TECH SPECIAL..PHOTOSHOP

An airbrush with reality

Photoshop is now so intrinsic to our daily digital lives that you might find it hard to believe that the programme is just two decades old. While some would argue that the software has given a new meaning to skill and creativity, others believe that it has killed those attributes and erased the line between real and fake

Stop for a second and look around. Nearly every image you see — advertising billboards, magazine covers, blockbuster films, front pages of newspapers, even the logo on the toothbrush you use every morning — has been touched up by one particular software, in one way or another.
From bringing visual effects to life in Avatar to helping you decide if the new hair colour you’ve been meaning to try out becomes you, from making Hermione’s breasts bigger for a Harry Potter poster to adding ballistic clout to the Iranian government, the influence of Adobe Photoshop has been so great that the programme has even earned a place in the vernacular as a shorthand for the act of altering images. It’s not often that a technology product, even a pathbreaking one, enters the language as a verb — though most of us ‘google’ and some of us ‘xerox’, nobody yet ‘walkmans’, ‘ipods’ or even ‘windows’.

MAKING OF THE SOFTWARE

Back in 1987, nothing could have predicted the deep impact this software would have on our lives. Photo manipulation two decades ago, though prevalent, was reserved to a knowledgeable few and required expertise and money. Then, Thomas Knoll, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, started messing about with greyscale digital images on a monochrome display. His brother, John, joined him and they came up with an image editing software called ‘Display’. In 1988, John presented a demo to Adobe. The software was well received, a licensing deal struck and on February 19, 1990, after 10 months of development, Photoshop 1.0 was released.
After many scandals, unrealistically skinny models, countless accusations of racism and 11 versions in more than 20 languages, Photoshop today is accepted as a software product that redefined creativity in the digital age. Like the first oil paintings that shook up the art scene in the mid-19th century — with the likes of Monet and Van Gogh embracing the new, cheap medium — Adobe Photoshop has become the new inexpensive way to create new realities and alter the world surrounding us.
John, now a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, the firm behind the special effects in films like Avatar and the Harry Potter series, says: “It’s endlessly amusing to see
how much it has permeated popular culture. It really is everywhere. You can hardly turn around and not see something that was done in Photoshop.” Adds Thomas: “Adobe predicted it would sell 500 copies of Photoshop per month. I guess you could say we beat those projections! We knew we had a groundbreaking technology on our hands, but we never anticipated how much it would impact the images we see all around us.”

IN A SNAP

Despite its countless features, photography has always been the heartbeat of Photoshop. With each new version, the software has evolved along with the market it served. As transparencies transitioned into digital cameras, more and more photographers saw the potential in Photoshop.
The software repairs ancient photographs, preserving history. It enhances and magnifies medical images, helping doctors share critical scans and get opinions from various ends of the planet. It shows you how you would look with a new haircut. It creates entire worlds out of the imagination. And, of course, it alters the looks of people — it can make the dark-skinned look fair and the plump slim. It can remove blemishes and wrinkles, while preserving lighting and texture. And that is the beauty and the beast of Photoshop.
Ace photographer Raghu Rai accepts the software as a tool that photography needs. “A good photograph is one that captures reality to the closest. Before computers were available, lensmen used various filters, aperture-shutter speed combinations, double exposures and other methods to produce exactly what they saw. It is not always possible for a camera to capture what the naked eye sees and there is nothing wrong with someone using software to achieve that.”

A POLITICAL TOOL

All these features of Photoshop, however, are a double-edged sword. The software is often used to alter real events and affect our perceptions. Examples abound for these, too, from inserting or removing people from important events to recreating war scenes. In July 2008, Iran released a photograph of four missiles being launched simultaneously. Turns out there were only three missiles, with a fourth digitally inserted to add more menace. This is the sort of manipulation that gets Rai seething.
Closer home, people with a computer and lots of time to kill have pasted faces of well known actors and models on bodies of nude models and made them available for the world to see. “We need to draw a line somewhere,” says model Tupur Chatterjee. “It’s okay to remove a pimple or brighten up the skin, but it’s obviously not right to attach a celebrity’s face to the body of a nude model and paste it across the web.”

UNATTAINABLE BEAUTY

The beauty industry — worth $160 billion globally — is often accused of using Photoshop to apply subliminal pressures to which young females, and now even men, succumb. Constantly bombarded with perfect figures and unrealistic standards of beauty, youngsters often given up eating to look like that.
Tupur, who has appeared on many magazine covers, does not have a problem with her photographs being ‘touched up’. “It isn’t easy to get a perfect picture and so many times a very good photograph is ruined by an odd lamp shade or a wire that happens to be sticking around somewhere in the frame. Photoshop, in such cases, can save time, money and energy for the model, the photographer and the ad agency involved.”
Tupur does not believe that a software can kill creativity and skill. “No amount of manipulation can make a bad photograph look good, but it surely can make a very good picture even better.”

ETHICS IN THE FRAME

There’s a weird relationship between society, photography and Photoshop — most people suffer from the illusion that a photograph is the ultimate truth or, at least, it should be. According to fashion photographer Atul Kasbekar, “it is one thing to sort out the lighting in a picture and another to create a woman who practically has no waist.’’ He says, “It is scary when we hear of young girls starving themselves after seeing a model in some magazine, but it is not a phenomenon one can blame Photoshop for. A good typewriter never wrote a great book — Photoshop is only as good or bad as people make it.”
Mehr Jessia Rampal, India’s first supermodel who graced several magazine covers in the ’80s, much before Photoshop was mainstream, is all for a tool that can make a person look more beautiful. “I would not make a value judgement about airbrushing and photoshopping a picture. It’s a part of the glamour industry. Ad agencies are very demanding — if a model who is selling fairness cream has blemishes, it just wouldn’t work. People have to be realistic when they see an ad. Something is obviously wrong in the upbringing of the girls and boys who starve themselves or go on a bodybuilding rampage just to look like a model.”

WAY FORWARD

Not everybody, though, agrees with Mehr. Though Adobe’s Photoshop business generates as much as $300 million a year, owns 90 per cent of the market and has created an ecosystem of support products, it has raised a demon that the Knolls least expected. As airbrushing scandals regularly land on newspaper frontpages, Adobe has announced that it is working on a software that will make it easy for photo editors to spot a manipulated image.
However, even that might not be enough. As obsession with body image grows, health officials have a new enemy to fight. Governments across the world, including France, Britain, the US and Italy, are pushing for a law mandating that magazines tell readers when and how they have altered photos of models. Editors of glamour magazines have resisted such a proposal, but as the backlash against manipulated images that push an idealised standard of beauty gains momentum, it remains to be seen how much of the truth can be photoshopped.

The Devil's Photoshop

In 2008, Iran released a picture of four missiles being launched simultaneously. In truth, there were three missiles launched, with the fourth digitally inserted.
In 2006, a Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj came under criticism for tampering with a photograph of an Israeli air raid in Beirut by adding thicker, darker smoke
In 2003, Brian Walski’s LA Timescover photo from Iraq combined two separate images of a US soldier and Iraqi civilians. Readers noticed images of the same civilians in the background before Walski was fired.

(VISHANT V AGARWALA TOI CREST10320)