Speaker 1: Get Text of Technology with tex staff from hosts dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Johnson Strickland
Speaker 1: and join me again. Is Dylan done? Go back, thank you,
Speaker 1: And we are now going to talk more about photo manipulation.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to move into the post digital era.
Speaker 1: So in our first episode we really concentrated on the
Speaker 1: science of photography and how when we're talking about a
Speaker 1: physical medium, something like film or plates or physical negatives,
Speaker 1: the manipulation was very painstaking in some cases and required
Speaker 1: a lot of work on the part of the photographer.
Speaker 1: And the story changes dramatically once we get especially once
Speaker 1: we get well into the post digital era, where we're
Speaker 1: now talking about files not necessarily physical media, and it
Speaker 1: opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: it's you know, images on computers. That's nothing new. We've
Speaker 1: had those for quite some time. I would argue that
Speaker 1: perhaps the pivotal moment in the post digital era would
Speaker 1: be nineteen eighties seven. That's when you have a PhD
Speaker 1: student at the University of Michigan named Thomas Noel who
Speaker 1: builds a program for the Mac Plus. He calls it display.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Display everyone's using that these days, but
Speaker 1: they are, They just don't know. Yeah, they just it's
Speaker 1: just not called that anymore. Yeah. So in Night he
Speaker 1: and his brother John Noel. John Noel was an effects expert,
Speaker 1: a little company called Industrial Light and Magic. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: a little, little known Hollywood effects studio, just one of
Speaker 1: the smaller ones. Yeah, they put their heads together and
Speaker 1: together they come up with an idea. They decided to
Speaker 1: rename display and they call it Photoshop, and they license
Speaker 1: it to a manufacturer of slide scanners, and the manufacturers
Speaker 1: called Barney Scan. So the very first version of Photoshop,
Speaker 1: which was not version one point, oh, it preceded version
Speaker 1: one point It was version zero point eight seven. It
Speaker 1: was included with about two hundred scanners. So are about
Speaker 1: two hundred editions of Photoshop zero point eight seven out there? Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a yeah, I guess. And in nineteen nine they
Speaker 1: would sign a distribution deal with Adobe, and thus the
Speaker 1: relationship with Adobe and Photoshop begins. Was also when we
Speaker 1: get a famous incident of photo manipulation, a huge slap.
Speaker 1: I would say, this was a TV guide cover. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're particularly familiar with this instance. It
Speaker 1: is Oprah so this was pretty awful, I would say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what what happened was TV Guide puts Oprah on
Speaker 1: the cover. That's not the egregious, nasty, horrible part. Now,
Speaker 1: that's that's perfectly fine. She was a ratings champion, absolutely
Speaker 1: deserved to be on the cover of TV Yeah. 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 seventy nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nineteen 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 comes in English major,
Speaker 1: don't blame me. So here's here's something it's hard to believe.
Speaker 1: Adobe Photoshop one point oh fit on a single three
Speaker 1: and a half inch floppy disk. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you think about the size of those those programs now,
Speaker 1: and well, first of all, we don't use sloppy disks anymore. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know if Photoshop still I guess you can
Speaker 1: still physically, but most people download it from the cloud now, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get a digital download and it's sizeable. It would
Speaker 1: take many three and a half inch disks to hold it. Now,
Speaker 1: and the Photoshop one point oh contained several of the
Speaker 1: tools that would later become the standard features of Photoshop.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing to me. Yeah, the clone tool was
Speaker 1: included in Photoshop one point oh. Yeah, and you you
Speaker 1: you already had the ability to select certain certain parts
Speaker 1: of an image and human saturation levels or tones. The
Speaker 1: thinking since I never used one point. Oh, thinking back
Speaker 1: and imagining that that was possible back then already in
Speaker 1: some form is is pretty amazing. Although the great thing
Speaker 1: about photoshop was that in comparison to its competitors, it
Speaker 1: was it was easier, more intuitive, and that's the way
Speaker 1: it was marketed. Right. So keep in mind that when
Speaker 1: we talked about in Part one, those those those means
Speaker 1: of manipulating and editing photos that was a specialized skill.
Speaker 1: Like if you were not a photographer, chances are you
Speaker 1: were unaware of how this this trickery or manipulation took place.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like you can almost think of it
Speaker 1: like a guild system. It wasn't formal like that, but
Speaker 1: it was this thing that if you were not part
Speaker 1: of that club, you were largely ignorant of what was
Speaker 1: going on in order for that stuff to happen. Uh.
Speaker 1: This approach meant that it suddenly became much more accessible.
Speaker 1: It's still had a barrier to entry. There was still
Speaker 1: a learning curve to be to be conquered, but it
Speaker 1: was much lower than say having to go and and
Speaker 1: roll in classes in photography and all the chemistry involved
Speaker 1: there was there was no longer chemistry involved, and there
Speaker 1: was no longer chemistry in a photo, which you didn't
Speaker 1: need to have chemistry to development, and you didn't have
Speaker 1: to go into the dark room and stand there with
Speaker 1: the tools if you wanted to lighten a part of
Speaker 1: an image or dark end. Yeah. I loved and you're
Speaker 1: in the part one you talked about the experience of
Speaker 1: going into a pitch black room in order to manipulate
Speaker 1: a camera so that you don't expose the film to light,
Speaker 1: thus ruining the film because obviously the film is as photoreactive.
