're going to be services that you can
Speaker 1: use that you can upload your image and it's going
Speaker 1: to tell you whether or not they think it's been
Speaker 1: digitally altered because they have an algorithm for finding those
Speaker 1: things out. Which, Yeah, once you have the algorithms, go
Speaker 1: in there where they're looking at it pixel by pixel,
Speaker 1: Like they can look at two adjacent pixels and if
Speaker 1: there's enough of a difference between the two that can't
Speaker 1: be explained by other elements within the image, then that's
Speaker 1: a possible red flag. Yeah, Or people who forget to
Speaker 1: alter their metadata or raise their metadata. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to find fakes, and more often than not,
Speaker 1: they're found out pretty quickly. There's also been some pretty
Speaker 1: embarrassing situations where people have uploaded a photo that they
Speaker 1: had cropped and uh, and yet the original picture is
Speaker 1: still accessible through that image, where someone's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: just expanded it and I saw that your room is
Speaker 1: a total mess. That would be the less scandalous versions
Speaker 1: of some of those photos that have made their rounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then some of them, like you said, are just bad.
Speaker 1: I mean not to skip around too much, but one
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples recently has been there have been
Speaker 1: like a number of photographs of Chinese officials inspecting things
Speaker 1: that are pretty poorly done. I haven't seen these there
Speaker 1: there are. There's just one in particular. It's a doctored
Speaker 1: photo of three local officials inspecting a highway project, uh,
Speaker 1: where they're not on the road, they're just placed kind
Speaker 1: of above the road. So it's like, so not only
Speaker 1: are they inspecting their hovering yeah, like no shadow work,
Speaker 1: and also it's kind of like a stock photo where
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, like they have these looks on their
Speaker 1: face that are like very surprised of how well the
Speaker 1: progress is going on on the road. They're like, oh gosh, wow,
Speaker 1: look at this road and it's pretty embarrassing. And when
Speaker 1: when that's something like that gets out it, yeah, I
Speaker 1: I definitely and I meant to bring this up when
Speaker 1: we were talking about stock photography earlier. There's also been
Speaker 1: several instances of various UM companies or news agencies or
Speaker 1: political campaigns that have used stock images of people and
Speaker 1: use them in ways to claim that this is representing
Speaker 1: a specific individual that isn't the person who posed for
Speaker 1: the stock photography in order to portray a particular viewpoint
Speaker 1: or to put forth a story or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: We've seen that happen a few times where UM people
Speaker 1: have said this image that you're using to to create
Speaker 1: this narrative that furthers your cause in one way or another,
Speaker 1: whether it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum
Speaker 1: you're on. This has been done across the board by
Speaker 1: various people at various times, sometimes not necessarily maliciously, but
Speaker 1: certainly to mislead they would create. They find the stock
Speaker 1: image that seems to represent like diversity would be a
Speaker 1: good one. They I've seen this happen a couple of
Speaker 1: times and people point out, actually, that's a stock image.
Speaker 1: That's not a picture of their employees or their campaign.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not a representative of that group. That's
Speaker 1: actually just a stock photo. And here's where you can
Speaker 1: find it. Yeah, like you took this crowd and you
Speaker 1: put it with this picture of you, and that crowd
Speaker 1: didn't actually come to your event. Um, so do you
Speaker 1: really have the support that you say that you have,
Speaker 1: or uh, even on a stock photo. But one I
Speaker 1: think that you could get from an image database and
Speaker 1: put two photos together that was pretty famous is back
Speaker 1: in two thousand four when there was the image of
Speaker 1: John Kerry sitting next to Jane Fonda at an anti
Speaker 1: vietnamm A protest. Yeah, and that that I think back
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, it took a little bit longer
Speaker 1: for that news to be made public that it was fake,
Speaker 1: where now I think it would it would circle background
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. But that was that was an image that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people looked at and thought, wow,
Speaker 1: that looks that looks legitimate. That really looks like they're
Speaker 1: sitting there together, that they had a closer relationship than
Speaker 1: they actually had a lot of people do that for
Speaker 1: either positive or negative, to take pictures of themselves and
Speaker 1: put them with famous p for either a positive or
Speaker 1: a negative connotation. Yeah, this kind of also leads into
Speaker 1: a more lighthearted version of people using photoshop for this
Speaker 1: kind of purpose. It's my favorite, I mean, it's my
Speaker 1: favorite thing about photoshop. Ever, It's my favorite way that
Speaker 1: people use photoshop. I mean, I I appreciate again the
Speaker 1: technical skill and artistry that is required for you to
Speaker 1: make good use of photoshop and not make it look crappy,
Speaker 1: because I do not have that skill. If I use photoshop,
Speaker 1: it's gonna look like I use fingerpaints to cover up
Speaker 1: a smudge or something. But I love with a with
Speaker 1: a passion that is difficult to describe. The funny uses
Speaker 1: of photoshop people will do when someone presents a photo
Speaker 1: and they have a request. But this happens a lot
Speaker 1: on Reddit, where they say, here's a picture I took,
Speaker 1: this is what I wanted. Can someone photoshop this for
Speaker 1: me so that this outcome happens. And the friend is
Speaker 1: for people to do ridiculous photoshops that that uh end
Speaker 1: up fulfilling the letter of what the person asked for,
Speaker 1: but not the spirit of what they asked for. I
Speaker 1: love that. It's it's like, can you put I don't
Speaker 1: have a picture of me and my cat together? Can
Speaker 1: you put me in my cat in the same picture?
