PhotoSchlocking "The Once and Future Obama"

His complexion seems light in the fauxtograph as well. Perhaps my imagination. It does present an interesting, would MSM prefer Obama to less black?

Posted by kend727 at May 9, 2007 9:12 AM

Of course, this is balanced by the daily flattering photographs and audio/video bites of President George W. Bush.

... in Bizzaro World.

Posted by Jeff Brokaw at May 9, 2007 11:56 AM

I work with photographs every day and as to the color of his skin, that's probably a side effect rather than a deliberate ploy. When my studio photographs students with dark skin— particularly Indian/Pakistani— they often have a low level of contrast and details are difficult to make out. We'll often lighten them in ways that make the skin tone stand out for the simple reason that if we didn't, their faces would be an undifferentiated mass of color.

In fact, we will sometimes get requests to match the color to the proof, which is bizarre since that coloration is not only light, it tends to be orange. But hey, they're the ones sticking the photo on the wall, so we oblige.

And their photo editor could do to learn a bit more Photoshop. The Unsharp Mask looks particularly horrible on his nose and mouth. One trick we use is "luminosity sharpen", which is to have a layer with the unsharp mask and then select the inverse of the RGB channel to mask off the lighter areas. It's quite an effective technique.

Posted by B. Durbin at May 13, 2007 6:45 PM

Is good news then. Hopefully they have learned their lesson to not blatenly change things

Posted by kend727 at May 15, 2007 12:06 PM

Pop culture reference: I can't get past Obama's resemblence to the white guy going to the black family in Dave Chappelle's Trading Spouses skit. Well, that and the fact that this man does not even come close to representing me.

Posted by Will Turman at May 22, 2007 3:23 AM