Speaker 1: You can't. Since it's photoreactive, any light is going to
Speaker 1: make it react. And the idea of fumbling around in
Speaker 1: the dark that first time, where you're trying to build
Speaker 1: that familiarity, it made me think of every scene in
Speaker 1: every military movie where someone has to take apart a
Speaker 1: gun and then reassemble. It was like, this sounds like that,
Speaker 1: Like that, like after after week five, verse six, you
Speaker 1: just confidently just you're not even thinking about it's no
Speaker 1: longer conscious thought, it's just muscle memory. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: that's that's great, But it's also great now as much
Speaker 1: as I love film photography. To do that on a
Speaker 1: daily basis is not as easy as taking a digital
Speaker 1: SLR and putting an SD card. Yeah, it turns out that,
Speaker 1: you know, you can even do that with the lights on.
Speaker 1: You can. Yeah, that's great. So. The cool thing also
Speaker 1: about Adobe Photoshop one point oh is it was being
Speaker 1: used for some really high profile, uh feature films at
Speaker 1: the time. There were actual effects studios that were using
Speaker 1: elements of Photoshop to work on composite digital shots of
Speaker 1: their films, including movies like The Abyss. So that's James
Speaker 1: Cameron's big movie that depending on which version you're seeing,
Speaker 1: you're dedicating about four hours of your life. Too. There's
Speaker 1: The Rocketeer, which highly underrated fantastic sci fi fantasy film. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember seeing that one of us really young. It's
Speaker 1: a it's great. It's a great movie. Go check it out.
Speaker 1: If you haven't seen The Rocket here, you got to
Speaker 1: see the Rocket here. So it's actually a really good
Speaker 1: superhero film. It just didn't get adopted by a larger
Speaker 1: audience the way some of the ones today did. Terminator
Speaker 1: two was one of the movies that phoms Shop one
Speaker 1: point oh influenced. Wow James Cameron. Ye, so if you uh,
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you really want to celebrate,
Speaker 1: give photoshop one point. I a very slowly descending thumbs up.
Speaker 1: And then one of one of a movie that I
Speaker 1: love despite its flaws, Hook, Steven Spielberg movie. Really Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the Steven Spielberg Retelling of Peter Pan, where Robin
Speaker 1: Williams is a grown up Peter Pan and Dustin Hoffman
Speaker 1: is Captain Hook. Uh. Dustin Hoffman, by the way, phenomenal
Speaker 1: Captain Hook, one of my I loved his performance. I
Speaker 1: wish there were more Hook in the movie Hook, because
Speaker 1: every time he was on screen, I was happy. It's
Speaker 1: just pretty phenomenal. Yeah. Uh. It was a totally different
Speaker 1: style of Hook than I was anticipating, and I loved
Speaker 1: every second of it. Anyway, all of those had influence
Speaker 1: from photoshop. There were digital composites, and we talked previously
Speaker 1: in the earlier episode about composite photographs. In that sense,
Speaker 1: there were composites that were completely made through analog methods
Speaker 1: where you're literally cutting and pasting either in a negative
Speaker 1: form or print form and taking a new photograph whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. But you were putting together two or
Speaker 1: more images to create a new image that's a composite
Speaker 1: of those previous ones. Now we're talking about doing the
Speaker 1: same thing but using digital tools, which gives you a
Speaker 1: lot more freedom. It does, and and soon thereafter I
Speaker 1: think three point oh was the introduction of layers, which
Speaker 1: changes everything. Yeah, you have non destructive editing. Please can
Speaker 1: you explain what that is? Non destructive editing is a
Speaker 1: godsend because, uh, I guess when those people maybe open
Speaker 1: 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 clear acetate as maybe
Speaker 1: and and so if you uh subtract from one part
Speaker 1: of that layer, if you still have a copy of
Speaker 1: that underneath, nothing's going to happen to the original part
Speaker 1: of that image. You're and you're still going to have
Speaker 1: on the bottom layer. If you don't edit that layer
Speaker 1: the whole image, you're still going to have the whole image.
Speaker 1: So you have your original as the base, the foundation, yes,
Speaker 1: and then you lay other layers on top of it.
Speaker 1: That's where you can do your manipulation. And then you decide,
Speaker 1: maybe you decide, you know, I took that balloon out,
Speaker 1: but I actually kind of want that balloon back in.
Speaker 1: Now that I've done these other edits, I'm gonna go back,
Speaker 1: re add that one layer or undo what I did
Speaker 1: on that one layer, and now it's as if by
Speaker 1: magic we get the balloon back exactly. And and I'm
Speaker 1: sure a lot of people have noticed that you have
Speaker 1: at the top of your your application, you have different
Speaker 1: tabs on them. Is like adjustments, and you can go
Speaker 1: and you can change the contrast, the saturation, things like that. Well,
Speaker 1: with adjustment layers, you can add that on and then
Speaker 1: you can you can turn off that layer and the
Speaker 1: effect goes away. If you do that through the file
Speaker 1: menu at the top, it changes the picture permanently. If
Speaker 1: you can't, if you don't hit the back button, if
Speaker 1: you don't have undo, yeah, yeah, as long as you
Speaker 1: or or if you avoid saving it, you still have
Speaker 1: your original. But then what's the point of doing all
Speaker 1: the work? Yeah, it's a great point. I mean I've
Speaker 1: often wondered because as someone who had only casually use
Speaker 1: these editing tools myself, Uh, it took a while for
Speaker 1: me to figure out what layers were, and um, like
Speaker 1: I remember specifically using them to do things like if
Speaker 1: I wanted to take an image but remove, like remove
Speaker 1: an image on a white background, Like let's say it's
Speaker 1: a stock photo of something, and I want to put
Speaker 1: that image, the image of that thing on some other
Speaker 1: background and not have a big white box behind it.
