The Big Cheese Doesn't Stand Alone

Another controversy is broiling over a digitally manipulated news image on a magazine cover.

This time it's a photograph of President Obama standing alone on a Louisiana beach, for The Economist's June 19 cover story on the BP oil spill catastrophe.

Except in the original unaltered image, by Reuters photographer Larry Downing, he's not alone. By cropping out Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard (routinely acceptable) and Photoshopping out Charlotte Randolph, a local parish president (highly questionable), it appears that he's "looking forlornly at the ground," as a New York Times blog item accurately describes it.

The Economist violated Reuters' own strict photo-editing policies. In its defense, deputy editor Emma Duncan declared (in an email to the N.Y. Times) that cropping Allen was justified, and that Randolph was "removed not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers. I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story."

Still, that was indubitably the net effect -- all the more proof that any photo editing that fudges reality is bound to create more problems than it solves.

Sneak Preview: Photoshop CS5's Hot New 'Content-Aware Fill'

Jaws are dropping over Adobe's hot new Content-Aware Fill feature in its upcoming Photoshop CS5 (due April 12). Some enthusiasts are finding it so incredibly magical that they're wondering if it's just an elaborate April Fool's hoax.

Essentially it's a retouching tool that clones and intelligently replicates textures as needed to instantly achieve the sort of image smoothing and cleanup that would manually take you forever to reproduce.

As Photoshop product manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes demonstrates in this video (below), Content-Aware Fill can eradicate everything from flare to litter to entire highways. It can extend erratic cloud patterns to the borders. To judge from early response from Photoshop fans, it might as well microwave your dinner and fold your laundry, too.

(NOTE: Watch this demo full-screen to truly appreciate the subtleties.)

One of the biggest requests we get of Photoshop is to make adding, removing, moving or repairing items faster and more seamless. From retouching to completely reimagining an image, here's an early glimpse of what could happen when you press the delete key.

Already there's fear among pro photogs and stock houses -- and glee among image purloiners -- that it's a one-stop solution for eradicating protective watermarks.

And of course visual journalism ethicists, who wrestle constantly with the extent to which technology should be used to alter the depiction of reality, will have a field day trying to figure out whether Content-Aware Fill is going too far, for any situation or circumstance.

The conundrum expands exponentially when you consider what will soon be possible with video retouching -- a godsend for advertisers, a dance-with-the-devil for journalists.