These are just a few of the commands and commandments given to the participants corralled into Lab 318 yesterday for the Beginning Photoshop basics class. The power of transformation offered by Photoshop was not yielded without first warning of the dangers inherent in the tool.
Quoting Stan Lee (or perhaps Peter Parker's Uncle Ben), director Steve Elliott admonished the group that "with great power comes great responsibility."
In Lab 318, beginners learned the basics of enhancing a photo aesthetically without damaging the credibility of the photograph. In my experience, we have used Photoshop for the typical reasons: correcting the demonic looking eyes of some poor person who has been baptized by some unholy flash; lightening a photo that has been condemned to the darkness; whitening the teeth of someone who may or may not have had proper meetings with Mr. Toothpaste and his friend Dr. Toothbrush in his lifetime. I have only had one student question any of these practices, and I believe she may have been the ex-girlfriend of the yellow-toothed guy.
Ethically, where does this line begin and end? When you transform the picture into misleading the public? No doubt, whitening teeth does, in fact, mislead the public in some way...
Michael Simons assists participants Elizabeth Granger and Lisa Shapiro in the Beginning Photoshop Class.
Melissa Langlois
Whitewater High School
Fayetteville, Ga.
The raw image turning into a photo illustration is very subjective. What you consider a huge change to a photo, I may say the photo isn't edited that much. Ultimately, when a photo has been edited and is OBVIOUS that work has been done in a photo editing program, that's where the line must be drawn. A couple examples that WOULD be unethical...
ReplyDelete-changing the eye color on a student for the newspaper
-eliminating all the blemishes on a students face before publishing through dodge and burn tool on photoshop.
-a shot of the zoo and it's a blank background and adding a colorful bird.
It's so subjective really!