Pictures: From Graphics to outright lies

Here's an image that we start with.

I have a dear friend whose hobby is photography. He doesn't just take photos though because he's an artist. So, he takes pictures, digital pictures, and then he processes them to make beautiful prints. You can see some here. What's interesting is that the pictures you see are not what the scene showed but rather the pictures are what he wants you to see. They are art, and as art, they are gorgeous and well worth having. I proudly display many of these works in my office.

But they are not a capture of reality. (It is interesting to ask just what is a capture of reality and how do you know it. That's a post for another time.)

Now two scientists have devised an automated algorithm that allows you to easily remove, edit, and change your digital pictures to take out what you don't like and replace with something that will fill-in the picture realistically. This is letting a computer effectively edit out reality from your pictures.

Digital photographers could soon be able to erase unwanted elements in photos by using tools that scan for similar images in online libraries.

Research teams have developed an algorithm that uses sites like Flickr to help discover light sources, camera position and composition in a photo.

Using this data the tools then search for objects, such as landscapes or cars, that match the original.

The teams aim to create image libraries that anyone can use to edit snaps.

In the past you could edit pictures, use Photoshop and change what you liked and didn't like. Now, it is automated (well, almost) so that soon you won't have to work at making phony images. Phony images are fine, of course, we are free to change them as we like. But to have the process automated, well, that just seems like making it all the more easy to distort reality.

This is the same image with the roof removed and phony boats inserted. A beautiful graphic but not a photo of the actual scene.