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In article <10034@plains.NoDak.edu> stinnett@plains.NoDak.edu (M.G. Stinnett) writes:

   In article <5130@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> packer@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov writes:
   >read out of a computer memory twice. The implication: the age of
   >computer-processed news photographs has definitely arrived.

   So why not mention the cover photo of last week's Time? The one where
   they used a computer to put bar codes on the nose of the fighter
   planes?

Actually, Time processes lots of their covers.  My favorite one (I witnessed
this in person, was several years back, right after the Chernobyl accident.

Let me make a short story long...  (If you're in a hurry, skip to
the bottom paragraphs).

I was at a pre-press house in NJ (GS Litho) installing some software
for a product that my then-employer was beta testing at their plant.
GS Litho is a major customer of Scitex's (a big player in imaging
systems) -- an employee of GSL claimed that GSL had more Scitex
equipment in one place than anyone in North America.  I was wandering
around watching GSL's imaging artists retouch, stitch together, and
otherwise enhance, images of all sorts.  Much of the stuff they were
working on was advertising material.  I was (and still am) amazed at
what one can do with this equipment.

I started paying attention when I saw several pictures of Volvo sedans
and station wagons lying around.  It seems that Volvo needed some
pictures of the new model year's station wagon in time to meet a press
deadline, but hadn't built any yet.  Not to worry -- the previous
year's sedan was the same as the new wagon from the front doors up,
and the new wagon wasn't changing in the back.  So GSL was taking the
two pictures, of two different color cars, matching the colors and
lighting perspectives, and everything was copacetic.

That one didn't bother me *too* much, but the BMW ad really pissed me
off.  This one was of a bright red car, shot from the side.  The
picture had come back from the ad designer's desk with circles and
arrows (on the 8x10 color glossy photo, just like the Guthrie song!)
on it, pointing to the chrome door keylocks.  'Visually distracting',
said the markup, accompanied by instructions to airbrush them out.
For pete's sake, if the keylocks are on the car, and they ruin it's
lines, change the car, not the ad!!

The previous two things paled compared to the Time cover.  This was a
cover photo, for an article chronicling the efforts of that famous
American leukemia (I think) expert that went over to try to do
bone-marrow transplants on some of the victims.  The picture was of a
very unhappy, hairless person dying horribly in an oxygen tent some
where inside the USSR.  The image had been taken on the sly, and was
not particularly well composed.  The cover had come back from the
editor's heavily marked.  The two things I remember clearly were that
an IV tube was in the way and was to be removed, and that glare from
the oxygen tent was obscuring most of the victim's face, and again was
to be removed.  Other minor elements were to be excised as well, but
those are the two I remember.

Perhaps I'm being a weenie, but I think photojournalists are making a
serious mistake by allowing their images to be manipulated in this
way.  They may sell better in the short run, but I think it will
damage the field irreparably.  The manipulated Time cover was much
better looking and had more impact post-airbrushing than before, but
it was an artist's conception, not a photograph!  I think anything
that blurs the distinction between true photojournalism and the
National Enquirer's "Saddam Hussein Wears Women's Clothing!"-type
pasteups is a crime, and a disservice to straight photographers.

We are very close to having commercially available scanning and
film-output technology that operates at better-than-film-grain
resolution.  At that point, photojournalism will be dead if the
public isn't convinced that responsible publications will make no
use of the technology in any way that could affect the journalistic
content of an image.

Done Fuming For Now,

Tony Berke (tonyb@juliet.ll.mit.edu)