Speaker 1: And then like someone will make the cat huge and
Speaker 1: the guy tiny. Yeah, yeah exactly, or they'll they'll like
Speaker 1: just uh, you know, end up having like half a
Speaker 1: cat on the picture and the other half the cat
Speaker 1: is on the other side of the picture, and just
Speaker 1: just sometimes sometimes the results are terrible, like like terrible
Speaker 1: as in oh, and sometimes they're just funny. My favorite
Speaker 1: one that I've seen recently, uh And I mentioned this
Speaker 1: to you a couple of days ago when we were
Speaker 1: talking about this podcast was one where it was a
Speaker 1: guy standing next to the Eiffel Tower and he had
Speaker 1: his hand up in the air, and what he had
Speaker 1: wanted was the photographer to take a picture so that
Speaker 1: the perspective made it look as if he had his
Speaker 1: hand on the top of the Eiffel Tower. Classic Eiffel photo,
Speaker 1: classic leaning tower photo. Yeah, exactly, get it. The one
Speaker 1: that you know, everyone's gotta have one, right, I would
Speaker 1: be the guy who would want the photo to be
Speaker 1: taken incorrectly on purpose, like I would like I'd want
Speaker 1: to be the guy next to the lean tower piece.
Speaker 1: I had my hands up and there's clearly like three
Speaker 1: ft of space between direction exactly like yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not even on the right side of the tower
Speaker 1: or something like that, because I think that's funny because
Speaker 1: so many people have done the other one. So this
Speaker 1: one I saw where the guy said, could you photo
Speaker 1: shop this so that my hand is on the top
Speaker 1: of the Eiffel Tower. Obviously people had a lot of
Speaker 1: fun with it. I think my favorite was one where
Speaker 1: it made guy had had done I shouldn't say a
Speaker 1: guy might have been a lady. I have no idea
Speaker 1: that the manipulator um made made the guy's arm look
Speaker 1: like Mr. Fantastic or plastic uh. And it was not
Speaker 1: done subtly or like like. It was very cartoonishly where
Speaker 1: it looped around all over the photo until the palm
Speaker 1: was on the top of the Eiffel Tower. Now clearly
Speaker 1: what the guy had meant was, can you reduce the
Speaker 1: size of the Eiffel Tower in the perspective of this
Speaker 1: photo and then edge it over to the side so
Speaker 1: that my hand is on top of it, but that's
Speaker 1: obviously not what the redditors provided. And that's just one
Speaker 1: example and just one example of one request. There are
Speaker 1: entire threads of these sort of things, and they always
Speaker 1: make me laugh because people are so creative, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes a certain level of skill to do photoshop
Speaker 1: badly on purpose. Within itself, it is I wanna argue
Speaker 1: yes and indeed, and it kind of also goes back
Speaker 1: to something that came out of a very tragic event
Speaker 1: but led to ridiculous examples of photoshop. The famous example
Speaker 1: of the guy on the top of the World Trade
Speaker 1: Center UM on September eleven, two thousand one one of
Speaker 1: the most famous manipulations they can think of the modern age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's you know, you've price scene it. It's the
Speaker 1: guy who's waving and then in the background you see
Speaker 1: the plane headed for the World Trade Center and um,
Speaker 1: this was not this was a manipulated photo. The plane
Speaker 1: was not there in the original photo. And as a meme,
Speaker 1: people started to use photoshop to cut the guy out
Speaker 1: of the picture and put him in other various like
Speaker 1: disaster scenarios like the Hindenburg or JFK JFK or volcano exploding,
Speaker 1: or sometimes would be movies, like there would just be
Speaker 1: a still from a movie and this guy would just
Speaker 1: be popped up in the back, and I love that.