Speaker 1: That's when it was it was useful if that was
Speaker 1: a layer itself, like I could take the layer that
Speaker 1: had the object and leave the white background behind, so
Speaker 1: I could actually put that against a different background and
Speaker 1: have it look like it meant it was meant to be.
Speaker 1: There another huge breakthrough his masks. And if use layers
Speaker 1: and masks together, you have so much control and and
Speaker 1: it's you can go backwards or forwards as much as
Speaker 1: you want in your document. With with masks, you can
Speaker 1: select a certain part of the image and then you
Speaker 1: can mask out the rest of it, so you just
Speaker 1: have that that part selected, and then you can use
Speaker 1: the paint brush to paint and or paint out to
Speaker 1: kind of clean up the lines that you just selected.
Speaker 1: If you want more of that layer that you just
Speaker 1: blank part of it out, you can you can erase
Speaker 1: part of it and you can bring it back in.
Speaker 1: So layers and mass I think we're big game changers
Speaker 1: for photo editors and photo manipulators who either used as
Speaker 1: an art or they used it to deceive whatever you
Speaker 1: want to use it for. Photoshop was making it possible.
Speaker 1: As we as we have said many times on tech stuff,
Speaker 1: it's not the tool that's necessarily the issue or the problem.
Speaker 1: It's the way the tools implemented. And the purpose of
Speaker 1: these tools was to give greater freedom to people who
Speaker 1: work in images, and what you do with that freedom
Speaker 1: is up to the choice of the individual, and in
Speaker 1: some cases it was to make art. In some cases
Speaker 1: it was just to clean up an image so that
Speaker 1: the point that the photographer wanted you to focus on
Speaker 1: was in fact the most notable element of that image.
Speaker 1: Like if if I'm taking a photo of something and
Speaker 1: I think like, oh, it's this great background and I've
Speaker 1: got a wonderful subject in the foreground, and I'm really
Speaker 1: concentrating on my subject, and I don't notice that there's
Speaker 1: some jackass twenty feet back who's you know, waving maniacally
Speaker 1: into the camera. And then I think, I really don't
Speaker 1: want that guy there. I mean, you know, just pop
Speaker 1: open a new layer and photo shop and clone stamp
Speaker 1: them out. I like the way you think, Well, when
Speaker 1: you see that guy in the street, like I clone
Speaker 1: stamped you exactly, and he doesn't know what you mean,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a good chance he has no idea how
Speaker 1: what what a sick burn, which is essentially saying, like
Speaker 1: I did what I did to you what Stalin did
Speaker 1: to the commissar, only in the photo sense, though you're
Speaker 1: free to go. So some other instances of photo manipulation,
Speaker 1: some of which were not necessarily meant to be uh
Speaker 1: taken as a representation of the actual person, some of
Speaker 1: which it's arguable. Texas Monthly Magazine had a great image
Speaker 1: of Governor Ann richards on a Harley Davidson. That's a
Speaker 1: great one, and she liked it. Yeah, yeah, she looked great.
Speaker 1: But if you actually looked in the credit page of
Speaker 1: the magazine. They they indicate that the motorcyclist was a
Speaker 1: stock image, and so if you were to take the
Speaker 1: trouble of looking at the at that credit page, you
Speaker 1: would see that they don't hide the fact that this
Speaker 1: was a manipulation. And that's almost become common practices for
Speaker 1: manipulated covers. Maybe if it's someone's head on someone else's body, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a big thing, that it will have a
Speaker 1: small disclaimer either on the credit page or very small
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the cover that says that it
Speaker 1: is illustration. Yeah. Yeah. And ninety three that's when photoshop
Speaker 1: would come to Windows. So finally Windows users were able
Speaker 1: to stand side by side with Mac users with sixteen
Speaker 1: bit support. That was that was the big thing that year,
Speaker 1: I think for Windows. UH. Here's a famous instance of
Speaker 1: photo manipulation that was a big controversy. This was during
Speaker 1: UH just in the in the wake of O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson being arrested on the charge of murder, and two
Speaker 1: magazines came out at the same time, both using O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpsons mug shot. Newsweek had the unaltered mug shot as
Speaker 1: the cover. Time magazine had a altered version of that
Speaker 1: mug shot. Yes, they manipulated it to make him appear
Speaker 1: darker and more menacing, which is I would argue bad
Speaker 1: photo journalism. Yeah, and uh, yes, it's yes, both of
Speaker 1: those things. It is I would argue indefensible. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that they show you a
Speaker 1: most photography history of photography classes or yeahtha quite pointing
Speaker 1: at that and saying, do not be this person. No,
Speaker 1: it's a bad idea. It says a lot. It says
Speaker 1: a lot of really ugly things about not just the
Speaker 1: mentality 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 opinions 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 know, that's
Speaker 1: all of that is just ugly and it's unfortunate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and 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 one 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 photojournalism.
