Reality Check: Rating Scale Proposed For Photo Retouching In Beauty Ads
This article was originally published in The Rose Sheet
Executive Summary
A software-based system for quantifying the degree that a photo has been altered could “provide incentive” for marketers to limit digital retouching in beauty advertisements.
Dartmouth computer science professor Dr. Hany Farid and Ph.D. student Eric Kee are proposing a software-based rating system that would let consumers know how much digital altering has been performed on photos of models in fashion and beauty advertisements.
In an article published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Farid and Kee suggest that such a rating “may provide incentive for publishers and models to reduce some of the more extreme forms of digital retouching that are common today.”
The practice, which has become commonplace with the proliferation of photo-editing software like Adobe Photoshop, has been linked to serious health and body-image issues based on “idealized and unattainable images of physical beauty,” they note.
The researchers acknowledge the limitations of their tool and note that industry-wide deployment would require “buy-in” and feedback from stakeholders, including the beauty industry.
Farid and Kee’s proposed system uses image modeling and analysis software to quantify the degree to which a photo has been altered, whether through the slimming of limbs, enlargement of eyes, corrections for symmetry or changes to skin tone and texture, according to the PNAS article. A score of 1 to 5 is then assigned, with higher values denoting a greater amount of modification.
The researchers compared results derived through their approach with scores awarded by human observers and found their metric to correlate well with perceptual judgments. They conclude that their system “can be used to objectively judge by how much a retouched photo has strayed from reality.”
Limitations Noted
Farid and Kee acknowledge that their metric has limitations. In some cases, photos with changes that were deemed significant to people viewing them – for example, the addition of makeup to a woman’s natural face and the addition of teeth to a man with a sizeable gap in his smile – did not earn high scores based on geometric and photometric measurements. In other cases, their software identified a significant deviation that to the human eye appears trivial.
The computer scientists maintain that their system is superior to one that merely labels an image as digitally altered or not, which “[does] not distinguish between common modifications such as cropping or color adjustment and modifications that dramatically alter a person’s appearance.”
However, while theirs is a more sophisticated rating system, “it remains to be seen if this rating can mediate the adverse effects of being inundated with unrealistic body images,” they say.
Furthermore, industry-wide deployment of such a system would require “buy-in” and feedback from publishers, professional photo retouchers, health experts and other stakeholders.
Kee emphasized in a Dec. 1 email that “the intent of our work is to strike a balance between the interests of all parties, including the beauty industry. “
The researchers’ proposed system is deftly timed and likely to find its supporters. Both fashion and beauty ads have come under fire of late for what has been deemed excessive retouching.
This summer, the American Medical Association adopted a policy to “discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote realistic expectations of appropriate body image.” In one ad of note, a “model's waist was slimmed so severely, her head appeared to be wider than her waist," AMA Board Member Barbara L. McAneny said in a June 21 release.
In the U.K., legislation is being considered that would require altered photos to be labeled. In January 2010, the Advertising Standards Authority decided that advertising for Procter & Gamble Co.’s Olay Definity Eye Illuminator and Johnson & Johnson’s Clean & Clear Advantage Acne Control Kit was misleading due to the improper use of makeup in "before" and "after" photos and the digital modification of a model's skin (Also see "J&J, P&G Cited By UK Advertising Standards Authority For Misleading Ads" - HBW Insight, 18 Jan, 2010.).
More than 700 people complained about the P&G advertisement, which featured 60-year-old British model Twiggy.
Even with such complaints, “not surprisingly, advertisers and publishers have resisted any such legislation” to limit or end the use of retouching, the Dartmouth researchers note.