Should Photo Retouching Be Legally Regulated?
Sep. 18
1:48 am
I certainly don’t think so (I’d rather see airlines regulated as to how they treat their passengers), but according to an article in Yahoo’s Shine magazine, a governing body in the UK thinks things have gotten so out-of-hand that maybe photo retouching should be regulated.
Here’s what the Shine article said:
“In what’s poised to be the biggest uproar yet over the ongoing issue of Photoshopping in mass media, members of the British Parliament are calling for a ban on digitally altering ads aimed at children under 16, and disclosure of these modifications in ads aimed at adults, reports Jezebel.“
Here’s the link to their article to read more.
Banning and disclosure of photoshopped ads? ADS? They must be joking. There has been manipulation in ads all along, not only in the visual parts. The complete advertising business inherently exists, is build on and makes use of manipulation in every kind of it’s entity.
In my opinion it would make sense to regulate the retouching and altering of photos in factual reports. Altering images in “serious” coverage is, in my opinion, way more problematic than retouching a beauty shot or a a photo of disney world showing 1000 lucky kids. I thought that the silly season has already ended, but this seems not to apply to the British Parliament…
Pardon me for my poor english.
IT IS FORBIDDEN TO FORBIDDEN
Ken
I wonder how long before Obama appoints a Czar of Retouching?
HAHAHA!!!
The great master portrait photographers from the 30’s have always retouched on their large plate cameras by hand. I don’t think the stars ever complained about looking better. Nothing has changed except that now everyone can master the clone tool. It’s more important that the client, model or star has given permission to alter the image. If they demand it I don’t see the problem. You can’t turn back the clock since Photoshop was invented. The bigger problem with the stars is how to hide their wrinkles in the age of high definition video.
They don’t look as good on my TV.
The first thing my daughter did with Photoshop was take every kids face on her class photo and created a group of monsters. 16 year old love these tools.
There is so much digital transformation happening in all media and the movies that we can’t escape it. Actors regularly have body doubles for shower scenes and stunt doubles.
So we are manipulated even without the software.
But that’s kind of the point I guess. I am not necessarily in favor of what they say…there are so many other things that they should care about first…
But anyway, the initiative is targeted towards teenagers under 16. When you alter photos in ads or whatever to give a fantasy /perfect look to someone you create a need in the mind of many kids. They would like to be like the photoshoped guy/gal, which is certainly impossible (how can it be possible if even an already fitted/good looking guy/gal was retouched?!)…
Ads/tv/games influence the minds of kids that do not have a strong/supportive family. Creating more pressure on kids that already have problems is not good and perhaps the government is the entity that should regulate or take care of the situation… I am not sure though, but it is not that stupid to think about it.
Cheers
Mariano, you have a good point. How much does the Retouching affect, go in a high school near you and see it for yourself. I see that everyday and young girls are destroying their bodies because of those ads. For the comments below, some obviously you have never seen that problem and I just wish you that you never have a daughter or a son that destroy their future because of that problem. Because, their is a lot of good families who are going through this and some if they would have a chance to see the Retouching people, it wouldn’t be a nice! But read below before making any judgments.
But what the government is trying to do is the most absurd approach to the problem. Totally agree that the ads agency been doing that for the longest time and a lot of people would lose their job. Here is a solution, start TEACHING!! and demonstrate what those people are doing. Here in Canada we have a program that is call CTS, and one of their option is they can take computer classes. So, every year I teach my students what ad agency are doing to models in the magazine
Does it help, YES because every teacher comes back to me and all say to me that I must be teaching my Magazine stuff!! because all my students are talking about it in the other classes 
and the best thing is when you have parent call you to say Thanks 
Yeah, to bad I can be their to say: “So England, spend some money wisely on teachers, train them, and create a program where students at Middle School and High School can take and learn. Yes it is a HUGE problem for teens to understand what they see everyday in the media but when they learn how it is done, they have a completely different view
” and PS by the way, I would be more then happy to move in England and train those teachers 
Scott, how do I use a personal picture when I post a comment? I just have the generic silhouette and I was trying to figure out how to show my mug. I have been trying to figure it out for 10 minutes now!
