back to article Not smiling for the camera? Adobe's Creative Cloud suite can fix that

Adobe is updating its Creative Cloud suite to version 2015.5 and including a new Photoshop feature which modifies facial expressions after the event. Called Face Aware Liquify, the feature extends the existing shape-bending Liquify filter with face recognition and tools to tweak eyes, nose, mouth (including smile control), …

  1. M7S

    The spirit of Zelig lives

    and will now be appearing in all your family photos..

    Technically the camera still isn't lying, its the post production, but this will increasingly devalue photographs as a source of future historical record

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: The spirit of Zelig lives

      >this will increasingly devalue photographs as a source of future historical record

      Patented in 1947, may I present this photo-retouching table?

      It vibrates the photographic negative that the artist is working on, so that brush strokes are rendered invisible:

      http://petapixel.com/2014/10/19/adams-retouching-machine-helped-old-school-photoshoppers-retouch-negatives-hand/

      Before we used the term 'photoshopped', we would talk of people being 'airbrushed' from history.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The spirit of Zelig lives

        True, but it was a fairly more complex technique requiring specific skills applied only to a smaller subset of photos. Digital editing made it so easy quite a lot of photos are now heavily retouched. And the worst thing is they look more and more quite the same.

        1. Deltics

          Re: The spirit of Zelig lives

          True - once upon a time it was harder, so it was only done on a very few photos where the "reasons" were compelling. i.e. likely to be historically significant.

          These days almost every snap that is chatted, instagrammed, facebooked or flickr'd is subject to some digital tinkerage. But those are hardly historically significant, so does it really matter ?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The spirit of Zelig lives

            No, it wasn't because "historically significant". It was mostly made in portraits or other "official" photos, in advertising, or for propaganda reasons (after all, all forms of propaganda). The skills and the costs of the processes limited its use.

            You would have seen far less editing in many other photos - even of very high historical significance. Often made without later access to costly "enhancing" techniques.

            To be clear, I have no issues with techniques that could surface details which actually are in an image but would not be visible due to the medium limitations (i.e. limited dynamic range). The issue is when you almost re-create the image digitally, turn it into something that never existed, without telling the viewer. It's just another form of propaganda. Personal propaganda, commercial propaganda, still propaganda.

            And could you know, when you take a photo, what will its historical significance be in the years to come?

            Photos never told the full truth - the very act of framing (or cropping) lets you decide what's in and what's out, and thereby what the image tells. But now you can broadly modify even what's in. We're back to a form of "pictorialism", just subtler.

  2. Marcus Fil
    Happy

    We're here to see Koothrappali, not kill Batman

    Personally I use PS to have everyone be in the group photo they thought they were in, not one of the three I actually took in which at least one person was either blinking, yawning, looking down or impersonating a frightened rabbit. The thought of 'JOKERizing' them after the fact is probably a retouching step too far. This comment may have been tampered with.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bah!

    More features to allow those who haven't mastered camera craft to do some turd-polishing on the computer after the event, and call themselves photographers.

    1. Hollerithevo

      Re: Bah!

      Sometimes I am handed such loveliness and asked anxiously 'can you do anything about this?' So I have to take the waiter out, straighten the toupee, take the wineglass out of someone's hand, or the cigarette out of another's, fix the vacant gaze, take off the yellow or blue cast, sharpen and brighten.

      It's called making the top brass look good, when they thought their smartphone was all the camera they needed.

    2. BebopWeBop

      Re: Bah!

      Well to use photoshop to do this actually requires a lot of skill. But Cartier Breton they are not - and it shows

  4. earl grey
    FAIL

    seriously, if i'm smiling

    anyone who knows me knows that isn't me... so what's the poing?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: seriously, if i'm smiling

      The "Pong" is what you leave behind you after you move on...

