The Ethics of Photo Manipulation
History of Photo Manipulation
Photo manipulation is as old as photography, it was mostly used in
propaganda and movie posters a good example of this is the iconic photo of
the soviet flag over berlin. The soviet government staged and manipulated
this photograph by adding in more smoke, adjusting the contrast, and
removing the watch of the soldier supporting the flag bearer. There are many
more examples but this was a notable one.
Photoshop Use in Social media
The main problem with photoshop is when companies and
people use photoshop to change a picture that they want the public to
view as reality. For example, you visit a burger chain store, and you buy
a burger but the product they give you is not what it looked like on the
ad that you saw. That is a problem because it misleads the public into
thinking that the product that they are going to receive is going to be
like the ad they saw on the billboard.
This problem becomes more severe when companies and people start to use photoshop on
people and making it seem real. This will mislead people and make them insecure about their body.
These days people have become aware of companies and people editing their pictures to make their
pictures look better, this led companies and people to not use photoshop in their photos to relate better
to the public.
Photoshop is also used by shady news media to make click bait articles, this problem really
effects the older generations that cant tell the difference between what’s fake and what’s real. For
example my mom and her social group repeatedly keep sharing fake news with photoshopped images
with her friends and family.
Conclusion
There is a lot of good that can be done using photoshop, it can be used to create art that would
not be possible with paint and paper, create abstract art, fix old photographs, but photoshop becomes a
problem when people edit it and tell the public its real. More types of problems like this will arise as
soon as AI becomes better to make realistic artificial photos.
Sources
https://sites.psu.edu/grmertman/2015/10/22/photoshop-in-advertising/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVlcy-bBZu4
https://sabrinahicks.wordpress.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x03bO2b30hY