<——– this is what I am talking about.
You have to use Gravatar (www.gravatar.com) whery you upload your picture and connect it to a mail address. There are other services as well.
I think if our governments want to spend their time considering the weighty topic of “photographic regulations”, they should spend it considering how they can enshrine my right to take a photo of pretty much anything I like (within the bounds of human decency), pretty much anywhere I like.
So I can stand on a public street with my nice camera & tripod, and take a photo of an iconic building.
Or I can buy tickets to a sporting event, take along my nice camera and take photos of the events unfolding.
Or… so many other “or”s.
This is the problem with governments, they try to over regulate everything without a detailed understanding of what it is they are trying to regulate and they end up producing stupid rules that achieve nothing.
Media Literacy lessons in schools, what happens if you fail your media literacy exam are you not allowed to view any ads because you haven’t the common sense to see that they are trying to sell you something and you will buy everything you see an advert for and get into massive debt. Ah I see their point.
I’m reasonably liberal for my age and even I think the UK (or others) would be going too far by regulating ads in newspapers and magazines. If they feel they must pass a law, how about for photojournalism only. I really don’t care if a model has a blemish removed or a couple pounds taken off, but don’t fake “the news”. As Graham commented. too many bills are introduced without the legislators having a clear understanding of what their legislating.
Finally! Laws to make us safer! Photo retouching kills millions around the world every day! Just from the toxic levels of retouching that governments allow to be added to food and drinking water, alone! Not to mention the poor women and children who are subjected to retouching! Criminal! Just this month, in fact, poor Paula Deen was made to look 17 on the cover of her magazine! Oh, the horror! It must be stopped! I’m so glad at least one government has its priorities straight and will do all it can to save the world from this lethal menace! If only the rest of the world will follow the UK’s example, we can all sleep easier at night…geez.
That would be the July/Aug. issue correct? It looks like someone was really intent on showing the world their skill (or lack there of) with Gaussian Blur!
Scott, while I feel regulation would be futile, pointless, and unethical, I have to say that retouching has definitely gotten out of hand…and something that really drove it home to me was your own recent “Triplets” tutorial on the NAPP website. You had a beautiful model who was in a pose where her belly protruded a little–like a normal person’s belly would–and you performed some photo-liposuction because…well, I’m not sure why. You just did it as a matter of course, commenting that the model would have been unhappy otherwise.
Please don’t take this as a personal attack–I regard you as an intelligent and ethical guy. I was just flabbergasted (really) when you did the nip/tuck thing on a model who wouldn’t look chubby if you stuck a feather pillow under her shirt.
define “digitally altered”. if it’s a jpeg the camera has already “altered” the data before you ever see it. even if it isn’t the camera has already processed the raw sensor data. your computer puts its spin on the data when rendering to the display and a printer has its own ideas of color correction. commercial printing will most likely have changed the colorspace to cmyk, not a reversible translation. if viewed on tv a different encoding of the rgb, again not reversible, would have been used. are all these going to fall under the same blanket?
good luck with a precise definition that means “you can’t make models look inhuman, or food look better than it is, but other manipulation is ok”.
i really am ashamed to live in this god awful becoming police state country. ill start saving an move to europe or NZ who know but here is not were ill stay, with the government being such left wing idiots.
Interesting, when I saw the post title, I thought it was going to be about http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/essay-9/ . There we’re talking about a manipulating photojournalism.
Wow, this is interesting. David Hume Kennerly protesting Newsweek cropping his photo and using it out of context. For such a renowned photojournalist to be treated this way is a shame.
I can’t say that I agree with the idea of making a law for it, but I have to admit that I don’t see ads the same way since I have seen the kind of manipulations made in a lot of ads ans magazines. It is easy for us to say it’s no big deal, we understand that almost every of those pictures we see every day have been manipulated.
