Surfsafe is a browser extension that compares all the images you load in your browser to images that appear on "trusted news sites," fact-checking services, and Snopes, and pops up a tool-tip warning when you hover over known hoax images with links to more information. Read the rest

Tokyo based artist Yuni Yoshida created her Layered series by manually cutting out cubed "pixels" of foods that recreate the gestalt of the original. Read the rest

Researchers from graphics company NVIDIA developed a deep learning system that automatically reconstructs corrupted images or fills in missing parts:

The method, which performs a process called “image inpainting”, could be implemented in photo editing software to remove unwanted content, while filling it with a realistic computer-generated alternative.

“Our model can robustly handle holes of any shape, size location, or distance from the image borders. Previous deep learning approaches have focused on rectangular regions located around the center of the image, and often rely on expensive post-processing,” the NVIDIA researchers stated in their research paper. “Further, our model gracefully handles holes of increasing size.”

Peter Lik is one of the world's most successful photographers. He reportedly works in-camera and without significant compositional retouching. But he appears to have been caught with his shoop down. The tl;dr, as Steve Cullen has it: a recent moon shot has a perfectly spherical disc when at that resolution mountains would be visible on its horizon; it's impossible to get that particular angle on the moon from the place where the photograph was taken; and, haha, the same moon shot is already in an earlier composition.

Here's the bottom line: I don't believe that the moon in either of Lik's photographs was there when the picture was taken. I am not saying there couldn't be a moon in his raw images, it just is not the moon we see in the final works. ... At the end of the day, photography is an art form and there certainly are many interpretations about what is right or wrong and good or bad. I believe what the folks are asking for from Lik and his associates is for them to speak the truth about the work, whatever that truth may be. Nothing more and nothing less.

It's funny because the photo seems so obviously shopped. We think we can tell by the pixels, it's the cold cruel harmony of the spheres that shows it.

I can't help but feel Peter left something out...

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Reuters, the news agency, has banned photographers from filing photos captured in RAW format, mandating in-camera JPGs instead. This, it believes, will cut down on processing time—and prevent photographers from editorializing their images.

“As eyewitness accounts of events covered by dedicated and responsible journalists, Reuters Pictures must reflect reality. While we aim for photography of the highest aesthetic quality, our goal is not to artistically interpret the news."

Filing RAW is the equivalent of handing unprocessed film, instead of a print, to your page layout guys. It shouldn't be their headache. So that complaint makes sense.

But the thing about photomanipulation? This strikes me as a human resources problem being misunderstood as a technical problem.

Whatever else you might say about the increased latitude for photomanipulation that RAW images provide, one can easily convert a worked RAW photo to JPG before filing it. Asking everyone to capture photos as JPGs won't make "arty" shooters more honest. Read the rest

H&M has admitted that the bikini models in its ads are just real models' heads pasted onto a computer-generated "ideal" body. As Jezebel notes, "But man, isn't looking at the four identical bodies with different heads so uncanny?"

The bodies of most of the models H&M features on its website are computer-generated and "completely virtual," the company has admitted. H&M designs a body that can better display clothes made for humans than humans can, then "dresses" it by drawing on its clothes, and digitally pastes on the heads of real women in post-production.

H&M Puts Real Model Heads On Fake Bodies

(via JWZ) Read the rest

WMxdesign's GOP Clown College Flickr set is a collection of prominent Republicans and Republican commentators in clown makeup.

GOP Clown College

(via Kottke) Read the rest