Speaker 1: It's like, what are some other things that have made
Speaker 1: that big events throughout history that we can just put
Speaker 1: this person there. And part of you feels badly for
Speaker 1: the guy because it's not like like he was just
Speaker 1: posing for a picture on top of the World Trade
Speaker 1: Center and then somebody manipulated, presumably I don't think it
Speaker 1: was him manipulated the picture so that there was this
Speaker 1: plane in the background. Um, and then suddenly he becomes
Speaker 1: the center of a me even he's not necessarily the
Speaker 1: person who did the manipulation in the first place, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, maybe he has a good sense of
Speaker 1: humor about it. I don't know. It's very very weird
Speaker 1: thing to have happened to you. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I would feel if my image started This is not
Speaker 1: an invitation, listeners, I don't know how I would feel
Speaker 1: if my image started popping up everywhere. Go for it.
Speaker 1: Go for it. Dylan and I have a bit more
Speaker 1: to say about photo editing and manipulation after this quick break. Now,
Speaker 1: Dylan Dean are you aware of our super fan, Aaron Cooper.
Speaker 1: I am not so. Aaron Cooper has done tons of
Speaker 1: photo editing, various stuff you should know, text stuff for
Speaker 1: thinking folks. All the posters in Studio A, all of
Speaker 1: those are his work. So like Holy Monty Python, the
Speaker 1: Holy Grail featuring the people from How Stuff Works. That's
Speaker 1: you know, this is Aaron Cooper's I commend you on
Speaker 1: that is very good he's done. He's done a couple
Speaker 1: of Star Wars ones for me because he did one
Speaker 1: with where I was Luke and Chris Palette was lay up,
Speaker 1: and then when Lauren came in as my co host,
Speaker 1: he replaced Chris with Lauren. But then he put Chris
Speaker 1: in the background as a ghost O BI one version
Speaker 1: and I thought I was brilliant. And then when I
Speaker 1: when when Lauren left the show, he wrote me and
Speaker 1: said I'm not doing another one. Said I don't blame
Speaker 1: you man, You've done You've done more than your share.
Speaker 1: But he is an example of the people who like
Speaker 1: to use photoshop in order to make a joke and
Speaker 1: make a statement and show his appreciation for something that
Speaker 1: he really enjoys. And so big props to Sea. I
Speaker 1: think that his work is great and I'm glad to
Speaker 1: put a name with someone who's made me laugh quite
Speaker 1: a few times in this studio. Yeah, it's it's great stuff.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'll definitely show you when this show is over,
Speaker 1: I'll show you the pictures he's done for tech stuff.
Speaker 1: Are there any other famous examples of photo manipulation manipulation
Speaker 1: you'd like to talk about? Well, speaking of Star Wars, Uh,
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, Uh, there was Iranian missile test. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, it was an image released of the missile
Speaker 1: tests that a bunch of news outlets picked up and
Speaker 1: it didn't take long for someone to realize that, uh,
Speaker 1: two of the missiles in the tests that were being
Speaker 1: launched have been replicated, so it's the same missile twice.
Speaker 1: And the internet had a field day with it. And
Speaker 1: it eventually ended up that someone put a bunch of
Speaker 1: missiles going off in in opposite directions they were they
Speaker 1: were going in both directions, kind of shooting into each other.