Speaker 1: The one I was going to mention was an attempt
Speaker 1: but the University of Wasson 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 or to the side of several
Speaker 1: white students all cheering on a football game. The only
Speaker 1: problem was it was a composite photo. The black students
Speaker 1: photo had been taken a year apart from the football
Speaker 1: fans photo, and then the black student had been inserted
Speaker 1: into the picture in order to perpetuate this idea that
Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin had a diverse student body. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it is bad. I mean, like the photoshop itself
Speaker 1: is bad. It does not look like that person is
Speaker 1: not the same place. There's a publication in Toronto. I
Speaker 1: think it was for uh. It was like come to
Speaker 1: Toronto and they were trying to show on the on
Speaker 1: the cover a diverse family, and so they did the
Speaker 1: same thing that they did with the Wisconsin cover. And
Speaker 1: it hits me on two levels both of these covers
Speaker 1: that it's it's it's it's it's not good practice. And
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 I can 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 takeet on this sad box.
Speaker 1: 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 u get the photograph,
Speaker 1: the real photograph, get the real diversity of the campus,
Speaker 1: things like that. Yeah, I agree, it's because because all
Speaker 1: it takes, even if you do it really really well
Speaker 1: with the photo manipulation, all it takes is someone who
Speaker 1: has any knowledge of what's going on to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't really happen, and then everything unravels and then
Speaker 1: you have a pr problem that's way bigger than the
Speaker 1: perceived lack of diversity. Um, so definitely agree, address the
Speaker 1: underlying problem of diversity before you start worrying about uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the brochure as you're handing out. That's that's
Speaker 1: definitely I'm on the same page. Yeah, and and I've
Speaker 1: all of a sudden thought of like, um. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of examples of of people who have pointed
Speaker 1: out photos in this this post digital era, who have
Speaker 1: experience with photoshop, who work with digital photography fairly extensively,
Speaker 1: who very quickly can point out when, um, when when
Speaker 1: less than professional manipulation has taken place, like in some cases,
Speaker 1: in some cases it's it's fairly obvious even to the
Speaker 1: casual viewer, and in some cases it takes a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a trained eye to start noticing the indicators.
Speaker 1: If it's done really, really well, then theoretically you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to tell like you you you what you
Speaker 1: could say, well, it's possible that was manipulated. It's also
Speaker 1: possible that that wasn't manipulated. Some of the well done
Speaker 1: ones go viral so quickly that it can make the
Speaker 1: rounds everywhere before someone comes out, even if it's like
Speaker 1: three hours later, it's already hit all the news, you know,
Speaker 1: and they they're like, oh, hey, I just opened this
Speaker 1: up a photoshop zoomed incent I can tell you where
Speaker 1: they where this picture ends, and this picture begins, and
Speaker 1: this edit this is definitely manipulated. Yeah. I suppose if
Speaker 1: you were to take the greatest pains possible and go
Speaker 1: pixel by pixel and you had lots of spare time
Speaker 1: on your hands, you could perhaps create an image that
Speaker 1: was essentially unbeatable undetectable. But it's a huge amount of
Speaker 1: effort in order to do that. You can probably get
Speaker 1: past a large percentage of the viewing public with a
Speaker 1: with a decent manipulation job. But they're always going to
Speaker 1: be those experts out there who are like, they know
Speaker 1: what to look for, and there's always going to be
Speaker 1: Now in two thousand and fifteen, there's gonna they're going
Speaker 1: to be services that you can use that you can
Speaker 1: upload your image. It's going to tell you whether or
Speaker 1: not they think it's been digitally altered because they have
Speaker 1: an algorithm for finding those things out. Which, Yeah, once
Speaker 1: you have the algorithms, go in there where they're looking
Speaker 1: at it pixel by pixel, Like they can look at
Speaker 1: two adjacent pixels and if there's enough of a difference
Speaker 1: between the two that can't be explained by other elements
Speaker 1: within the image, then that's a possible red flag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or people who forget to alter their metadata or raise
Speaker 1: their metadata. There are a lot of ways to find fakes,
Speaker 1: and more often than not, they are found out pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: There's also been some pretty embarrassing situations where people have
Speaker 1: uploaded a photo that they had cropped and uh, and
Speaker 1: yet the original picture is still accessible through that image,
Speaker 1: where someone's like, oh, I just expanded it and I
Speaker 1: saw that your room is a total mess. That would
Speaker 1: be the less scandalous versions of some of those photos
Speaker 1: that have made their rounds. Yeah, and then some of them,
Speaker 1: like you said, are just bad. I mean not to
Speaker 1: skip around too much, but one of my favorite examples
Speaker 1: recently has been there have been like a number of
Speaker 1: photographs of Chinese officials inspecting things that are pretty poorly done.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen these, they're there are There's just one
Speaker 1: in particular. It's a doctored photo of three local officials
Speaker 1: inspecting a highway project, uh, where they're not on the road,
Speaker 1: they're just placed kind of above the road. So it's like,
Speaker 1: so not only are they inspecting their hovering yeah, like
