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Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

mortenhannemose.github.io

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Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#181

Post by jtriangle »

chasing wrote: post #111
twodave wrote: post #49

I was expecting to read some story about criminal exploitation, but this sounds like it's just... completely above-board? As a few other commenters stated, the model hasn't explicitly stated whether she supports the use of the photo or not. Even if she did explicitly come out and say she doesn't like people using it, she doesn't own the rights to it. I'm fine with (and happy for) people going above and beyond to resp…

People who sell photos of their bodies should be allowed to make ethical arguments or have opinions outside the narrow confines of their contracts. Even if those pictures are naked pictures.

The picture is not a naked picture, it is a crop of a photo in which the subject is naked, but cropped in such a way that does not portray any nudity.

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#182

Post by mock-possum »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #50

It's astonishing how a supposedly liberal and tolerant society is so much hateful towards eroticism it considers the Lena pic originating from a PlayBoy magazine to have a "troubled" origin.

So imagine sitting around with your coworkers, and one of your teammates raises his hand and says, "I think we should use this naked picture of a hot white chick as reference imagery."

How does that make you feel? It would sketch me the fuck out.

In all fairness, would I react differently if it was a cute asian dude with a big dick? No, honestly, I would still be sketched out by it, and I like cute asian dudes with big dicks. I just don't feel comfortable indulging my sexual interests in the workplace, and I don't think that's a particularly controversial position. It has nothing to do with 'liberal' or 'tolerant society.'

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#183

Post by jtriangle »

shultays wrote: post #26
matthews2 wrote: post #3

Background: the original Lena picture comes from the Playboy Magazine, and the model doesn't want people to use it. https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/it-s-time-to-retire-...

Huh, I remember reading about her finding it interesting, even attending one image processing conference as a guest, but maybe I misremembering? edit: apparently she changed her mind later

She was championed up until a few years ago as the "Queen of JPEG", and was fairly active in that community.

Rightly so too, it's an image of her, but, more importantly, that image is very difficult to compress efficiently and maintain acceptable quality. There are other images that could have been used, but, an image of her was used, and she enjoyed the celebrity from that until recently.

She is allowed, of course, to change her mind, much as the rest of the world is allowed to consider her past behavior when deciding how they respond to her changing her mind.

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#184

Post by mock-possum »

jacobriis wrote: post #132

Is the problem that the photo is cropped from a woman who is nude or that the woman is beautiful or that a photo of a woman would be used at all? I watched the documentary produced by the campaign Losing Lena ( https://www.facebook.com/codelikeagirlau/videos/985614161797... ) here are the complaints: 1) Female student says high school students made jokes about the photo and made her feel that women were made to be a…

Yeah, all three points are basically the same thing - exclusion / lack of inclusion. They could have chosen any photo, and they picked one that specifically depicted a naked white woman, primarily aimed at sexual gratification for straight men.

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#185

Post by jtriangle »

mock-possum wrote: post #179
thepasswordis wrote: post #87

Can we please just have some things with some soul? This is a cute photo, the model in the photo has said she thinks is cool and kindof funny that it has been used for image research, the story is kindof cute and funny, and it's just...all around wholesome. The people who want to get rid of this stuff are sad. The world does not need to be a soulless, beige, featureless, boring slurry of boring featureless HR spoken…

yeah but think it through - what kind of 'soul' is there in this story, when you really dig down to the bottom of it, eh? Cropped nude pinups aren't really what I'd call 'wholesome' - and the prospect of being in a room full of people working off that reference image doesn't really sound too comfortable to me. Additionally: we all know there's a reason it's a naked white cis girl's butt. Change any of those attribute…

If someone can't look at a very cropped picture of a woman without sexualizing her, they need to evaluate how they think about women. That, and that alone, is the problem here.

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#186

Post by jtriangle »

olalonde wrote: post #39

This is like GitHub renaming master branch to main branch in an effort to attract more Black Americans to tech. AKA a virtue signaling side show that accomplishes absolutely nothing. No one even knew it came from a Playboy magasine until this whole "retire Lena" movement.

People involved in professional imaging tend to know it's from a playboy magazine.

Nobody cared, and Lena was generally celebrated in that community, still is in fact. No amount of temporary blogger complaining is going to change that because they completely forget the reason that image is used. It is very difficult to reproduce/compress/etc and while it's certainly possible to use alternative images (though the image provided by the original post is a very poor substitute), it's simply easier to use Lena because people know where the problem areas are going to be if something is awry.

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#187

Post by jtriangle »

mock-possum wrote: post #182
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #50

It's astonishing how a supposedly liberal and tolerant society is so much hateful towards eroticism it considers the Lena pic originating from a PlayBoy magazine to have a "troubled" origin.

So imagine sitting around with your coworkers, and one of your teammates raises his hand and says, "I think we should use this naked picture of a hot white chick as reference imagery." How does that make you feel? It would sketch me the fuck out. In all fairness, would I react differently if it was a cute asian dude with a big dick? No, honestly, I would still be sketched out by it, and I like cute asian dudes with b…

"I think we should use this naked picture of a hot white chick as reference imagery"

Lena is not visibly naked in the reference imagery, so, your point is moot. It was always a cropped image, and it was cropped for exactly the reasons you outlined. If you, or others, cannot look at Lena without sexualizing her, that isn't the fault of the image, that's the fault of the viewer.

Lena was used because that image is very difficult to reproduce/compress/etc, and that has not changed.

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#188

Post by zzo38computer »

olalonde wrote: post #39

This is like GitHub renaming master branch to main branch in an effort to attract more Black Americans to tech. AKA a virtue signaling side show that accomplishes absolutely nothing. No one even knew it came from a Playboy magasine until this whole "retire Lena" movement.

> This is like GitHub renaming master branch to main branch in an effort to attract more Black Americans to tech. AKA a virtue signaling side show that accomplishes absolutely nothing.

While I think this "virtue signaling" is misguided, that does not necessarily mean that the branch renaming accomplishes nothing. For one thing, "main" is two letters shorter than "master" and starts with the same two letters, but that is a rather minor thing. More important, I think, that they ensured that branch renaming is implemented, since that is a helpful feature.

I had previously (not being familiar with git) been concerned that it might cause problems, using the different default name in git and GitHub, but as it turns out this is not a problem at all. I have uploaded a git repository that uses "trunk" as the default branch name to GitHub, and there are no problems at all; it just works.

Also, they did not automatically change existing repositorites. If they did that, that would be a problem too, but fortunately they did not do that.

> No one even knew it came from a Playboy magasine until this whole "retire Lena" movement.

Actually, I think it was well known enough.

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#189

Post by jtriangle »

mrpopo wrote: post #19

I think in order to be used in image tech, it shouldn't be shipped as PNG, even with lossless compression. It should be BMP, ideally with the PBM, PGM and PPM formats too. Not sure how serious this is, though. :/

PNG is mathmatically lossless, so, you can easily decompress it into whatever format you'd like, while benefitting from a smaller file size.

That's the whole point.

Re: Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

#190

Post by jtriangle »

iameli wrote: post #121

Lena has said, in the linked video, that she would prefer her picture stop being used in this way. That ought be a sufficient condition for us, as developers, to stop using it. I'm distressed to find comment threads here are talking about copyright or complaining about "virtue signalling." You don't have to agree with her to respect her wishes.

You're also under no obligation to respect her wishes. Not that long ago she was happy that her likeness had gained celebrity status, and has recently changed her mind (a little).

If you wish to be subject to the whims of someone that you don't know, and likely never will know, feel free. Sounds exhausting.

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