Tool Reveals Degree of Digital Retouching
Amid growing concerns about the psychological impact of widespread digital ‘enhancement’ of photos comes a new tool to reveal how much fashion and beauty pics have been altered.
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What’s the Latest Development?
Computer scientists have developed software measuring how much fashion and beauty photos have been altered. Their research, being published in a scholarly journal, is intended as a technological response to concerns about the many highly idealized and digitally edited images in advertising and fashion magazines.
What’s the Big Idea?
Such images, research suggests, promote eating disorders and anxiety about body types, especially among young women. Feminist legislators in France, Britain and Norway have called for digitally altered photos to be labeled. And the American Medical Association’s policy on body image and advertising urges advertisers not to alter photographs in a way that could promote unrealistic body image expectations.
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