Camera That Makes You Look Skinny

I think the “slimming effect” may appear somewhat lame to many, but honestly although my first reaction was to think that it’s lame.. I believe most people try to take photos of themselves from flattering angles (those that may make them appear more slim, handsome, physically fit, whatever).. and many of those with the aptitude certainly will use Photoshop to remove blemishes/etc.

The most interesting thing about the feature is that [from what i can tell] it doesnt work as advertised. If you view the flash intro on the page you linked, it clearly shows how to use the slimming feature… take photo, select slimming, and then drag a levels slider untill the desired slim-level is reached. During this flash show, the individual that is being slimmed clearly becomes “less wide” while the background remains undisturbed in scale. I followed the link, because as someone who works in a related field, I was curious as to whether they were simply compressing the width of the whole picture, or they had developed some algorithm to identify a subject of a photograph and selectively scale that subject. If you look at the two “belt-buckle-girl” photos, layered over each other, you can clearly see that the entire photo has changed in scale, not just the subject.

I’m not arguing that compressing the width of the photo isn’t still a useful feature.. I am virtually positive that many people will buy these cameras and have an interest in doing just so, and not posess the technical wherewithal to do so themselves in mspaint/photoshop/gimp/etc. However, the flash intro represents that they have developed a technology that is far superior to what they actually have developed*, and that is somewhat disingenuous.

*i am basing my assertion off the belief that the belt-buckle-girl images represent an accurate output of the effect. If these images aren’t an example of the effect, and were merely doctored up from a stock photo rather than the output of a “slim-enabled” HP camera, then I may be mistaken.