Speaker 1: no shadow work, and also it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: stock photo where they're like, oh, like they have these
Speaker 1: looks on their face that are like very surprised of
Speaker 1: how well the progress is going on on the road.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh gosh, wow, look at this road and
Speaker 1: it's pretty embarrassing. And when when that something like that
Speaker 1: gets out it Yeah, I I definitely and I meant
Speaker 1: to bring this up when we were talking about stock
Speaker 1: photography earlier. There's also been several instances of various UM
Speaker 1: companies or news agencies or political campaigns that have used
Speaker 1: stock images of people and use them in ways to
Speaker 1: claim that this is representing a specific individual that isn't
Speaker 1: the person who posed for the stock photography in order
Speaker 1: to portray a particular viewpoint or to put forth a
Speaker 1: story or something along those lines. We've seen that happen
Speaker 1: a few times where UM people have said this image
Speaker 1: that you're using to to create this narrative that furthers
Speaker 1: your cause in one way or another, whether it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what side of political spectrum you're on. This has
Speaker 1: been done across the board by various people at various times,
Speaker 1: sometimes not necessarily maliciously, but certainly to mislead. They would
Speaker 1: create they find a stock image that seems to represent
Speaker 1: like diversity would be a good one. They I've seen
Speaker 1: this happen a couple of times and people point out, actually,
Speaker 1: that's a stock image. That's not a picture of their
Speaker 1: employees or their campaign. That's not that's not a representative
Speaker 1: of that group. That's actually just a stock photo. And
Speaker 1: here's where you can find it. Yeah, like you took
Speaker 1: this crowd and you put it with this picture of you,
Speaker 1: and that crowd didn't actually hump to your event. Um,
Speaker 1: so do you really have the support that you say
Speaker 1: that you have, or uh, even a stock photo? But
Speaker 1: one I think that you could get from an image
Speaker 1: database and put two photos together. That was pretty famous
Speaker 1: is back in two thousand four when there was the
Speaker 1: image of John Kerry sitting next to Jane Fonda at
Speaker 1: an anti vietnamum A protests. Yeah, and that that I
Speaker 1: think back in two thousand four, it took a little
Speaker 1: bit longer for that news to be made public that
Speaker 1: it was fake, where now I think it would it
Speaker 1: would circle background pretty quickly. But that was that was
Speaker 1: an image that I think a lot of people looked
Speaker 1: at and thought, wow, that looks that looks legitimate. That
Speaker 1: really looks like they're sitting there together, that they had
Speaker 1: a closer relationship than they actually had a lot of
Speaker 1: people do that for either positive or negative, to take
Speaker 1: pictures of themselves and put them with famous people for
Speaker 1: either a positive or a negative connotation. Yeah, this kind
Speaker 1: of also leads into a more lighthearted version of people
Speaker 1: using photoshop for this kind of purpose. It's my favorite,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's my favorite thing about photoshop. Ever, It's
Speaker 1: my favorite way that people use photoshop. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I appreciate again the technical skill and artistry that is
Speaker 1: required for you to make good use of photoshop and
Speaker 1: not make it look crappy, because I do not have
Speaker 1: that skill. If I use photoshop, it's gonna look like
Speaker 1: I use finger paints to cover up a smudge or something.
Speaker 1: But I love with a with a passion that is
Speaker 1: difficult to describe. The funny uses of photoshop people will
Speaker 1: do when someone presents a photo and they have a request.
Speaker 1: But this happens a lot on Reddit, where they say,
Speaker 1: here's a picture I took, this is what I wanted.
Speaker 1: Can someone photoshop this for me so that this outcome happens.
Speaker 1: And the trend is for people to do ridiculous photoshops
Speaker 1: that that uh end up fulfilling letter of what the
Speaker 1: person asked for, but not the spirit of what they
Speaker 1: asked for. I love that. It's it's like, can you
Speaker 1: put I don't have a picture of me and my
Speaker 1: cat together? Can you put me in my cat in
Speaker 1: the same picture? And then like someone will make the
Speaker 1: cat huge and tiny? Yeah, yeah, exactly, or they'll they'll
Speaker 1: like just uh, you know, end up having like half
Speaker 1: a cat on the picture and the other half the
Speaker 1: cat is on the other side of the picture, and
Speaker 1: just just sometimes sometimes the results are terrible, like like
Speaker 1: terrible as in oh, and sometimes they're just funny. My
Speaker 1: favorite one that I've seen recently, uh And I mentioned
Speaker 1: this to you a couple of days ago, and we
Speaker 1: were talking about this podcast was one where it was
Speaker 1: a guy standing next to the Eiffel Tower and he
Speaker 1: had his hand up in the air, and what he
Speaker 1: had wanted was the photographer to take a picture so
Speaker 1: that the perspective made it look as if he had
Speaker 1: his hand on the top of the Eiffel Tower. Classic
Speaker 1: Eiffel photo, classic leaning tower photo. Yeah, exactly, get it.
Speaker 1: The one that you know, everyone's got to have one, right,
Speaker 1: I would be the guy who would want the photo
Speaker 1: to be taken incorrectly on purpose, like I would like
Speaker 1: I'd want to be the guy next to the lean
Speaker 1: tower piece. I had my hands up and there's clearly
Speaker 1: like three ft of space between direction exactly like yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not even on the right side of
Speaker 1: the tower or something like that, because I think that's
Speaker 1: funny because so many people have done the other one.
