Photoshopped or Not? A Tool To Tell

   In Journalism class, we read the article “Photoshopped or not? A tool to tell” by Steve Lohr, a writer for the New York Times. This article was about two computer scientists, Dr. Farid and Eric Kee Ph.D. students, who want to create a software tool that lets you know how much a photo has be altered from a 1 to 5 scale range. As one being the least altered and five being the most altered. 

   The photographs of models and celebrities that are in magazines and bill boards are being buffed with Photoshop. Photoshop helps you retouch the photo to make a pimple go away or to brighten it and other editing tools. The article includes quotes from computer science professors and professional photo editors. A survey was taken in women’s magazine and readers said they want celebrities to “look great but real.” This shows that it’s better for people to be their natural beautiful self rather than to display something they aren’t. 

   I think that super-skinny, overly perfect images of women in magazines, the internet, and TV encourage eating disorders and low self-esteem because they see perfect bodies and faces and they want to be just like what the pictures they see. These models and celebrities are portraying the wrong things into peoples head because they think that they are really perfect they actually aren’t. If they see people on magazines with perfect bodies they might start eating less and do other things to make their body look like what they see. I think that altered images should be labeled so that those who look at magazines can know how much the image has been changes because it would make people feel better about themselves and it could build their self esteem.