But I also have to say that this kind of retouching is in part responsible for a lot of cases of anorexia (I’ve seen and worked with people in this situation) because they see all these people that look so healthy and are so thin. The truth is, they really think people can naturally look like that.
So Janine, when you said “Photo retouching kills millions around the world every day!”, it might not be millions a day, but you have to admit that anorexia has become a real problem in our society and that one of the major cause of this trend is the fact that almost every picture we see in ads and magazine has been ’shopped to enhance the look of the model / celebrity.
I wouldn’t make it a law though, it’s gonna be a pain in the @$$ to regulate and decide what is targeted at teens under 16. Fashion? of course! Makeup? Anything that’s not anti-aging can be aimed at teens. Music? Why not!
It’s gonna cost a lot of graphic design artists their jobs if they do go on with this…
I guess that’s what it is all about…
Not protecting the retouched people, but the kids that want to look like them.
There’s a category of legislation known as “Fetcher” bills. Their press releases are always loaded with phrases like “to protect the children” or “to fight terrorism” or “to make the roadways safer”. They contain language that seems absurd and wrong-headed. They would also cost some industry a lot of money to implement if passed.
The result is that the industry lobbyists visit the legislators and committee chairs and persuade them to abandon or tailor the legislation. This persuasion is done via campaign contributions (or, sometimes, outright bribes), thus the name. These bills’ purpose is to fetch money to help with re-election.
This proposal has all the earmarks of a fetcher bill.
Steve (retired lawyer)
I learn something new everyday here, and it’s not always photograph related. Cheers!
this guy has done some work on the matter (indirectly): http://www.henryjenkins.org/archives.html
Cheers
Mariano
I can certainly understand our collective concern about misrepresentation of truth, whether it’s done with a photograph, a drawing, or simply words. What I don’t understand is why photography gets drawn into claims of sinister intentions, yet we understand the distinctions in other mediums.
For instance, writing falls into two broad categories, fiction and non-fiction. We don’t expect a novel to reflect un-retouched reality – we expect reading it to be an enjoyable experience. Conversely, we expect a non-fiction account to be completely accurate. The jury of public opinion turns very quickly against writers who take liberties with the truth and attempt to label it as non-fiction.
The same is true with painting. I’ve never heard anyone complain that stars in Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” appear to have been enhanced. But, we expect the artist’s rendering of a courtroom scene to be accurate when it’s published as news. Again, public opinion does a pretty good job of understanding the difference, and punishes the transgressors.
It will never happen, trust me…
I also think this is a silly idea that will never happen – some degree of retouching will always happen.
But I also think it’s a good discussion to have, especially about advertisements targetting kids. It’s one thing to clean up some rough edges etc. but quite another to constantly portray an “ideal form” that many “normal” people don’t have.
Oh my gosh! You mean advertisements are misleading?!! You mean all those cosmetics really won’t make me look younger, thinner, richer…? Apparently those politicians are complete rubes, and have missed the entire history of commercial advertising on this planet.
Here’s my idea for a better law: let the advertisers Photoshop all they want, but if the product does not look like or deliver the same results as shown in the ad, whether that’s due to PS, lighting, faked-up sets, fake product, camera angle, misleading dialogue, etc…, and I am disappointed I can get all of my money back.
Our govornment would regulate the chaos theory if they could.
However I worry about the suceptibilty of our youngsters (predominently the girls but boys too) to the onslaught of perfect media images. But a bigger problem in our country is parenting standards and discipline. I also think there are more harmful lies spread via the TV which need addressing more urgently.
After all, Photoshop retouching is simply an extension of make-up which has been used worldwide for millenia. Say no to censorship but yes to education.
politicians need to be seen to act irregardless of the idiocy of the action. thus the whole problem of “junk science”, excessive anti-terrorist response. remember that politicians exist solely to be re-elected.
and how do they propose to verify “touched” photos?