Speaker 1: There's smoke everywhere, and then the very bottom of the
Speaker 1: frame there's a jar jar banks just his head and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, fast forward four years, another uh, Iranian news
Speaker 1: outlet picks up that picture, the edited picture for their
Speaker 1: website on an article about Iranian missile tests. So someone
Speaker 1: just searched for a picture of the tests and found
Speaker 1: the wrong one. Yeah, and so like good enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's um, that's unfortunately we we know obviously we have
Speaker 1: seen images that people have presented as as being genuine
Speaker 1: without actually knowing that there had been manipulation. It doesn't
Speaker 1: always mean if someone spreads these kind of photos around,
Speaker 1: it doesn't always mean that they are aware of the
Speaker 1: of the manipulation. They may be victims of that manipulation,
Speaker 1: and then they further perpetuated by sharing it. It's very
Speaker 1: easy to lose original credit on the Internet because things
Speaker 1: are passed around. Even even things that you can verify
Speaker 1: fairly easily can still spread. A famous example which will finally,
Speaker 1: I think, be put to bed this year, We're almost there.
Speaker 1: October is so close. The image of the digital Redoubt
Speaker 1: and back to the future too. I've seen that manipulated
Speaker 1: to be at least five different dates. Yeah, at least
Speaker 1: sometimes more than once a year. Like there, I would
Speaker 1: say at least since two thousand and ten, I've seen
Speaker 1: quite a few. And it is it's in October this year, folks.
Speaker 1: So once we get past October, I think that will
Speaker 1: be the end of its. Once we get past October
Speaker 1: and everyone has self licing shoes and hoverboards. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: just remember they don't work on water unless you got power,
Speaker 1: unless you got that Lexus hoverboard. H that's right, the
Speaker 1: Lexus one. It's different yea that that includes uh, super
Speaker 1: cool magnets that you want to be real careful with
Speaker 1: that one. UM. But I think one of the issues
Speaker 1: that's pretty prevalent these days with photo manipulation is UM
Speaker 1: magazine covers and yes, I and UM. And there's been
Speaker 1: a couple of breakthroughs in the past few years on
Speaker 1: kind of raining that in because I'm sure that everyone's
Speaker 1: seen this and and it's easy to tell that these
Speaker 1: photos have been manipulated just because whose skin is that
Speaker 1: perfect and things like that, whose waste is that small?
Speaker 1: Especially if you if you see any like casual photo
Speaker 1: of especially now that UM, we we have a flood
Speaker 1: of photos hitting our social networks that are taken from
Speaker 1: the subjects themselves, and you start to see what they
Speaker 1: really look like. These and I'm not saying that they
Speaker 1: are unattractive at all, I'm talking like, you know, everyone
Speaker 1: from supermodels to actors, to authors to whatever. You see
Speaker 1: what they really look like, and then you compare that
Speaker 1: to the magazine version of them, the magazine cover version,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they look like two totally different people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also it's a lot of the originals get leaked
Speaker 1: and people make, you know, comparisons where they overlay the
Speaker 1: original with the edit and you can see all of
Speaker 1: the work that they've done, the perceived flaws that have
Speaker 1: been corrected. And in two thousand nine there was a
Speaker 1: really extreme case from Ralph Lauren Uh they edited one
Speaker 1: of their models to have just possibly in human proportions,
Speaker 1: just a tiny, tiny waist, just very small arms, and
Speaker 1: and there was a big backlash and that that kind
Speaker 1: of that wasn't exactly the change of tide. But in
Speaker 1: the years following UM there have been such instances as
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve, Israel became the first country to
Speaker 1: require advertisements to say when they were digitally manipulating photos
Speaker 1: to make people appear thinner. UM. It also set like
Speaker 1: a minimum boss mat body mass index that the models
Speaker 1: could have to ensure that no underweight models were used
Speaker 1: in advertisements. So there was actually like a not a
Speaker 1: weight limit, but in body mass limit. Yeah. And then um,
Speaker 1: there was a teenager that started a campaign, uh, that
Speaker 1: wanted seventeen magazine to stop retouching their models in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, and seventeen magazine made like an eight point
Speaker 1: packed that said that they would never change body or
Speaker 1: face shapes and that they will only use models who
Speaker 1: give the perception of health healthiness. Right. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: in order to not perpetuate an unrealistic ideal of physical
Speaker 1: beauty or to create this kind of unhealthy, uh, unhealthy
Speaker 1: obsession with images that may in fact be unattainable because
Speaker 1: they've been manipulated to the point where this is not
Speaker 1: representative of what a human being looks like. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just make people feel really bad about themselves. Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 1: Of course, there have been several Dove advertisement campaigns that
Speaker 1: have shown the process of taking a model, and they
Speaker 1: take the subject and show the whole process from going
Speaker 1: from the way she looks before any anything's been done
Speaker 1: to the wardrobe and makeup and hair process, which already
Speaker 1: changes her appearance significantly from what she looked like before.
