Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

This is hilarious; Iran has apparently photoshopped an extra missile into the photograph they released to the press about their recent missile test:

As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo was used on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.

This is the image that ran in the papers and has recently been retracted for being “apparently digitally altered” by Iranian state media. Agence France-Presse said the fourth missile “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test.” Here I’ve blown up a portion of the smoke so you can clearly see the ’shop:

For simple photo editing tasks, Paint NET is a free Microsoft .NET powered open-source alternative. Installing Paint NET is as easy as downloading a small executable from their site, the Microsoft NET 2.0 runtime, and running them.

If you wonder how useful this is, let’s walk you through several common tasks.

1) Resizing a screenshot for your blog post:

In this case, ironically it will a meta-screenshot operation, because we’ll be taking a screenshot to illustrate taking a screenshot… you get the picture. It’s as easy as using the rectangle tool, and image, resize:

2) Cutting someone out of a complex picture:

Everyone’s always needing to mask out a person for one reason or another–how well does Paint compare in this regard? It turns out pretty well–the masking tools seem to work better than in Adobe Photoshop:

There are a few downsides to Paint dot NET:

• It doesn’t have all the fancy features that Photoshop has
• It has a limited set of FX plugins (but they’re free)
• It uses more CPU than Photoshop, and feels slightly less responsive
• It’s idea of multiple documents is to have them selectable in a single window
• It’s brush tools are relatively useless because they don’t have varying opacity and flow

Not everything’s bad, though–the source code is open, so you can go fix it up yourself and submit patches to make it better. In another year or two, it will probably be a lot more useful.

After pressure from bloggers who noticed that an image showing Beirut after an airstrike had cloned smoke and other features, Reuters said, “photo editing software was improperly used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvience.” Here’s what the image looked like, as published by Reuters:

Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut’s suburbs August 5, 2006. Many buildings were flattened during the attack. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj

Then, Reuters issued an image kill for the photo:

Reuters has suspended a photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to a photograph showing smoke billowing from buildings following an air strike on Beirut. Reuters takes such matters extremely seriously as it is strictly against company editorial policy to alter pictures.

The new, correct photo, is this one:

ATTENTION EDITORS: THIS IS A CORRECTED FILE OF LBN20. REUTERS HAS ISSUED A KILL OF THE PREVIOUS VERSION. Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut’s suburbs August 5, 2006. Picture taken August 5, 2006. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj (LEBANON)

You can check out Yahoo for more photos posted by Adnan Hajj yourself; I don’t immediately see any other doctored photos.