Dec 21 2009
How Photoshop Turns Reality Grey
While the above image began as a photograph, I can no longer call it one. After modifying it with Photoshop, what I now have is . . . an image? A doctored photograph? Were I to reduce the filtering degree by degree, what would be the point, I wonder, I could refer to it as a photograph, period? Seems to me that photo editing software has introduced a whole lot of grey area into what we present as reality.
Consider this NASA photo.
There is no mention at the source of image manipulation. We do learn what captured the image of cosmic reality: the “Wide Field Camera peering though the recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.”
But I sense some grey in the above. Not in color, but in the beautiful light diffraction of some of the stars. How much was the image doctored? Does it matter?
