How do different editing techniques impact the appeal of a photograph,

and how much editing is too much?

Cameron M. Flann

Senior Project Advisor: Roxy Mcknight

12th Grade Humanities

Animas High School
27 February 2017
 Part I: Introduction

Click! Click! The camera flashes photos before the professional photographer's eyes as

he eagerly thinks about how he is going to edit and then post his photos. However, not everyone

is a professional photographer and many of us do not know how, or if, we should edit our photos.

Posting photos has never been more common with more than half of all internet users (54%)

sharing photos and videos online, and an increasing number are using specific photo sharing

applications such as Instagram and Snapchat (Oeldorf-Hirsch 624). With the number of photos

shared on the rise, companies and average people want their photos to have as high of an impact

as possible to stand out. Therefore, people and companies use filters, Photoshop, Lightroom, and

many more tools to edit and enhance their photos to make them more appealing. At what point is

this editing too much? When is the model too skinny or muscular? Is it morally wrong to change

a photo to emphasize an issue? Every day we are bombarded with photos through magazines,

news articles, ads, newsfeeds, and social media feeds, many edited in an unrealistic way causing

concern for our current and future generation of consumers. Some editing techniques & filters do

increase photo appeal, but editing in some instances, can be considered too much when it

portrays a false narrative, rather than simply enhancing an existing image.

Part 2: Historical context

Photography over the past 200 years has evolved into a massive empire spanning into

every genre in the world. Many painters used the new photographic medium to answer questions

on how to render an image in painting. The photography movement started to be widely known

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in February 1839 with the Daguerreotype camera (a name shortened from camera obscura) in

a process almost immediately christened photography, from Greek photos (light) and graphos

(writing)(Kleiner et al. 886), which was very advanced for its time and had only an average

shutter time of about 8 hours. While that is an extremely long shutter time today, it was

remarkably good for the time. For portraits, many people would wear headgear to remain still

enough. In the 1850s Henry Talbots negative images were introduced to the photography

community. Talbots method offered an exceptionally faster shutter time, but created photos that

were grainy and blurry. Although, this system was faster it failed to be adopted due to the high

price of equipment and stiff licensing. Photographers used both systems to capture events of high

magnitude such as the aftermath of the American Civil war. The photos completely captured the

precise clarity of the bodies of Union soldiers in the foreground, boots stolen and pockets picked,

to the almost illegible corpses in the distance, the suggestion of innumerable other dead soldiers

is unavoidable(Kleiner et al. 887). Being able to capture the magnitude of large events allowed

for a deeper and richer world history rather than paintings and longhand of the time.

Photography has now evolved into the digital realm as technology has evolved over the

past century. The first digital camera was invented in 1975 by Kodak Camera. A couple decades

later Adobe Photoshop was released to the photography community. Adobe Photoshop allowed

people to edit their photos in ways that made people begin to question the truth of an image (see

appendix 1). As social media began to join the digital community people began to use the built in

recoloring and editing properties that they offered, enhancing their own everyday images. Digital

photography, photoshop, and social media have now all combined into today's society.

Part 3: Summary of Past Research

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 Over the past decade, photography has spread like a virus across social media platforms

and the Internet causing a greater effect on our lives. With more than 90% of adults now having

mobile phones (Pew Research Center, 2014), most of which allow them to take photos and

instantly share them on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (Oeldorf-Hirsch 624).

Being able to post photos so easily has allowed for people to share their lives with the touch of a

button. The ability to post photos everyday has a greater impact on younger generations as

research indicates that those sharing photos online may be less aware of the deeper needs that

these activities fulfill, such as identity creation and self-expression (Oeldorf-Hirsch 625). The

impact on future generations will be extraordinary and people will begin to feel anxious if they

do not share their photographs; In fact, 55% feel guilty if they do not share (Oeldorf-Hirsch

625). The feeling of guilt is created due to the need for attachment and many use it to build a

community around images of their experiences. Family relationships struggle as they are

replaced by the social circle as we construct our online communities around photostreams and

shared timelines(Popova 6). As families get replaced by virtual circles, we enter a time where

people no longer truly communicate with each other which works for some people, yet others

have a harder time adapting. Social media accounts turn into lifelong stories rather than

highlighted moments. Photography with the help of social media has reached a point where it is

only a two step process: ...photo making and photo sharing. Photo making is the preservation of

a given time, place, or experience, while photo sharing builds community around these

experiences (Oeldorf-Hirsch 626). People tend to feel more and more guilty if they do not share

their life on the internet or social media platforms as it creates a virtual community around them,

but meanwhile it separates a family into the larger community.

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 As photography developes in the multimedia world, people are starting to find its

negative effects. Sontag argues: To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It

means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world the feels like knowledge - and,

therefore, like power (Popova 3). This mindset can alter or even change people's perceptions on

life, influence people relationships and more. Posting photos has evolved to a point where it has

created a society of envy and competition. A place where there is no common community but

instead a never ending stream that you must swim up to succeed. This is bad for the general

community but it can also act as a motivator. Everyone now needs to prove themselves: Their,

images validate experiences[and] help people take possession of space in which they are most

insecure. Thus, photography develops in tandem with one of the most characteristic of modern

activities: tourism (Popova 7). People use their photographs to almost prove that their

experience was true.

The idea of needing to prove oneself is a rather new thought process which came along

with the social media era. Social media has only been available for a short time in comparison to

photography. Photography has developed into a remarkably nuanced and frequently

contradictory genre, and one that is as much about what we do with snapshots and how we feel

about them as it is about what the photographs look like (Zuromskis 19).

With the evolution of photography and how contradictory it has become it now opened

up room for artistic freedoms and the ability to create photos beyond one's imagination. The

ability to take a perfect photo and being able to develop new styles is great yet has begun to

encourage a black hole of negative outcomes. With the added guilt of not posting enough and

trying to fit in, many people present themselves online as if all is well, glossing over hardship.

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Younger generations are using photography as a means to an end producing images that express

aspects of themselves in a way they find both pleasing and convincing, and reflective on their

engagement with the wider world(Stanley 140). Photography is now a medium to express

oneself and is abused to portray a narrative that best fits who they are.But is that okay?

Is it okay if the media portrays photo manipulation in the same way as young adults who

change their photos to get more likes? With the availability of Photoshop and many more

digitally enhancing resources, many media organizations use photography to tell their most

likely biased story rather than the truth. Currently, many people know of Photoshopping from

media sources like magazines and blog sites, to be specific 97.84% of 139 people(Coffaney

14). That being said, 82.01% did not assume there was photoshopping in newspapers

(Coffaney 14) which is understandable. As a news organization people need to be able to trust

the information being presented, if even some of the information is false, that is a big problem.

Instances of this happening include Photoshopping influential people into photos from protests

that were never actually attended and adding additional missiles into an Iran rocket test photo to

exaggerate the issue (examples can be found in appendix 1). With news organizations changing

photos to gather different reactions and no one monitoring the issue it causes concern for whats

propaganda and whats accurate news.

With news organizations and the media in general altering photographs, people begin to

wonder what is stopping these organizations from causing large worldwide problems. Currently,

there are no laws, organizations, or any other sort of regulations stopping this from happening.

Organizations can adjust photos however they like without needing to disclose how or if they

have manipulated their photos. that they have done anything. That is not the worst part, these

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images have reached millions of people and caused much hype over a false image.

Photoshopping can affect a lot of people (Coffaney 10). In an attempt to stop organizations such

as news agencies and magazines from editing photos, European countries such as the United

Kingdom and France have tried to pass legislation relating to Photoshop but have not been

successful(Coffaney 7). These laws would require, if ever passed, to disclose somewhere near

the photo that it was altered in some way.

Corporations are not the only people that have the power to change the outcome of a

scenario with photos. Due to no laws against Photoshop currently:

U.S laws do not explicitly regulate Photoshop, the software may be used to

violate existing laws. For instance, a liable case can be made if a digitally

altered image is used to violate existing laws. Further, in our legal system, any

forensic evidence that is altered by any prosecutors through the use of graphics

software would be grounds for a mistrial if not a perjury case. Defense lawyers

also may use Photoshop improperly to exonerate their clients. (Lawrence)

Being able to get out of a court case with the help of Photoshop is one of the many reasons that

there should be an implementation of some laws. But how far would these laws extend? Artists

and general photographers love to edit photos to super unrealistic levels in order to capture their

ideas; would they have to follow the same guidelines? Should they be entitled to some sort of

secrecy?

Editing can be used to change almost any aspect of a photograph from basic retouching to

building a photo from scratch, which can be abused, so a few different organizations used basic

recoloring to create more natural looking photos. For many years photographers have recolored

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photos to enhance its appearance, and change a viewers emotional response to it e.g. dark

colors may suggest sadness(Huang et al. 1). This style of editing has worked for many years. In

some cases, like the writers Huang, Zhang, Martin, and Hu of Learning Natural Colors For

Image Recoloring, have been able to create a number based system to determine the best

recoloring for a photograph. The concept of the best recolored photograph can be very

subjective. It seems like the best option to avoid over editing, at least for large corporations like

newspapers.

If recoloring is the best option and laws are implemented where does it leave artists?

Would photographers, designers and artists in general still have the artistic freedom and secrecy?

Artists still want to be able to use these programs to create surreal art pieces. There would be

strong opposition to potential laws from the artistic community. Lastly, It is important to keep in

mind the first amendment and how these laws could affect free speech. There are a lot of first

amendment supporters that would possibly be opposed any implementation of laws. What if laws

are implemented limiting editing to a basic recoloring? What are the edits that make a photo

more appealing?

Part 4: Findings and Analysis

How do different edits/filters on photos affect how appealing a photos is to the viewer?

To answer this question a Google Forms survey received results from Animas High School

students and r/SampleSize on Reddit.com totaling 94 responses over a five day span. This survey

was created with the intention of finding out if people have a preference for photos that are

edited differently in order to give a statistical information for future editing.

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Methods:

Four different photos were selected for this survey. The photos selected were landscapes

and portraits. Each photo was edited using Adobe Lightroom software. All four photos were

taken and edited in RAW format for more freedom with adjustments. Each photo was imported

into Lightroom and would first receive an Exposure adjustment of +.50 then it was exported to

the desktop. The same photo would then receive a -.50 exposure adjustment and then it was

exported again. Exposure was then set to 0 and the process was repeated for Warmth (+/-650),

Saturation (+/- 50), and Contrast (+/-50).

Once all of the photos were exported, each pair of photos (i.e. both images edited

saturation) are imported into Adobe Photoshop on a canvas large enough to fit both photos

horizontally next to each other. Once placed side by side, the photos are saved as one image file

to be implemented into the survey. This process was continued for all of the other edited photos.

Each of the images resolution is lowered to at least 1600x1600 for easy online viewing without

a long wait load. This was achieved through Adobe Photoshops image processor or most image

viewers such as Apples Viewer program.

This survey was created using Googles Forms online application. To begin we titled the

survey: Which photos are more appealing than others? We used a white background template to

avoid any additional variables. We split the survey so that each of the pages after the initial info

page only contained one type of edit so people knew what was changed. The order of the pages

went: general info, contrast, saturation, exposure, and warmth.

The first page asked two questions to gather information on who is taking the survey like

age and gender. Each of the following pages had a headline specifying how the photos were

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edited for that page: The following images have a contrast adjustment. After the page is specified

each photo pair is presented with the question: Which photo is more appealing? Along with a

multiple choice box offering the options: Left, Equally appealing or looks the same, and right.

Followed by the multiple choice is a comment box to describe why they selected one of the three

options. All data was then collected into a spreadsheet for analysis.

Strengths and Weakness:

This survey was conducted in a manner that initially was thought to have allowed for

good solidified answers. Through the use of a white background, the study could present the

photos in a way that is un-distracting for the viewer. The question remained the same and each

page specified the edits for the images it presented. With all these precautions there was most

likely no factors influencing the participants answer other than their surroundings. In a perfect

scenario, participants would be placed in a room empty of distractions to take the survey.

Another option to consider that was not done in this survey was, adding an additional

photo to each of the pairs showing the original unedited photo to see if participants prefer the

natural look. Along with an additional image, it is important to consider that each of the pairs

was edited in only one way. If the survey was to be conducted again it may be important to run

tests with multiple edits combined on every image. This idea is very important because the

individual edits may be more appealing individually but may not achieve the same effect

together. This survey only had 94 participants, predominantly from Animas High School which

is located in a rural area. What if the sample size was larger and polled from massive cities like

Los Angeles? With these small imperfections, my data can be conclusive but on an individual

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edit level. For a definitive answer consider running the survey after adjusting for the weakness

discussed here.

Findings:

Even though the answers are not conclusive on a broad level it is interesting to explain

different statistics found within the survey on an individual edit level. The statistics are inclusive

because of the weakness in the survey which will be discussed below in the coming pages.

Summary of original research:

Survey of 94 people.

Figure 1: Survey of 94 people.

Age: Gender:

12-17: 60.6% Male: 44.7%

18-24: 18.1% Female: 53.2%

25-34: 14.9% Other: 2.1%

35-44: 4.3%

45-54: 2.1% Saturation:

74.35% tend to prefer higher saturation while

Contrast: 13.5% prefer less saturation.

58.3% tend to prefer higher contrast while

10.1% prefer less contrast. Warmth:

52.1% tend to prefer higher warmth in photos

Exposure: while 30.4% prefer less warmth.

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 27.5% tend to prefer higher exposure while

64.1% prefer less exposure.

The results of this survey are as expected. Looking through the research it appears that

almost everyone prefers a lower exposure (64.1%), higher contrast (58.3%), and saturation

(76.3%), but when it comes to warmth many people are on both sides. As a percentage (52.12%)

tend to prefer higher warmth in photos while (30.4%) prefer less. Overall people are unanimous

about which edits are the best but warmth seems to be more based on the photo and the artistic

choice.

In order to get a definite answer on whether or not edits fully do affect the appearance of

photos it is important to do further testing. With the current results from the survey it is possible

to conclude that people prefer Saturation, Contrast and Warmth (52.12%) to be higher; with

exposure levels lower. This conclusion is with each edit done individually for a proper

conclusion it would make sense to combine edits in another survey.

Part 5: Conclusion

Photography as a whole has developed and escalated to be today's social media partner.

Edits in the news, magazines, and on social media in general, have an effect on how appealing a

photo is. Anything from just general color editing to heavily changing a photo in photoshop. It

has become clear that photography is the act of taking the photos AND the editing afterwards to

go with it. At this point, it is apparent that there is too much editing being done to photographs,

from over saturation to physically altering, like adding an additional rocket to a photo. What

should be the limit to this editing? Who should enforce limitations? Editing has changed from

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just basic natural looking adjustment and transferred to a problem where people are beginning to

display false photos as truth. As Europe begins to try to implement laws against photography it

seems reasonable to consider the same within the United States. I believe that adding some sort

of law against this editing could be as simple as requiring any source to display some sort of

disclaimer to go with their photo when it is posted. Or even requiring news organizations or

corporations to show the original photos as well. Implementing laws this way still allows for

editing to still happen and not limit the first amendment but it is also more obvious when over

editing is happening. Of course, there would need to be an exclusion for artists to allow for

continued artistic freedom. With or without any laws photography is a part of our lives and we

need to find some way to use it appropriately.

As photography shows up more and more in everyone's lives, especially with our current

and future generations, we have to keep in mind: What's the point? Families are together at the

table, but are in their own worlds staring at another person's life, who in turn is trying to validate

their own experiences. Through validating these experiences people want to be able to post the

most appealing photo possible; as we live in the market of trying to be on top. This market to be

on top with the best photography is a very contradictory genre letting many express themselves

in their own way. Thats the beauty of the new social media era. We post photos to be on top but

we have the freedom to express how we get there.

The goal of the survey was to find the best edits for photos of any genre to allow people

to express themselves and create the most appealing photos. The results showed that people

prefer Saturation, Contrast, and Warmth to be higher, while exposure levels are lower. Though

we can not fully trust these answers yet we will certainly in the future, with further research.

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Artists and graphic designers can begin to use these results as suggestions for their own work to

possibly increase appeal. Even though the results can only really be used as suggestion, further

research will hopefully change editting to be more instructional.

Although, we found that the individual edits can change the viewpoint of many peoples

photos there is still room for more research. It is important that the research is continued to find

out the significance of combining two or more different types of edits into one photo. It may also

be worthwhile to research the photo adjustment ramifications as time goes on without any sort of

restrictions in place.

Yes, editing a photograph has the potential to increase its appeal. Editing can be taken to

a more advanced level now with technology, the pressures of social media, and the media

working to change the world. Change can be good but there should be some concern for future

photo misrepresentation in the media and many more places. With the already large amount of

misrepresentation it is possible for the implementation of laws. In the end, photography can be

edited in a way to become more appealing but, it is important to understand what is to much and

what the implications are.

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 Appendix 1:

Figure 1:Anti-War Propaganda Photoshopped (Coffaney 8)

Figure 2: Syrian War Propaganda (Coffaney 10)

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 Appendix 2:

Figure 1: Page 1 of Survey

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Figure 2: Page 2 of Survey

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Figure 3: Page 3 of Survey

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Figure 4: Page 4 of Survey

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Figure 5: Page 5 of Survey

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 Appendix 3:

Figure 6: Survey results of 94 different

responses

Age: Gender:

12-17: 60.6% Male: 44.7%

18-24: 18.1% Female: 53.2%

25-34: 14.9% Other: 2.1%

35-44: 4.3%

45-54: 2.1% Saturation:

Image one: 60.9% prefer higher saturation

21.7% don't notice a difference

Contrast: 17.4% prefer less saturation.

Image one: 63.8% prefer higher contrast

29.8% don't notice a difference Image two: 83.9% prefer higher saturation

6.4% prefer less contrast. 8.6% don't notice a difference

7.5% prefer less saturation.

Image two: 57.4% prefer higher contrast

33% don't notice a difference Image three: 76.3% prefer higher saturation

9.6% prefer less contrast. 9.7% don't notice a difference

14% prefer less saturation.

Image three: 68.1% prefer higher contrast

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19.1% don't notice a difference Image four: 76.3% prefer higher saturation

12.8% prefer less contrast. 8.6% don't notice a difference

15.1% prefer less saturation.

Image four: 51.1% prefer higher contrast

37.2% don't notice a difference 74.35% tend to prefer higher saturation

11.7% prefer less contrast. while 13.5% prefer less saturation.

58.3% tend to prefer higher contrast while Warmth:

10.13% prefer less contrast. Image one: 46.8% prefer higher warmth

8.5% don't notice a difference

44.7% prefer less warmth.

Exposure:

Image one: 10.8% prefer higher exposure Image two: 59.6% prefer higher warmth

3.2% don't notice a difference 12.8% don't notice a difference

86% prefer less exposure. 27.7% prefer less warmth.

Image two: 33.3% prefer higher exposure Image three: 50% prefer higher warmth

10.8% don't notice a difference 29.8% don't notice a difference

55.9% prefer less exposure. 20.2% prefer less warmth.

Image three: 21.5% prefer higher exposure Image four: 52.1% prefer higher warmth

10.8% don't notice a difference 18.1% don't notice a difference

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67.7% prefer less exposure. 29.1% prefer less warmth.

Image four: 44.7% prefer higher exposure 52.12% tend to prefer higher warmth in

8.5% don't notice a difference photos while 30.4% prefer less warmth.

46.8% prefer less exposure.

27.58% tend to prefer higher exposure

while 64.1% prefer less exposure.

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