Propaganda Tips

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to excellence, which is why we occasionally use this forum to provide useful tips on how to do various things. Today's topic is photographic manipulation. We have reported on this before, but the focus of that post was to understand what the manipulation meant, not how to successfully pull it off. Today we will consider a list of useful tips so that you, too, can manipulate photos. We will use Microsoft's recent altered photo as an example.

1. Subtlety in photographic manipulation is paramount. The smaller the difference between the original image and the manipulated one, the less likely the casual observer is to question the legitimacy of the photo. In the case of the Microsoft case, they chose the head of one of the people in the photo, which would be great if nobody looked at the faces in the photos. Unfortunately, most people do look at the faces, so this choice proved to be a poor one.
2. Consistency in manipulation is important. Small discrepancies, such as the position of a shadow, can mean the difference between successful propaganda and embarrassing amateurish material. In Microsoft's picture they chose to orient the head in a different position, making the shadows on the person's body inconsistent. What's more, the head itself has its light source on the opposite side of the room from the other faces. If anything says "manipulated" it's shadows in the wrong places.
3. Thoroughness helps. When manipulating a photo, be sure to change all of something to all of something else. Microsoft chose to change the black man's head to white, but neglected to change the black man's hand.
4. Make sure you have a purpose. Propaganda is most effective when it has a message behind it, so be sure that your manipulation conveys your message. Either the manipulators of the Microsoft image are racist, or the message is lost. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not generous, so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that either their message was too subtle for us or they didn't have a message, not that they were acting out of hatred for another race. The GPD does not tolerate discrimination, so we hope that this is the case. We wouldn't want to have to add Microsoft to our list of enemies.