Get the picture? Time for small talk

Following is Issue 31 of The Sensible Internet Design Letter [ archive | subscribe ].

Get the picture? It's time for small talk

Photoshop's better than any drug to alter perceptions of reality ... video phones struggle to resolve a big head ... and a defining moment under the powdered wig of Webster.

Small talk, mostly on topic:

Photo stop, please

Many TSIDL subscribers already know the Los Angeles Times dismissed photographer Brian Walski this week for using digital imaging software to substantially alter the content of a news photograph from Iraq.

Media pundits in the online-news discussion list perked up at this news. I'm frankly amazed that the debate over digital manipulation of news images remains this lively. To me, the issue is cut and dried: a publisher that distributes photographic images in any context of "news" and "reality" cannot allow manipulation of image content.

Is it a surprise to consumers to learn that a fashion magazine whitens eyes and slims thighs to make models look better? Nope. Is it a shock to realize that the food one prepares in one's own kitchen will never look as good as the heavily pampered, immaculately arranged dishes pictured in Bon Appetit? Nah. Those periodicals intend to portray ideals -- it wasn't that long ago that fashion mags used sleek, stylized illustrations as much as photographs to depict the latest frocks at their best.

But should news organizations use digital tools to move people and objects in event-coverage photos, just to improve the composition or appearance? Absolutely not. It crosses a line.

Maybe news consumers are so jaded that they don't expect any form of "big media" story coverage to be strictly factual, free of bias or manipulation. Maybe in many cases they're right. But news organizations still put forth, still believe in, the expectation that a photograph depicts exactly what was going on in front of that lens, straightforward, less prone to the biases that creep into reporters' prose.

Does this mean all photo illustrations -- conceptual images or those that may be manipulated for effect, with full disclosure to consumers -- are wrong? Nope, again. The keys are sound editorial judgment and full, clear acknowledgment to consumers that what they see is an illustration, not a depiction of any reality.

More on images

Part of the reason I'm so adamant about trying to preserve the credibility of news images is that, once again, this war shows us how powerful they can be.

Sure, you can go to any Internet news site and see action and emotion stills from Iraq. And that's great. But I realized still photography has a long and bright future when I saw how many of the broadcast and cable TV newscasts routinely devote "bumper" segments to narration-free slideshows of still images from the war.

Yep, they're the same networks with all those embedded reporters packing video phones and mobile satellite uplinks. Video galore at their fingertips, and they still put up photographs for impact.

Of course, those video phones have their own problems. Until the Pentagon volunteered him to retreat from the front lines, Geraldo Rivera's Fox News reports belied what seems to be a stubborn weakness of such advanced technologies.

The video phone camera could not keep both his nose and the rest of his face in focus at the same time.

I shouldn't just throw terms out like that

A friend of a friend who saw my chalk talk at New Media World last week wrote to ask if I would define three terms I tend to toss out a lot in this newsletter, on the SI site, and in presentations.

I often refer to the "volume" of a Web index page, of its "signal-to-noise ratio" and "visual order." The terms are related, almost degrees of the same concept. I kind of liked what I wrote in reply to this friend-of-a-friend, so I'll repeat it here:

Volume: Like the volume knob on a radio. In design, turning up the volume means greater visual density, color saturation and more of a sense that a page or piece is "shouting" at you.

Signal-to-noise ratio: Simply the ability to deliver the intended primary message (the main headline, for example) clearly above all other "noise" on the page. A high volume page does not necessarily have a good signal/noise ratio, and vice versa.

Visual order: The ability to use design to guide an intended audience through elements roughly in the order of importance intended by the site's leadership. So if you're presenting six elements on a Web home page, good signal-to-noise ratio means it is obvious which one item is most important. Good visual order means it is also reasonably clear which is No. 2, 3, 4 etc.

And, just as no two people can agree on exactly where to set an audio system's controls for best sound fidelity, I doubt any two designers can look at the same Web page and agree on whether the volume, signal-to-noise ratio and visual order are all quite right.