News Agency Circulation : Geneva
Subject: Shocking news for digital photographers
With the advent of the digital camera, photographers around the world have rejoiced that they no longer have to worry about fading and discolouring prints and slides because their photographic masterpiece is preserved for all time in a computer file … or so they thought. Professor Ira Lopolf of the Geneva Institute For Photographic Research & Experimentation has today exploded this comfortable myth with his announcement of some ground-breaking research carried out over the past two years.
Prof. Lopolf will address an assembly of the Institute later today with his formal findings, but has already released some of its content to the press.
Speaking at his Geneva home before an invited press corps, Prof. Lopolf said “I, and some of my colleagues, have long suspected that each time an image file is opened on a computer, the pixels lose some of their original colour saturation and vibrancy. We are referring to this process as Pixel Fatigue. We conducted tests over a period of two years, making two identical copies of image files, then leaving one unopened and undisturbed on the hard drive, whilst the other file was opened and viewed on screen up to three hundred times over the two years. In every case, when we eventually opened the undisturbed file and compared it with the one that had been repeatedly opened for viewing, the visible difference was dramatic, with the repeatedly opened file having faded noticeably. The results were the same no matter what type of computer we used, or what format we saved the images in. Jpg, RAW, Tiff all suffered in the same way.
I have included one of our test examples in the press pack, which clearly demonstrates how much an image of a colourful rose has suffered as a result of this pixel fatigue.
I liken this effect to a fine bottle of wine, which if left undisturbed, will keep perfectly, but once opened and disturbed, will quickly deteriorate”
When asked what can be done to prevent this phenomenon, Prof. Ira Lopolf had this to say. “Sadly, our work concludes that there is no way of preventing or reversing this pixel fatigue process. If digital photographers want to keep their image files in perfect condition, they must resign themselves to never opening or looking at them”
Returning later to his fine bottle of wine analogy, he said. “We are now looking into the possibility that an image file which remains undisturbed on a hard drive for several years may actually improve its pixel quality with age, but establishing a control file to enable a verifiable comparison is proving to be a significant challenge”.
So far, none of the major digital camera manufacturers has been prepared to go on record. However, a disgruntled executive who recently lost his job from one of the biggest Japanese firms told us “The top management in the industry have known about this for a long time, but we were all sworn to secrecy. They knew that once the information became public knowledge, digital camera sales would be hit hard. Well, the cat’s really out of the bag now!”
Professor Ira Lopolf, who is tipped for a Nobel Prize next year, is celebrating his 65th birthday on the 1st April 2005.
