This story was worth writing up, absolutely. City of Toronto uses stock imagery for the “Fun Guide” cover, including a pretty poor attempt to retrofit more ethnic diversity into the image. (“The kids sure do take after their mother, don’t they?”)
I understand being on a deadline, and I really don’t have a problem with judicious use of stock. Though it is a bit redonculous to be in a time and place where the city doesn’t have any of its own photographs of families having “fun”. That’s just sad.
It is also odd to me that this weird collage was option A. I mean, stock sites are lousy with photographs taken for the sole purpose of bulking out the “diverse + families” search results.
But all that’s not actually what I’m annoyed about at the moment. Because apparently I prefer the things that irk me to be a little more ‘off the beaten path’. The issues discussed in the article are gimmes, and I just gotta be different, dammit.
Okay, what is really bugging me? Really really?
The description The Post used for /how/ they found out about this botch job. More specifically, the description of the /software/ they used to find out.
I know right? Issues, I has them.
Observe:
“The cover shot caught the eye of a National Post graphics editor, who ran it through a program called TinEye that detects visual enhancements to standard art.”
I don’t even think I finished reading the article. I selected and right-clicked “TinEye” to do a little insta-googling. Because if there was an app doing photography forensics like that (with no baseline, just give it an image and watch the magic unfold), I wanted to know about it. Since it would have traveled back in time from the future, when such things are possible.
Computer: “Oh, dude. Totally. They changed the levels here, and there’s some colour enhancement here, here and here. I can’t believe they thought they’d get away with this. You see that? No, not that, that! I’m pointing right at it! If you think that’s the original white balance, I want what you’re smoking.”
It’s not that I think this sort of after-the-fact image analysis is not possible. Of course much of it is. Some of it with the naked eyebulb, some with the comp-u-ters. (And it’s not like the “enhanced” image in this case was so masterfully done). Just that I doubted this particular app was doing all that The Post implied.
And my right-click led me to TinEye’s site, which led to this description of what their software does:
“TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.”
Finding out where an image came from, where else it is used — essentially just a sophisticated game of matchy-match — is not remotely the same thing as “detect[ing] visual enhancements to standard art.”
Why does this bother me? Because assertions like this, slightly but notably inaccurate, grease the slippery-slope of misunderstanding what technology can (or cannot) do. Leading to people having genuine fears about their webcam “watching” them when it’s switched off (post-it note over the webcam, anyone? anyone?), or the TiVo becoming sentient, or their toaster trying to kill them.
Okay, maybe the last one isn’t something people genuinely fear.
Sigh. Anyways, I have to go now. I think I left my toaster plugged in.
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