I’m with Matt N., above. Advertisements are misleading? Heaven forbid. The nature of advertisement is to put the best spin on the product; telling us of its virtues but leaving out the vices. Why should it be different for the accompanying photos?
The Brits have once again come up with a wonderful idea, just like the Brutish Empire…. which failed, and monarchy …. which turned out to be totally ineffectual and a huge drain on their economy. The solution is not in regulating artists who have to satisfy their moneymaking employers, but in educating people about what beauty really is. Easy, huh?
Some points in answer to your comment…
1. The British Empire had it’s day, just as all Empires do – but none last for ever. Even the current ones will change and fade over time.
2. Our monarchy still seems to be going strong and works reasonably well in our system (you mustn’t confuse absolute with constitutional monarchy – we gave up the former after the Civil War – ours, not yours)
3. Further the term ‘British Parliament’ mustn’t be confused with a minority policital party’s spokesperson (Liberal Democrat). It would be like saying the American Government when you actually meant Ross Perot.
The whole ‘ban retouching’ thing is a classic case of good intentions without considering the reality and all the unintended consequences.
Anthony.
Politicians trying to legislate against lies, misdirection and spin. Really now? Pot, meet kettle!
Photography is still Art and at this point we live in a free soceity and we shouldn’t start regulating Art, that can lead to a very silippery slope.
I am not in favor of the measure. But they are not legislating art. They are trying to limit certain type of ads.
I think the government is more bothered about false advertising than photoshop.
Other UK newspapers have spotted the fact that this isn’t the first time her make up was electronic. Sounds as if even she wasn’t happy about the retouching either.
I have a great solution to the problem – mandatory Photoshop classes in schools! You could even offer a major in fashion retouching. That way all the susceptiable little kids will know all the tricks and will never beleive these ads are how people really look.
Seriously though I do get their point and having a young daughter I am concerned about the ‘impossibly perfect’ image these type of ads promote. There are already lots of ‘false advertising’ legislations that should cover the ‘out-right’ deceptions as for the rest. For me I’ll just to my best to make sure my daughter knows the truth about these images.
Guys before everyone goes a bit over the top on this one, as a British reader can I point out a few things? I’ll try not to drag us too off topic into UK politics, but it does have some relevance to the number a grains of salt we should take this with.
1) Jo Swinson (the person who kicked all this off) is nothing to do with the UK government. She is a member of the opposition Liberal Democrat party, which is about as far as you can get form government in this country. She clearly has as solid a grasp on the meaning on the word liberal as Fox news.
http://www.joswinson.org.uk/news/000942/airbrushed_adverts_aimed_at_children_should_be_banned__swinson.html
2) The government is not who she would be appealing to anyway, the Advertising Standards Authority would enforce any new rules and I believe they are non-statutory.
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/
3) The Guardian is the most reliably left wing paper in the UK- have a read of the comments posted there about the original article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/05/women-adverts
It won’t happen, just because the lady happens to be a member of parliament in the UK that does not give her any more credence in this case.
How the discussion moved to left vs. right, I don’t know. But back to the original point. I certainly don’t want censorship with regards to retouching. I will say however, that with sites like this one (http://apostropher.com/cache/angelswithattitudes.htm) out there, I can definitely see their point. That kind of irresponsible use of both children and retouching is just wrong in my view. Does it merit regulation? Thats a tough call.
Regards,
Nothing wrong with using PS on Alien dolls!
What do you mean those are meant to be real kids? Yeeeeuch!
creepy ain’t it?
I also see where there is validity in this, but generally I don’t like seeing ‘banning’ of anything that could have been avoided with better parenting.
On one side, I see ads placed in local magazines by dermatology clinics using stock photos of retouched models. They are implying that they can make your skin look this good, which is impossible because the photo went through 3 hours of retouching. I kinda see that as these businesses getting away with false advertising. Not cool.
