
Body by Victoria (2009) - xanthine
http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/322-Body-By-Victoria.html
======
cge
Error Level Analysis
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_level_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_level_analysis))
is controversial, and some people would argue that its usual application is
pseudoscientific.

If you're interested in ELA, I'd encourage you to try it on some control
photographs you've taken yourself, and know are unmodified, particularly
photographs that have objects with considerably different textures, like
textured fabrics.

Trying it on lossless screenshots can also be amusing.

~~~
wheybags
> and know are unmodified

Cameras these days do all sorts of digital processing themselves, especially
on phones, which might make this a little hard

~~~
fredophile
If it finds problems in images directly out of the camera that makes its use
for identifying image manipulation suspect.

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1017726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1017726)

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cseleborg
The apparently shoddy job (handbag, tiles, etc) suggests to me that whitening
dark skin tones, enlarging busts and thinning arms and legs is so banal it's
not even worth paying a skilled artist for.

To me, this example serves as a stark reminder that women's bodies are _still_
expected to conform to absurd norms in the media. FFS, can we get past this
already!?

~~~
Ghjklov
People respond to incentives. They must've figured out at some point that
using attractive models for advertising sells better to normal, average
people. Not all models you have on hand will be attractive enough for the
magazine, so they can supplement with Photoshop. Even if you regulate away
Photoshop usage in the marketing/advertising industry, they'd just have to
start only hiring super attractive models right? Maybe we could force
companies to use average looking models? I don't know, but there's a lot of
ways you could approach it. The simplest but most difficult solution is to
change people. I know the first reaction is to think that "Wow, it's all those
pervert men's fault for these absurd norms and expectations of women!" but
then I remember these are advertisements targeted to women. What to do?

~~~
pjc50
French solution: [https://www.france24.com/en/20170930-france-fashion-
photosho...](https://www.france24.com/en/20170930-france-fashion-photoshop-
law-models-skinny) / [https://www.france24.com/en/20170506-france-health-
skinny-ai...](https://www.france24.com/en/20170506-france-health-skinny-
airbrushed-models-fashion-anorexia)

(France is still in many ways a more conformist culture than the Anglo-
American one, but this is a good gesture)

~~~
ComputerGuru
Also [https://www.france24.com/en/20170906-french-fashion-
giants-b...](https://www.france24.com/en/20170906-french-fashion-giants-ban-
super-skinny-models-anorexia)

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azalemeth
It's worth re-mentioning that the model in this article had her skin tone
whitened significantly as part of the photoshopping, as well as nipple
removal/bust enhancement/handbag "removal" etc.

Basically, they made her look less black.

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zeristor
It’s a bit grim that no one is using her name; talk about depersonalisation.

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saeranv
What exactly is he performing the PCA on? I assume the image is concatenated
into a 1D vector, so what makes up the matrix that's used to generate the
eigenvectors? RGB values?

~~~
JadeNB
See, for example, slide 17 ff. of
[http://people.ciirc.cvut.cz/~hlavac/TeachPresEn/11ImageProc/...](http://people.ciirc.cvut.cz/~hlavac/TeachPresEn/11ImageProc/15PCA.pdf)
.

~~~
saeranv
I may be getting this wrong, but doesn't that slide show the PCA being done on
multiple images? Each image is 321 x 261, which concats to a 83781 vector.
Then they're repeating that for 32 images producing a 83781 x 32 matrix, which
they then apply the PCA on to get 32 principle components.

When you have only one image, what's making up the columns of the matrix
(assuming rows = 1D image vector)?

~~~
JadeNB
> I may be getting this wrong, but doesn't that slide show the PCA being done
> on multiple images? Each image is 321 x 261, which concats to a 83781
> vector. Then they're repeating that for 32 images producing a 83781 x 32
> matrix, which they then apply the PCA on to get 32 principle components.

Yes, you are right (except that it's 'principal'), and I didn't read my link
carefully. I am a mathematician whose specialty is not a million miles away
from these kind of signal-reconstruction techniques, but far enough away that
I can't give any better answer from personal knowledge. Sorry!

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spiritplumber
This is an excellent "how to catch a photoshop" guide.

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throwaway_pdp09
Not on topic, but the changes to the pics bring out the horror masks. Check
the black skull leering out of the gloom in 2nd pic, the joker's red/green
skull-face of the 4th, the black cheshire cat grin of the last.

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globular-toast
This is interesting when it comes to being able to spot a Photoshop. But this
seems to be about more than that. It seems to be about casting shame on to
Victoria's Secret for using Photoshop. Why is that? They are selling a dress
and want to show it in the best light. Is the author claiming false
advertising? The model is being compensated (probably handsomely) for the use
of her image. She should consider herself lucky that Photoshop exists because
she's clearly not exactly what they want, but close enough.

~~~
galoisgirl
They answered in this FAQ:
[http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/346-Bod...](http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/346-Body-
of-Answers.html)

