Above Left: Cover of The Economist; Right: Original, unedited Reuters photo.

The Economist is under fire by the New York Times for editing a photo for their recent cover. To their credit, The Economist fully admitted to editing the photo and here’s what they had to say about it…

I was editing the paper the week we ran the image of President Obama with the oil rig in the background. Yes, Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the image (Admiral Allen was removed by the crop). We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers.

We often edit the photos we use on our covers, for one of two reasons. Sometimes — as with a cover we ran on March 27 on U.S. health care, with Mr. Obama with a bandage round his head — it’s an obvious joke. Sometimes — as with an image of President Chavez on May 15 on which we darkened the background, or with our “It’s time” cover … endorsing Mr. Obama, from which the background was removed altogether — it is to bring out the central character. We don’t edit photos in order to mislead.

I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. “The damage beyond the spill” referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.

I was going to write up a lengthy post stating my opinion on this, but instead I think I will just go with: “What Stephen Colbert said…”

A few days ago I posted a demo video featuring the new content aware filter that will be available in Photoshop Cs5. Well, the spoof videos are beginning to roll out now, and this one fills me with LOLz…

Above: A spoof of  David Cameron’s campaign billboard from mydavidcameron.com.

I briefly mentioned British politician David Cameron in a previous post about British Politician Caroline Dinenage’s billboard Photoshoppery. It seems Cameron was also accused of airbrushing himself to look younger for his political billboard, and those cheeky Brits have taken to the internet to voice their concerns (and point copious fun) at him. MyDavidCameron.com took Cameron’s original billboard and ran with (digital scissors all over) it.

Gotta love those Brits!

Above: Two of Spy magazine’s infamous “spoof” covers – Hillary Clinton as a dominatrix (from 1993) and George Bush Sr. with “cutout hair” (from 1989).

Spy magazine was a publication known for the manipulated images which often graced the covers, and the satirical wit which always occupied the inside pages. Spy ran monthly from October 1986 to May 1993, and now founder Kurt Andersen has put all 71 covers online for your viewing pleasure. (The only drawback is the small images can’t be enlarged.)

Anderson says of Spy’s manipulated covers…

Realistic digital manipulation of existing pictures was newly possible back  then, but difficult and incredibly expensive — the first primitive Photoshop software didn’t appear until 1990 — and probably the best of our giant-computer-generated covers were Ted Kennedy being splashed with water (November 1987), Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin brawling for “Feuds” (November 1988), the pregnant naked Bruce Willis (July 1991), Hillary Clinton as a dominatrix (January 1993) and Bill Clinton as Pinocchio (May 1993).

[view the gallery of SPY covers]

Oh Spy, how I miss thee…

It appears that a vandal is running amok in Berlin slapping stickers on subway posters that feature heavily airbrushed photos of Britney Spears, Leona Lewis and Christina Aguilera. The stickers make the subway posters resemble the user interface of Photoshop. Brilliant! You can see more photos of the vandal’s work on Flickr and Gizmodo. [via Feministe, Jezebel]