  5. ma1010
    Trollface

    It's interesting how things change back to where they were before

    Once upon a time, the way to preserve the image of a person was to have a portrait painted. Portrait painters often, shall we say, "improved" the subject. It was fairly rare that anyone really wanted "warts and all" in their portrait. Then cameras mostly ended that, capturing what was really there. Now we're heading back to the idea of editing reality. I suppose someday they may even be able to take a picture with me in it and transform my image from a pissed-off Satan with a bad hangover to a smiling, grandfatherly-looking sort of fellow.

    1. Alistair
      Coat

      Re: It's interesting how things change back to where they were before

      "Now we're heading back to the idea of editing reality"

      Umm. Heading back?

      You really haven't been paying much attention to mainstream media/social media have you?. Its just become a cultural phenomenon now.

  6. ma1010
    Childcatcher

    Airbrushes worked fairly well

    On second thought, there was a fair amount of history revision even in the days before Photoshop.

    I recall that about 50 years ago, my mother knew a person who worked as a photo retoucher for a company that specialized in school portrait photos. I remember she told one story of a girl who frantically called the company and begged them to make the pack of cigarettes she'd inadvertently left in her pocket disappear from her high school photo "Because mom will KILL me!" (Told you it was a long time ago. Take a packet of fags to school today and they'll immolate you, of course. Back then they actually had smoking areas in high schools, believe it or not. "When I were a lad...")

    The retoucher assured the girl it would be no problem and was as good as her word.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Gimp

      Re: Airbrushes worked fairly well

      Indeed, one can help a lot.

      Ah, that odd half hour spent with the GIMP touching up a friend's daughter...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Airbrushes worked fairly well

        Ah, that odd half hour spent with the GIMP touching up a friend's daughter...

        I'm not really sure you should admit to that in public :).

  7. Eddy Ito
    Black Helicopters

    Hmm, how to use that on the facial recognition databases. I'm sure there's money in that somewhere.

  8. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    Permissions

    "This means that famous cartoon characters could present at your company event, for example, subject to the necessary permissions."

    Permissions, sphermissions. I'm Batman at all company webinars from now on.

    1. Robert Moore

      Re: Permissions

      > Permissions, sphermissions. I'm Batman at all company webinars from now on.

      You don't need photoshop for that. Just go in costume. I personally prefer the 1960's Adam West Batman costume.

      It is really fun to wear it funerals. When people complain about your inappropriate attire, tell them the deceased requested you wear it.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OK, so there is still innovation happening..

    Interesting concepts, although I must admit that the ability to adjust someone's expression crosses for me the boundaries of creepy quite considerably.

    Now, if they could just innovate themselves out of the Cloud and be a bit more secure..

  10. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    So we can finally make Yuri Malenchenko smile?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/10/malenchenko_homecoming/

  11. Tom 7

    The camera never

    tells the truth anymore.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: The camera never

      It never really did.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice software, poisonous ecosystem. There has been liquify-type filters on photo-manipulation apps since forever, so there's noting new here really....just presumably some sort of edge/face -shape detection so you don't mongify your target while you're smearing pixels about.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's just simplifying the retouch for the less experienced "retouchers". Automate it.

  13. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Coat

    Still in the cloud only?

    Then count me out. I would have happily paid for a good piece of software (which PS certainly is) to own (OK, own the license), and upgrade when I feel the need. I do not like walking around, somewhere out of internet reach (try quite large bits of Uganda), and have my software tell me:

    "Sorry, I can't do that for you Dave."

    Because it cannot reach the Adobe servers to verify I have paid my subscription

    ...

    And I am not even called Dave.

    ...

    Mine is the one with the developer stains in it

    Mutters retreating to the proper dark room to develop some proper prints

  14. J 3
    Meh

    Mouth...

    OK, mouth "control" to get more smile. Hm. Assuming it works, a smile that only involves the mouth (or will this also automatically change the rest of the face, specially eyes?) will not look creepy and/or forced at all. Sure not. Uh huh.

  15. TheMole

    Just think of how much fun Stalin could have had.....

    No self respecting dictatorship can do without this must-have tool.

    Look the people love me !

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