Speaker 1: Then if the photography process, then the editing process in
Speaker 1: the photography where they make even further changes to her
Speaker 1: appearance and then do the side by side and say
Speaker 1: that you know, this is an example of of how
Speaker 1: the the industry, the beauty industry, has created this unrealistic
Speaker 1: and and possible, you know, damaging image of what beauty is.
Speaker 1: So in some instances, hopefully if it doesn't get if
Speaker 1: it doesn't cease it completely, there at least disclaimers, there's
Speaker 1: at least some there's someone, there's a watchdog of some
Speaker 1: sort kind of looking out for things like this. UM.
Speaker 1: But like I think I said earlier, there's also this
Speaker 1: this this feeling I think now from people who are
Speaker 1: inundated with so many photographs UM, and that there's just
Speaker 1: this different access to photography and that you're you see
Speaker 1: so many ads every day, you you go to so
Speaker 1: many websites that um, any photograph that you see is
Speaker 1: is going to still have edits, and that people are
Speaker 1: probably going to feel awkward if they don't see the
Speaker 1: edits that they might they might expect from an image
Speaker 1: just right out the camera, the changing the contrast, fixing
Speaker 1: the exposure, correcting the color. Like we've gotten to a
Speaker 1: point now where a lot of the cameras inside phones.
Speaker 1: The apps have software that auto automatically do certain enhancements
Speaker 1: to contrast or lighting, or to make sure that things
Speaker 1: like red eye aren't a problem. That kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: or in the past few years, you know, putting the
Speaker 1: hashtag no filter on your Instagram photo when you haven't
Speaker 1: put a filter that changes the quality of the photos.
Speaker 1: That that kind of that that's kind of interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I never I never really use filters occasionally like
Speaker 1: Google Google Photo, well once in a blue moon. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what the algorithm chooses as the criteria
Speaker 1: for this, but will single out an image and do
Speaker 1: an auto enhancement and show you what it looks like,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't automatically share it. You actually have the
Speaker 1: option to say, you know, that's fine, awesome, forget it.
Speaker 1: But I took a picture of my dog when I
Speaker 1: was walking my dog in the woods of North Georgia.
Speaker 1: We're right next to a river, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: to take a picture of my dog because he had
Speaker 1: never seen a river before, so this was a neat
Speaker 1: experience for him. He was incredibly cute. He was flipping out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was great. So I took a picture of him,
Speaker 1: and I have an Android phone, so my photos automatically
Speaker 1: back up to my Google Photo account and I get
Speaker 1: a message a little bit like eater and it says
Speaker 1: I've got an enhanced image of my dog. So I
Speaker 1: pull it up and it has added filters, so it
Speaker 1: looks almost like in a painting, almost like a painting style.
Speaker 1: Um to the point where I said, if this looked
Speaker 1: a little bit more like a painting, it would be
Speaker 1: exactly the sort of thing you would see in like
Speaker 1: a doctor's waiting room. Yeah, very rockwelly and kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And so, uh, you know, it's it's interesting we've reached
Speaker 1: this point now where the photo manipulation, uh is happening
Speaker 1: on its own, like due to algorithms. It's not even
Speaker 1: necessarily a human that's responsible for it. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: know you know something about Google deep dreaming. I'm not
Speaker 1: too familiar with what exactly what it does, but is
Speaker 1: there a quick way that you could break it down? Sure?
Speaker 1: Google deep dream the the purpose of it deep dream
Speaker 1: itself is kind of an extension of what the purpose was.
Speaker 1: The purpose was to look at an image and I'll
Speaker 1: grow them, examines an image and looks for examples of
Speaker 1: areas of that image that it can enhance so that
Speaker 1: you can see stuff in greater detail. So, uh, maybe
Speaker 1: there's um like a blurry photo of someone's face. It
Speaker 1: might be able to bring those features into more more
Speaker 1: of a sharp appearance that you can actually see who
Speaker 1: that person is and it was. You know, it could
Speaker 1: be used for anything. It could be used for facial recognition.
Speaker 1: It could be used just to make an image look nicer.
