![]() ![]() The Playboy photoshoot led to several others including advertising covers for brands like Kodak and Xerox. Depending only on one test photo could result in creating algorithms which might not work on all images. Most phones these days click photos that have exponentially more pixels than the scan of a 1970s magazine image. This decision was taken in consultation with relevant journal editors and affects all Nature Research journals.”Īpart from the backlash, there also exist technological reasons to drop the Lena image. It read: “We would like to let our authors, reviewers and readers know that, with immediate effect, we no longer consider submissions containing the Lena (sometimes ‘Lenna’) image. In 2018, the website Nature published an article titled ‘A Note On The Lena Image’. Several journals have taken up that suggestion and for the last two decades no longer accept papers with the Lena image. “Why is an advanced science, technology, engineering and mathematics school using a Playboy centerfold in its classrooms? It’s time for TJ (Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology) to say hello to inclusive computer science education – and say goodbye to Lena.” In 2015, Maddie Zug, a high school senior from Virginia, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post. The 1972 November issue of Playboy went on to become the best-selling edition of the magazine, with a reported 7,161,561 copies sold worldwide.Įven as the image continues to be idolized by computer geeks, it has also faced a lot of feminist backlash over the years. The image also became a part of the media studies syllabus and would be routinely mentioned and acknowledged in coder and tech forums. ![]() One of the other images he is asked to identify is the Lenna. He is asked to identify Joseph Stalin and Charles de Gaulle. In the 1973 movie Sleeper, the protagonist Woody Allen wakes up in a dystopian world in 2173. Soon enough, the image became a pop culture icon. The engineers who worked on the technology changed over the years but the image endured. It was used for testing over and over until the format that we now know was the JPEG came to be born. Whether it was wavelets, compression, reconstruction or denoising, the Lenna – as it came to be known in the tech sector – became the industry standard. Soon enough, the Lena image was used to test out all kinds of technology linked with digital imagery. Lena had no idea but six months after becoming the Playboy cover girl, she was viral – decades before becoming viral was even a thing.Īpart from the complexities of the colors in the image, the sensual nature of the photo appealed to the predominantly male tech industry. The test was a success and the lab proudly handed out copies to other researchers to test their algorithms and compare. One of the engineers tore off the top third of the image and ran it through a set of analog to digital converters. The full image had Miss November posing with nothing but a feathered sun hat, boots, stockings and a pink boa. With its complex mix of colors, contrasts and textures, the team felt the image was perfect for testing out their software. The following year, Alexander Sawchuk and his team of engineers at the University of Southern California’s Signal and Image Processing Institute happened to be looking for a photo to test their new image compression software.īeing the 1970s, it was probably no big deal to have a Playboy magazine lying around in the office and that’s how they chanced upon Lena’s centerfold image. And that is how Lena came to pose for what would go on to become one of the most used images on the internet. The photos made the cut with the Playboy editorial team and along with being featured on the 1972 November cover, one of Lena’s images also made it to the issue’s centerfold. “But my husband, he thought it was kind of cool, and it was money, and I didn’t have a lot of money.” “ I didn’t really know what that (Playboy) was,” said Lena, in a 2019 interview with Wired. That is how Dwight Hooker – a photographer for the infamous Playboy magazine – came to approach Lena (pronounced Lenna) for a photoshoot in 1972. As they struggled to make ends meet, her husband encouraged her to sign up with local modeling agencies. ![]() Newly married and hungry for work, she was working as a house help for one of her affluent relatives. Lena Söderberg was 20 years old in 1971 when she moved to Chicago from her native Sweden. Adarsh explores how a random image from a 1970s Playboy photoshoot helped in the creation of the digital image format now known as the JPEG ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |