Photo retouching that wanders the border of truth.
Its history goes back to just after the birth of the world's first photograph in 1814. Let's look back on the trajectory of about 200 years with major breakthroughs and secret stories!
"Camera" means "room" in Latin and Italian. The wise men of the east and west glanced at the mysterious natural phenomenon that "when you make a small hole in the camera obscura (dark room), the landscape is reflected upside down on the wall", and from there you can draw a picture with the camera obscura. I started drawing, and the camera was born from that.
Mozi and Aristotle had noticed the phenomenon of upside down images long ago, but it became widespread in the West from the Latin translation of the book of optics, the main work of the father of optics, Ibn al-Hysam. It seems that Leonardo da Vinci was the first to be influenced by this book and used it for painting, and in 1490 he instructed his disciples to use it for painting. The 1502 manuscript also wrote:
When you make a hole in a building or room facing the landscape in the sunlight, the image is projected upside down on the wall through the opening. If you hit this image on white paper, you can catch the natural shape and light, though it is somewhat small and up and down. Hold a thin paper near the hole and look at it from behind. Because the image that bounces the light looks as it should be. (From "History of Photography" by Joseph Maria Olbrich)
Da Vinci boiled and dissected a person's eyeballs, and while doing various things, he found out that "the statue seems to come upside down like a camera obscura". .. However, it seems that he did not know how to be recognized by the brain upside down from there. It seems to be the mirror writing Da Vinci ...
The light coming in through the hole is very weak, but if you put a lens on it, the image will be clearer. It was Gerolamo Cardano of Italy who noticed this and announced it in 1550. Eventually, the Neapolitan physicist Giambattista della Porta wrote a book "Natural Magic" that introduced this as a painting method in 1558 and became a bestseller, and the journey to draw a picture while carrying a box of camera obscura became a little boom. I did.
The first photograph of mankind was taken in 1824 by the Frenchman Nicéphore Niepce. The light coming in through a small hole is burned directly onto the board over 8 hours, and only one photo is finished. It cannot be duplicated. After his death, Louis Daguerre, also a Frenchman, took over his will and shortened it to a minute or two with a silver plate.
Eventually, the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot, who could be called Daguerre's nemesis, appeared, inventing the negative and positive, and making it possible to reprint. Calvert Richard Jones, who was taught how to use it, triumphantly set out on a long journey through the Mediterranean, taking pictures of five monks when he stayed on Malta for four months, and only one monk floating behind him. Filled with ink (the photo at the beginning), it became the world's first retouched photo. Let's take a look at the baked photo.
Time passed and it was the 1860s. In the new world across the sea, Americans fought a fierce battle in the Civil War (1861-65), which decided the sex of the country. People who die like bugs. The bereaved family who mourns. What appeared there was William Mumler, who revives the deceased from the Underworld. He is the first fake photographer of mankind.
Mumler, a lonely Boston woodblock photographer, had a dead sister in a portrait taken in the early 1860s (famous as the world's first psychic photograph), and while sitting down and showing it to the surroundings, he said, "Your spirits. "I don't have the talent of Itako," he said, and gradually became a psychic photographer. The business of taking commemorative photos with dead people is a big hit in NY.
Mumler who stays in the darkroom from morning till night and burns the people of the world. Photographers who were so prosperous and jealous tried many times to go to Mumler's darkroom to get evidence of fraud (hopefully stealing technology), but no solid evidence was given. .. I didn't know where popularity would decline.
However, Mumler gradually got on the chart and extended his hand to mail-order sales of "sexual intercourse photos with the deceased", and he got stuck. This was an epoch-making service that even modern people couldn't think of, telling us the characteristics of the deceased who we wanted to meet, and sending money to make a photo of a friendship in life. When I baked it and delivered it, the rumors that "something was wrong" spread rapidly because the wife was still alive. He was accused of fraud and theft and was imprisoned in NY prison "The Tombs (graveyard)" and his life went dark. At the end, Mumler died without a sentence.
His photo-correction technique is said to be double-exposure, but his specific processing technique remained a mystery until the end, so he was not guilty of the trial. Of course, after the social credibility fell to the ground, he returned to Boston and took ordinary pictures. But here is a rare thing left at this time.
This is also probably called double exposure, but ... by the way? President Lincoln is the soul king of the spirit world, famous for his assassination dreams. It's up to you to believe it.
"Tall-Tale photo" was a little late and popular after taking a two-shot with a dead person. It seems that humankind has not made much progress 100 years ago and now. There are also huge cabbage, huge cones, and overwhelmingly superior battle scenes, and it seems that some of the simple people at that time believed in it.
In this era, the following tools were used.
・ Paint
·eraser
・ Brush
·airbrush
・ Loupe
・ Hands that do not shake
Speaking of photo editing in the analog film era, this is one that always comes out. The photo taken by Dennis Stock is edited by the darkroom editing master Pablo Inilio (a darkroom engineer at Magnum NY Headquarters), and the instructions are a list of numbers (exposure time), which is like a code. It's a big difference from me, who was developing the film while counting the number of "I-chi-ni-i". What people a little over 100 years ago baked for 8 hours is now in frame-second increments!
At that time, photo editing was a daunting task of baking many photos with various exposure times and comparing each color.
Time has passed 30 years ago. I wonder if everyone who heard "30 years ago" is using it every day. Yes, Photoshop. This was born in 1988. The photo above is Mrs. Jennifer, taken by Photoshop developer Thomas Knoll's younger brother John Knoll when he traveled to Tahiti. After this, she proposed and still lives in harmony.
The fathers of the two Photoshop developers are professors at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I love photography and computers, and I had an Apple II Plus in my house and a darkroom in the basement. Eventually, Thomas became a researcher at the University of Michigan, and John began to do special effects with George Lucas's "Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)" north of San Francisco (my wife is a colleague). Then, the photo editing software that my brother Thomas wrote in one hand caught my brother John's eyes, and it was almost the same as the Pixar used in the company! Astonished. I made various orders to my brother and completed it, and started business in Silicon Valley.
However, although the app has been created, it is difficult to obtain the essential digital photos. Machines that process digitally were really valuable at that time. When I went to Apple's Advanced Technology Laboratory where my friend was working, I had him use a flatbed scanner to digitally process this memorable photo, and it was a big hit when I used it in a demo. The contract was decided and officially released in the eyes of Adobe. It's a goddess of luck.
The following video reproduces the pattern when demoed to Adobe, but from here I crop it with a magic wand and paste it next to it to make a clone of Jennifer. You can flip the mountain behind to make it smaller and thinner to give it a sense of perspective. Change the color of the lake from blue to green. There is a simple joy in each operation.
It was released by Adobe in 1990, but at the beginning, it seems that it was thought that "it would be fine if 500 bottles were sold a month". Film retouching was a common sense in the publishing world, so no one noticed its value. It seems that it cost 1000 dollars to output one photo even if the photo was processed. I think people in the old days were very rich ... but before Photoshop came out, it was much more expensive! In the video above, my brother Noor says:
The same could be done with other systems, but it was extremely expensive. I had to go to the prepress house (printing plate studio), and when I went there was a red timer, and it was a ceremony to rent in time. Once I got a quote for Cytec's system, it was $ 900 an hour. What's more, all the operations were operators, and I was standing behind the person and giving instructions. It was just amazing that Photoshop was on my machine and I could control it myself.
Well, from now on, it's the same era, so it's omitted. Computers have exploded and become the world of Photoshop. However, it was an era when I was still a professional.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Kevin Systrom (@kevin) on
It was after the filter that photo editing really survived to the "many others" below. Instagram was born with a little nostalgic feeling, and it spread on the wave of the smartphone sharing era, but that retro world view is based on the experience of Instagram co-founder Kevin Sistrom studying abroad in Florence.
When he was in his second year of college, Sistrom thought about studying abroad, but he wasn't good at languages, so he chose the Italian language, which was said to be the "easiest", and went to study photography. Yeah, I saved up and got the best cameras and lenses, but Professor Charlie suddenly picked me up and said, "You didn't come to take the perfect photo. This is banned for three months." I was given a toy camera with two bundles and three sentences of Holga. The body and lens are made of plastic. If you are not good at it, light will come into the box from the side. I thought, but when I was told, "You learn infection," and when I took a walk, this was a strange texture. The photos I took are blurry and monochrome. Professor Charlie taught me how to add color to it.
The beauty of the simple light is unforgettable, and Instagram was reproduced later. Instagram photos are square because Holga is square. The photo above is from the beginning, but you can see the atmosphere.
When Talbot went on his honeymoon in Italy, he wanted to draw a beautiful landscape with the camera obscura, but he couldn't draw it well, and he developed the reprint technique long after. There may be something that stirs people's hearts on their trip to Italy.
By the way, it was this conversation with his wife Nicole that gave birth to the Instagram filter. Looking at Instagram's predecessor, Burbn (which was too complicated to use and unpopular), he said:
D: I never post a photo. Things that can't be taken well like Greg (a common friend).
Shi: Yeah, Greg is all filtered.
Two: (Look at her husband's face seriously) Then make a filter.
Shi: Oh, that's right. I need a filter.
So, I was just traveling to Mexico, so I connected to the internet with a dial-up connection of B & B, checked how to write the filter code, and added it to the app on the spot ... This was Instagram's first filter. .. By the way, the name is "X-Pro 2". Even the below average photos taken with a mobile camera in 2010 have the effect of getting out of a picture book, and are still in the top 10 popular filters. I feel love.
How was the 200 years of photo retouching? Actually, the story of AI should come after this, but let's end it when we feel love.
Adobe runs alone in the middle of creative tools.The ambitions of the AI "Adobe Sensei" they created were surprisingly field-oriented.
What is creative? I was made to think again. This special feature on AI (artificial intelligence) began with an introductory article, "What is AI?" Strange ...
https://www.gizmodo.jp/2018/03/what-is-adobe-sensei.html
Sources: New Yorker, CNBC, New Yorker, Masters of Scale
