No More Bad School Pictures
Now, this is either really cool or really creepy. Maybe both. The software company Reallusion has released a new software product called “FaceFilter”. It uses some fairly sophisticated visual tricks to fix photographs of people with less-than-perfect expressions. For instance, it can turn a frown into a smile, or open a squinted eye. And it can do it automatically, so the school photographer can run all his or her photos through to make sure everyone has a pleasant expression on their face, no matter how they looked on photo day.
How far do we want to let it go, though? To quote the product description, “By analyzing thousands of faces, FaceFilter has successfully extracted a formula for creating attractive faces.” Using FaceFilter allows you to “make faces look younger, slimmer, friendlier, smarter, kinder, confident, cooler or sexier, etc.”
So here’s an ethical question waiting for yearbook photographers in a year or so. There’s always been some ability to touch up pictures - remove blemishes, fix hair, and even replace hair with digital software. However, software like this lets you start messing around with the actual structure of the face. (”Please adjust the picture to make it look like I weigh 20 pounds less.”)
And hey, what about the teachers? Don’t we all want to look ten years younger? We’ll all want our turn, too!
You can check out the software at www.reallusion.com/facefilter/introduction.asp.