Speaker 1: So this one I saw where the guy said, could
Speaker 1: you photoshop this so that my hand is on the
Speaker 1: top of the Eiffel Tower. Obviously people had a lot
Speaker 1: of fun with it. I think my favorite was one
Speaker 1: where it 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. Clearly what
Speaker 1: the guy had meant was, can you reduce the size
Speaker 1: of the Eiffel Tower in the act about this photo
Speaker 1: and then edge it over to the side so that
Speaker 1: my hand is on top of it? But that's obviously
Speaker 1: not a lot the redditors provided, and that's just one example,
Speaker 1: and just one example of one request. There are entire
Speaker 1: threads of these sort of things, and they always make
Speaker 1: me laugh because people are so creative, Like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: takes a certain level of skill to do photoshop badly
Speaker 1: on purpose itself. It is I wanna argue, yes and indeed,
Speaker 1: and it kind of also goes back to something that
Speaker 1: came out of a very tragic event but led to
Speaker 1: ridiculous examples of photoshop. The famous example of the guy
Speaker 1: on the top of the World Trade Center UM on
Speaker 1: September eleven, two thousand one one of the most famous
Speaker 1: manipulations they can think of the modern age. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's you know, you've probably seen it. It's the guy
Speaker 1: who's waving and then in the background you see the
Speaker 1: plane headed for the World Trade Center and um, this
Speaker 1: was not this was a manipulated photo. The plane was
Speaker 1: 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 a
Speaker 1: volcano exploding, or sometimes would be movies, like there will
Speaker 1: just be a still from a movie and this guy
Speaker 1: would just be popped up in the back, and I
Speaker 1: love that. It's like, what are some other things that
Speaker 1: have made that big events throughout history that we can
Speaker 1: just put this person there. And part of you feels
Speaker 1: badly for the guy because it's not like like he
Speaker 1: was just posing for a picture on top of the
Speaker 1: World Trade Center and then somebody manipulated, presumably I don't
Speaker 1: think it was him, manipulated the picture so that there
Speaker 1: was this plane in the background. Um, and then suddenly
Speaker 1: he becomes the center of a meme and he's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the person who did the manipulation in the first place,
Speaker 1: but at anyway, maybe he has a good sense of
Speaker 1: humor about I don't know. It's very, very weird thing
Speaker 1: to have happened to you. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: would feel if my image started This is not an invitation, listeners,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I would feel if my image
Speaker 1: started popping up everywhere. Go for it. Go for it now, Dylan,
Speaker 1: do you 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 commend you on that.
Speaker 1: Very good he's done. He's done a couple of Star
Speaker 1: Wars ones for me because he did one with where
Speaker 1: I was Luke and Chris Palette was lay up, and
Speaker 1: then when Lauren came in as my co host, he
Speaker 1: replaced Chris with Lauren. But then he put Chris in
Speaker 1: the background as a ghost O BI one version and
Speaker 1: I thought I was brilliant. And then when I when
Speaker 1: when Lauren left the show, he wrote means that I'm
Speaker 1: not doing another one. I don't blame you, man, You've done.
Speaker 1: You've done more than your share. But he is an
Speaker 1: example of the people who like to use photoshop in
Speaker 1: order to make a joke and make a statement and
Speaker 1: show his appreciation for something that he really enjoys. And
Speaker 1: so big props to Yeah. I think that his work
Speaker 1: is great and I'm glad to put a name with
Speaker 1: someone who's made me laugh quite a few times in
Speaker 1: this studio. Yeah, it's it's great stuff. And uh, I'll
Speaker 1: definitely show you when this show is over, I'll show
Speaker 1: you the pictures he's done for tech stuff. Are there
Speaker 1: any other famous examples of photo manipulation manipulation you'd like
Speaker 1: to talk about speaking of Star Wars? Uh. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, Uh, there was Iranian missile test. Oh yeah, 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 take long for someone to realize that, uh, two
Speaker 1: of the missiles in the tests that were being launched
Speaker 1: to 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 and 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 like good enough. Yeah, that's um,
Speaker 1: that's unfortunately, and we we obviously we have seen images
Speaker 1: that people have presented as as being genuine without actually
Speaker 1: knowing that there had been manipulation. It doesn't always mean
Speaker 1: if someone spreads these kind of photos around, it doesn't
Speaker 1: always mean that they are aware of the of the manipulation.
Speaker 1: They may be victims of that manipulation, and then they
Speaker 1: further perpetuated by sharing it. It's very easy to lose
Speaker 1: original credit on the Internet because things are passed around.
Speaker 1: Even even things that you can verify fairly easily can
Speaker 1: still spread. A famous example which will finally, I think,
Speaker 1: be put to bed this year. We're almost there. October
Speaker 1: is so close the image of the digital Redoubt and
Speaker 1: back to the future too. I've seen that manipulated to
Speaker 1: be at least five different dates, yeah, at least sometimes
Speaker 1: more than once a year like there, I would say
Speaker 1: at least since two thousand and ten. I've seen quite
Speaker 1: 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 itual. Once we get past October
Speaker 1: and everyone has self licen 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 hoverboarding. That's right, the Lexus one.
Speaker 1: It's different yea that that includes uh super cool magnets
Speaker 1: that you want to be real careful with that one. UM.