On the other side, I absolutely believe that the camera often somehow makes the model look worse than she does standing right in front of me. I don’t know why, but I can see shots come right up on the screen and she looks like she’s got wrinkles in the shot where there are none on her face. Or her nose looks bigger- something always comes out different. I use retouching to ‘put it back the way it was in real life’. Is it ‘wrong’ to do this?
This can go on and on, but the bottom line is; kids/young women/whoever should be taught that when they see someone like a model or celebrity in photos and movies, that they don’t look that perfect in real life either.
I’ve always found it humorous the way most people attempt to “cling to reality” when it comes to viewing photographs. A photo is an image stupid – it’s not -nor has it every been reality. Even an “undoctored” photo from years past, is a comment by the photographer and the “subject.” Loosen up folks- enjoy- question everything and live in the question – not the answer. It’s all a mystery.
I feel that “if” a photograph is altered in any way other than for exposure compensation it should be notated and in detail, perhaps even going so far as to show the original and the altered version. Its called the ‘truth’.
Most of us shoot digital. Should we provide a bunch of ones and zeros as “the original” version?
OK, I’ll just tweak my work flow towards better makeup, wardrobe/costume, light and shoot carefully. And very selective casting.
Shooting costs will go up. those super skinny models with creamy skin will be in more demand. And not having a retouching disclaimer will give the ad more impact.
Better photographers will make more as will better makeup artists, stylists, models, ect… Companies with budgets to buy the better services will do better in the markets.
On the political side, every time a new regulation is passed, the race begins to circumvent it’s purpose. The first ones to do so reap the financial rewards.
Everything should be made illegal. Then certain things can be made legal. It will be easier to remember, because it will be a much shorter list!
hahahaaa!
This is such a non-story. The original report emanated from a minority UK party and does not have a hope in hell of becoming law. It was released in August, the silly season. and had probably hung around for month waiting for publication. Never heard a sniff of it in the UK, just a stupid story for foreign consumption.
And you guy are right, you do not need laws against retouching you need a health service – well about 40 million of you do.
Time for Obama to call down the Daily Two Minutes Of Hate® upon Adobe.
A worthy target indeed.
Have Mercy! Hugh Hefner is 84 years old. Are you trying to kill him?
This seems like a joke.
Isn’t it rather pointless to ban retouching in ads aimed at kids? A huge portion of the “problem” ads stem from the beauty industry (cosmetics, clothing, etc.) and those aren’t specifically aimed at children so they wouldn’t qualify under the proposed law anyhow.
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How do you sign up/subscribe to the blog? I searched for a sign up page but couldn’t find it.
Thx
what i always find funny about this notion….is i don’t think most lawmakers realize just how touched up EVERY photo is. i mean, assuming we aren’t talking about the hack jobs you’ll see get printed by mistake….there is a lot of work that goes into everything printed or aired.
i am personally not a fan of the “plastic-look” as a photoshop artist myself, but it’s up to me to make the decision on how far to take an image past “realistic”. i’ve found that most of the time creative directors will be satisfied with a realistic photo if you are good enough to keep it looking “real”.
but trying to take away photoshop from ads, is almost like asking to take away all creative direction while you are at it. from lighting techniques to make-up. just silly.
i dont think so , Regulating !!!
Wow it looks like I won’t get work in the UK. To think I spent a semester abroad in the UK doing an internship as a digital fashion retoucher and now I have to reconsider finding a job elsewhere when I graduate in a month. If they want to stifle my artistic skills, I will move elsewhere.
All they have to do is make it aware to teenagers what goes on with an image. If I was aware of that as a teenager, I’m sure my body image would be a little better. But banning ads is not going to stop the problem. They might as well ban tv because it’s full of skinny sticks as well. Awareness is the answer. Now I enjoy looking at ads because I see them as fine art.
It is extremely unlikely that this will really be regulated, Adobe and other software companies would probably have their layers step in before something like that could take effect.
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