Speaker 1: It could be used to um to to look at
Speaker 1: old photos and see if you can figure out, like
Speaker 1: imagine opening up a cold case. You've got this photograph
Speaker 1: of a face, and you've never been able to identify
Speaker 1: that person. Use this technology to try and see if
Speaker 1: it can at least make a guess as to what
Speaker 1: that person actually looks like. That's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: it does. So in a way, it's like the old
Speaker 1: science fiction zoom and enhance, you know, that old, good
Speaker 1: old TV trope. It's like that, but again it's making guesses.
Speaker 1: It's trying to fill in gaps where data does not exist,
Speaker 1: So it's looking for patterns. It's looking to try and
Speaker 1: insert information into those patterns that would make the most sense,
Speaker 1: which means that sometimes it makes mistakes. Well, the deep
Speaker 1: dream part is is cranking that up to like eleven.
Speaker 1: It's like oversaturating a photo. It's like making all the
Speaker 1: colors bleed, except in this case, what it's doing is
Speaker 1: it's saying, Hey, you know that pattern recognition you have
Speaker 1: where you're looking for stuff that looks like a face
Speaker 1: or whatever, or looks like a a plant or a
Speaker 1: dog or a lizard, whatever it may be. I'm going
Speaker 1: to turn that way up so that now you're going
Speaker 1: to be looking for that even harder. So anything that
Speaker 1: remotely looks like one of those things, you're going to
Speaker 1: interpret that as a representation, and then you're going to
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps. Be like, hey, what if that
Speaker 1: recognition software got real into psychedelic rock. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you look at these Google deep dream images, some of
Speaker 1: them like there's there's one in particular that's really good
Speaker 1: at finding dog faces and everything. So you might take
Speaker 1: a picture of a table that has a really interesting
Speaker 1: wood grain to it and you throw it through this
Speaker 1: Google Google deep Dream and it just finds dog faces everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it starts filling in the information so that now
Speaker 1: it's just an hple of craft Ian horror show of
Speaker 1: a table covered in dog faces um or like there
Speaker 1: are a lot of pictures of like again taking pictures
Speaker 1: of dogs where you look at the picture of the
Speaker 1: dog and it's looking at patterns in the fur, and
Speaker 1: suddenly you see like all these other faces of dogs
Speaker 1: emerging from these patterns of fur, and it definitely starts
Speaker 1: to feel like you are in a trippy nightmare scenario,
Speaker 1: like a nightmare, but you can close the browser window. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure that Salvador Dali would have said this
Speaker 1: is amazing and it should be included on all cameras
Speaker 1: and you should never be able to turn it off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it is that kind of trippy sort of experience.
Speaker 1: It's all based again on on pattern recognition, only in
Speaker 1: this case it's recognizing patterns that are not really representative
Speaker 1: of the thing. It interprets the mess. It's very much
Speaker 1: the same thing as looking up at the clouds and
Speaker 1: seeing a face. Now it's it's we humans do this
Speaker 1: all the time. We see patterns where there really isn't
Speaker 1: a pattern, Like we we recognize what appears to be
Speaker 1: a pattern in something that's largely a chaotic system. Same
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and it's actually pretty fascinating. It's a
Speaker 1: kind of artificial intelligence in a way. And that wraps
Speaker 1: up this classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Thanks again to Dylan for joining me, you know, seven
Speaker 1: years ago to talk about photo manipulation and editing. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the tools today are even more sophisticated, far more sophisticated
Speaker 1: than they were seven years ago. Uh, and it is
Speaker 1: phenomenal what can be done. Frightening in many ways, what
Speaker 1: can be done with photo and video editing and manipulation.
Speaker 1: So maybe at some point I will do a follow
Speaker 1: up episode on this and kind of talk about sort
Speaker 1: of the huge leaps in capabilities that we've seen since,
Speaker 1: because it's pretty remarkable. But until then, if you would
Speaker 1: like to suggest a topic for me to cover on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, there are a couple of different ways you
Speaker 1: can reach out. One is you can download the I
Speaker 1: Heart radio app, navigate over to tech Stuff, use that
Speaker 1: little microphone icon that'll let you leave a message up
Speaker 1: to thirty seconds in length telling me what you would
Speaker 1: like me to cover. Or you can reach out to
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. The handle that we use for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again. Release soon. Text Stuff is an I heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.