Speaker 1: But I think one of the issues that's pretty prevalent
Speaker 1: these days with photo manipulation is UM magazine covers and
Speaker 1: body image and UM. And there's been a couple of
Speaker 1: breakthroughs in the past few years on kind of raining
Speaker 1: that in because I'm sure that everyone's seen this and
Speaker 1: and it's easy to tell that these photos have been
Speaker 1: manipulated just because whose skin is that perfect and things
Speaker 1: like that, whose waste is that small? Especially if you
Speaker 1: if you see any casual photo of especially now that UM,
Speaker 1: we we have a flood of photos hitting our social
Speaker 1: networks that are taken from the subjects themselves, and you
Speaker 1: start to see what they really look like these and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that they are unattractive at all. I'm
Speaker 1: talking like, you know, everyone from supermodels to actors to
Speaker 1: authors to whatever. You see what they really look like,
Speaker 1: and then you compare that to the magazine version of them,
Speaker 1: the magazine cover version, and sometimes they look like two
Speaker 1: totally different people. Yeah. And also it's a lot of
Speaker 1: the originals get leaked and people make, you know, comparisons
Speaker 1: where they overlay the original with the edit and you
Speaker 1: can see all of the work that they've done, the
Speaker 1: perceived flaws that have been corrected. And in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine there was a really extreme case from Ralph Lauren. Uh,
Speaker 1: they edited one of their models to have just possibly
Speaker 1: in human proportions, just a tiny, tiny waist, just very
Speaker 1: small arms, and and there was a big backlash and
Speaker 1: that that kind of that wasn't exactly the change of tide.
Speaker 1: But in the years following UM there have been such
Speaker 1: instances as in two thousand twelve, Israel became the first
Speaker 1: country to require advertisements to say when they were digitally
Speaker 1: manipulating photos to make people appear thinner. UM. It also
Speaker 1: set like a minimum boss mat body mass index that
Speaker 1: the models could have to ensure that no underweight models
Speaker 1: were used in advertisements. So there was actually like a
Speaker 1: not a weight limit, but in body mass limit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then UM there was a teenager that started a
Speaker 1: campaign UH that wanted seventeen magazine to stop retouching their models.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twelve and seventeen, magazine made Like an
Speaker 1: eight point packed that said that they would never change
Speaker 1: body or face shapes and that they will only use
Speaker 1: models who give the perception of health healthiness. Right so,
Speaker 1: in other words, in order to not perpetuate an unrealistic
Speaker 1: ideal of physical beauty or to create this kind of unhealthy, uh,
Speaker 1: unhealthy obsession with images that may in fact be unattainable
Speaker 1: because they've been manipulated to the point where this is
Speaker 1: not representative of what a human being looks like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just make people feel really bad about themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember. Of course, there have been several Dove advertisement
Speaker 1: campaigns that have shown the process of taking a model,
Speaker 1: and they take the subject and show the whole process
Speaker 1: from going from the way she looks before any anything's
Speaker 1: been done, to the wardrobe and makeup and hair process,
Speaker 1: which already each changes her appearance significantly from what she
Speaker 1: looked like before. Then if the photography process, then the
Speaker 1: editing process in the photography where they make even further
Speaker 1: changes to her appearance, and then do the side by
Speaker 1: side and say that you know, this is an example
Speaker 1: of of how the the industry, the beauty industry has
Speaker 1: created this unrealistic and and possible, you know, damaging image
Speaker 1: of what beauty is. So in some instances, hopefully if
Speaker 1: it doesn't get if it doesn't cease it completely, there
Speaker 1: at least disclaimers, there's at least some there's someone, there's
Speaker 1: a watchdog of some sort kind of looking out for
Speaker 1: things like this. UM. But like I think I said earlier,
Speaker 1: there's also this this this feeling I think now from
Speaker 1: people who are inundated with so many photographs, UM, and
Speaker 1: that there's just this different access to photography and that
Speaker 1: you're you see so many ads every day, you're you
Speaker 1: go to so many websites that um, any photograph that
Speaker 1: you see is is going to still have edits, and
Speaker 1: that people are probably going to feel awkward if they
Speaker 1: don't see the edits that they might they might expect
Speaker 1: from an image just right out the camera. The changing
Speaker 1: the contrast, fixing the exposure, correcting the color. Heck, we've
Speaker 1: gotten to a point now where a lot of the cameras,
Speaker 1: inside phones, the apps have software that auto automatically do
Speaker 1: certain enhancements to contrast or lighting, or to make sure
Speaker 1: that things like red eye aren't a problem, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, or in the past few years, you know,
Speaker 1: putting the hashtag no filter on your Instagram photo when
Speaker 1: you haven't put a filter that changes the quality of
Speaker 1: the photos. 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, and you actually have
Speaker 1: the 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 flipping out. Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 1: So I took a picture of him. And I have
Speaker 1: an Android phone, so my photos automatically back up to
Speaker 1: my Google Photo account and I get a message a
Speaker 1: little bit later and it says I've got an enhanced
Speaker 1: image of my dog. So I pull it up and
Speaker 1: it has added filters, so it looks almost like in
Speaker 1: a painting, almost like a painting style. Um to the
Speaker 1: point where I said, if this looked a little bit
Speaker 1: more like a painting, it would be exactly the sort
Speaker 1: of thing you would see in like a doctor's waiting room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very rockwelly and kind of thing. And so, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting we've reached this point now where the
Speaker 1: photo manipulation, uh is happening on its own, like due
Speaker 1: to algorithms. It's not even necessarily a human that's responsible
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, and I know you know something about
Speaker 1: Google deep dreaming. I'm not too familiar with what exactly
Speaker 1: what it does, but is there a quick way that
Speaker 1: you could break it down? Sure? Google deep dream the
Speaker 1: the purpose of it deep dream itself is kind of
Speaker 1: an extension of what the purpose was. The purpose was
Speaker 1: to look at an image and I'll grow them examines
Speaker 1: an image and looks for examples of areas of that
Speaker 1: image that it can enhance so that you can see
Speaker 1: stuff in greater detail. So, uh, maybe there's um, like
Speaker 1: a blurry photo of someone's face. It might be able
Speaker 1: to bring those features into more more of a sharp
Speaker 1: appearance that you can actually see who that person is
Speaker 1: and it was. You know, it could be used for anything.
