‘digital editing technology’, in contemporary society

Digital editing technology is a space-biased media that is an extension of our imaginations the brain comes up with, allowing the spread of new ideas through visuals. The uses of digital editing technology in today’s society are so diverse that it spans from fashion, design, politics, personal, and academics. Before only being able to be done by professionals who have had many years of practice and experience, digital editing is now available and open to anyone regardless of their knowledge in this area (although their capabilities will be limited).

Some uses in the real world:
- Fashion magazines
- Tabloids
- Posters/promotion
- Censorship (Soviet Union – http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union)
- Personal display pictures shown online

On a personal level, it’s rapidly growing popular amongst teenagers; made evident by the various amounts of online photo editing websites that have popped up in recent years (www.picnik.com, www.fotoflexer.com, www.photofunia.com, just to name a few). These online services enable those who may not have the will or time to learn how to use graphics editing software to create quality pictures. All of it is done online allowing users access anywhere in the world, and without the need to download a new program.

What you do first is select the picture you wish to edit from your computer and upload it. Then, you’ll be given multiple options for how you want to alter the picture. The essentials across all online photo editors are: rotate, crop, resize, and red-eye. But of course, just having the bare essentials isn’t enough to attract the masses – there needs to be more incentive to overcome the competition. To do so, there are assortments of other effects available to choose from that range from simple to fancy.

Below are some examples:

With the development of digital technology and the ability to alter images in misleading ways, a sub-discipline called digital forensics emerged. This specialization is used by intelligence agencies, news organizations, and scientific journals when there is a “.. need to authenticate the validity of images.” (Dreifus, 2007, ¶ 4). An area of major concern is in the world of Science where there has been a growing trend of fraud jumping from 26% in 2001, to 44.1% in 2006 (Dreifus, 2007 ¶ 11). With these staggering numbers, it brings concerns as to whether or not the publications are an acceptable truth.

From an academic standpoint, I feel that it’s caused a negative effect on how we record data. It’s causing us as a society to become socially aware of what information we absorb and where it’s coming from because there’s always a chance that it may not be true. But to begin with, we should question everything we see by instinct (such as media). This causes the brain to stay sharp, and be able to comprehend between different claims.

Due to the increasing numbers of fraud, I believe that there needs to be new qualifications and procedures to be met before sources (photographs) are to be merited as legitimate. As the upbringing of digital forensics advances, we’ll slowly see through the frauds. This extra step will ensure that all information being recorded has been thoroughly examined for falsity. The time interval in between processing the information will be tedious and slow things down, but for accuracy’s sake it’ll be worth it.

References -
Dreifus, C. (2007, October 2) . Proving That Seeing Shouldn’t Always Be Believing. Retrieved February 8, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/02conv.html?scp=1&sq=photo%20manipulation&st=cse

Censorship of images in the Soviet Union. (2009, January 31). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Retrieved February 8, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union)