President Obama has recently made tech headlines by
asking kids to start creating and making their own educational video games. This is clearly an effort to boost America's extremely low educational rate, and increase US math and science scores to offer more of a competitive advantage against East Asian educational tech centers. But last week, Egypt surprised the world with their amazing Photoshop abilities.
An Egyptian newspaper photoshopped the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was digitally moved in front of President Obama. Though you have to admire their photoshopping skills, specifically using the special crop tool and the magic wand to replace the carpet pattern, I have to wonder who's idea this was and why they deemed it necessary.
When analyzing the two photo's above a few things are very clear. First, that President Mubarak was erased from the photo, then a completely separate photo of Mubarak was added in front of President Obama. We can tell it is a separate image of the Egyptian President for two main reasons: first, in the original photo Mubarak's left hand is further back than his right, and if you place an imaginary horizontal line across the Presidents body, his left arm is higher up than his right arm. But in the second photo, the Presidents hands are on the same horizontal plane, allowing us to conclude that this is a different image of the Egyptian President. Second, if you look at the doctored photo, there is a small space where you can see the red carpet between Mubarak's legs as the two legs of his pants touch as he walks. This space is not in the original photo.
It is important to note that the newspaper used a different image of Mubarak to illustrate that there was a lot of choice and work to doctoring this photo. In a world where image and public opinion means everything to politics, technology is a tool clearly being used in world politics.
Sources: [
Business Insider]