Speaker 1: It could be used for facial recognition. It could be
Speaker 1: used just to make an image look nicer. It could
Speaker 1: be used to um to to look at old photos
Speaker 1: and see if you can figure out, Like imagine opening
Speaker 1: up a cold case. You've got this photograph of a
Speaker 1: face and you've never been able to identify that person.
Speaker 1: You use this technology to try and see if it
Speaker 1: can at least make a guess as to what that
Speaker 1: person actually looks like. That's the sort of thing it does.
Speaker 1: So in a way, it's like the old science fiction
Speaker 1: zoom and enhance, you know, that old, good old TV trope.
Speaker 1: It's like that, but again it's making guesses. It's trying
Speaker 1: to fill in gaps where data does not exist, so
Speaker 1: it's looking for patterns. It's looking to try and insert
Speaker 1: 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 over satury in the photo. It's like making
Speaker 1: all the colors bleed. Except in this case, what it's
Speaker 1: doing is it's saying, Hey, you know that pattern recognition
Speaker 1: you have where you're looking for stuff that looks like
Speaker 1: a face or whatever, or looks like a a plant
Speaker 1: or a dog or a lizard, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn that way up so that now
Speaker 1: you're going to be looking for that even harder. So
Speaker 1: anything that remotely looks like one of those things, you're
Speaker 1: going to interpret that as a representation, and then you're
Speaker 1: going to fill in the gaps. Like, hey, what if
Speaker 1: that recognition software got real into psychedelic rock. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: if you look at these Google deep dream images, some
Speaker 1: of them like there's there's one in particular that's really
Speaker 1: good at finding dog faces and everything. So you might
Speaker 1: take a picture of a table that has a really
Speaker 1: interesting wood grain to it and you throw it through
Speaker 1: this Google Google Deep Dream and it just finds dog
Speaker 1: faces everywhere, and it starts filling in the information so
Speaker 1: that now it's just an HP love craft Ian horror
Speaker 1: show of a table covered in dog faces, um or
Speaker 1: like they're all out the pictures of like again taking
Speaker 1: pictures of dogs, where you look at the picture of
Speaker 1: the dog and it's looking at patterns in the fur,
Speaker 1: and suddenly you see like all these other faces of
Speaker 1: dogs emerging from these patterns of fur, and it definitely
Speaker 1: starts 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: and it's all based again on on pattern recognition, only
Speaker 1: in this case, it's recognizing patterns that are not really
Speaker 1: representative of the thing. It interprets the mess. It's very
Speaker 1: much the same thing as looking up at the clouds
Speaker 1: and seeing a face. Now it's it's we humans do
Speaker 1: this all the time. We see patterns where there really
Speaker 1: isn't a pattern, Like we we recognize what appears to
Speaker 1: be a pattern and something that's largely a chaotic syst um,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing, and it's actually pretty fascinating. It's
Speaker 1: a kind of artificial intelligence in a way. You might
Speaker 1: call it artificial dumbness because it's misinterpreting. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is not a lot of fun. Dylan. I gotta
Speaker 1: thank you now. I promise listeners, I'm gonna have Dylan
Speaker 1: on again. We're gonna do an episode in the future.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be kind of a an introduction to to
Speaker 1: the basics of photo editing, photoshop, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: so that you understand what what the tools are. We
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about it when you went into
Speaker 1: what the different levels and an image can be. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go into more detail in a future episode. And
Speaker 1: I know that my number one question because I've already
Speaker 1: told Dylan this is what's gonna be, and I've made
Speaker 1: sure he doesn't tell me the answer. What the heck
Speaker 1: is that magic wand for? So I'll tell you a
Speaker 1: better way to do things? Excellent. So I look forward
Speaker 1: to asking that for you to tell me and then
Speaker 1: to tell me why I shouldn't use it. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be in a future episode. Guys, if you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: please let me know. I'm gonna do my best to
Speaker 1: make sure I get Dylan back in here to to
Speaker 1: do some more shows. And if you have requests for
Speaker 1: other topics, maybe there's something else you've always wanted to
Speaker 1: know about. We we could even talk at some point
Speaker 1: about how this kind of manipulation has extended over into
Speaker 1: video form, going back to Star Wars, when the teaser
Speaker 1: trailer for episode seven came out and the lightsaber that
Speaker 1: had the two like the cross guard of the lightsaber
Speaker 1: came out and then someone did it as it you know,
Speaker 1: it went all the way up the blade like you like,
Speaker 1: you know, just just lasers coming out of every every
Speaker 1: surface of that lightsaber. That's the sort of thing that
Speaker 1: is an extension of what we're talking about here. So
Speaker 1: maybe we'll do an episode about that at some point
Speaker 1: in the future, but you gotta let me know. Send
Speaker 1: me an email. The addresses tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or drop me a line or Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter or Tumbler. I use tech stuff h s W
Speaker 1: as the handle at all three and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is a house stuff works dot com