Sparkle Pony's Photoshop Test Kitchen!

The other day, I wrote about USA Today Online's strange Photoshop job on Condi. The USAT photo editor's excuses seemed lame to me and also to Michelle Malkin, marking probably the first and only time the two of us would ever agree about something. Today, Howard Kurtz wrote a brief paragraph, sadly not online, about the kerfuffle in his column in the Washington Post. Again, the idiotic justifications offered by USAT really jumped out at me. Let's look again at what spokesmodel Steve Anderson told Editor and Publisher:

"USAToday.com, like other news organizations, often adjusts photos for sharpness and brightness to optimize appearance," Anderson told E&P. He added that an online editor sharpened the photo to brighten Rice's face, but did not do so in an effort to make her look strange."

Well, lots of people aren't familiar with Photoshop, so I'm not surprised these statements went unchallenged. Whoever talked to Howard Kurtz was a little more precise, saying the photo had been sharpened and her face had been brightened. I know better, though. Let's review: up top we've got the original AP Photo. Below, we've got the fun-sized version next to the ludicrous alteration posted by USA Today on their web site:

Hmmm... it doesn't really look brightened or sharpened to me, but that's super easy to check. Let's put half of the unaltered photo on top of the altered one. That way, any sharpening or brightening will stick out like a sore thumb:

So it looks like the photo was neither sharpened nor brightened. Here's what sharpening (on the left) and brightening the face (on the right) looks like:

Note how the sharpening does brighten the eyes. On a whim, I tried oversharpening just the eyes:

Similar to USA Today's silly results, but still not quite the same. Finally, I tried the most primitive way to simulate the results by clumsily using the paint brush to whiten her eyes. My results are below on the left, compared to, again, USAT's on the right:

And, well, mine's a little different, more demented than evil, but the effect is exactly the same.

The last piece of the puzzle is this: Online photo editors do not routinely "touch up" AP photos; AP does that for them... it's their job. It's totally obvious to me that despite what USA Today's spokesman says, the pic was altered clumsily and purposefully to make Condi look wacky. And then they got caught. And then the company used technobabble to cover for it. Who is this mysteriously untalented yet hilarious image mangler?

Would somebody at USA Today please buy him or her a beer?

EDIT: Also, is anybody else kinda freaking out about her neck?