Comments on: Photoshop + Thumbnails = Boobs

Photoshop + Thumbnails = Boobs

manero — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:26:12 -0800

Cat Schwartz, TechTV vixen, posted some pictures of herself on her blog. Due to an obscure bug in Photoshop, she also inadvertently posted pictures of herself nude. Oopos. Warning: Minor nudity enclosed.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:49:01 -0800

I had no idea this bug existed. It sort of reminds me of people that pass Word documents around without knowing the similar "features" of the program. The next time you get an important document (letter, contract, etc) as a word doc, be sure to go into the file properties and examine the revision history. I'm constantly surprised at how even tech-savvy professionals don't know about this and I can see the five drafts of what I'm reading, sometimes even with revision comments from other authors. Also, how the hell did that guy blow those thumbnails up without making them look horrible?

By: kfury

kfury — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:50:23 -0800

HAHAHahahahaqhahahahaha Ahem... This reminds me of how you can open a word doc saved using 'quicksave' (the default) in a text editor and see portions of previous revisions. I remember finding that out when I got a job rejection letter and opened it up to see other rejected applicants and their reasons for being rejected. (on preview: yeah, what Mat said)

By: BartFargo

BartFargo — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:51:56 -0800

Mathowie: The lesson is that when you crop a file the file maintains the original in full resolution unless you save it correctly. The hilarious thing is that Cat will almost certainly find out about this, and quick. Talk about learning the hard way. I'm definitely watching TechTV tomorrow.

By: Monk

Monk — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:56:23 -0800

I think she already knows. From her page on TechTV.com: The worst technology horror story I have to tell: Sending an IM to the wrong window. That was embarrassing. Also, I was talking bad about my ex when my cellphone accidentally called him in my purse. Yeah, he heard the whole darn conversation. Oh yeah, beware of the preview window in Photoshop.

By: riffola

riffola — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:56:31 -0800

She already found out about it. Looks like she is handling it far better than most people would've.

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:00:18 -0800

Suggestion that Cat ask Star Wars Kid out on a date in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:04:39 -0800

The lesson is that when you crop a file the file maintains the original in full resolution unless you save it correctly. How do you extract the image though, is it stuck in file headers or something? This is the first I've ever heard of it (and even files like jpg carry all this information?).

By: X-00

X-00 — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:05:54 -0800

Well the original posts have kinda been removed from the main page, but the archive lives on, it appears to me she removed the second post because it looks like she was smoking pot...

By: kfury

kfury — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:07:19 -0800

It's not saving the full resolution image. It's just keeping the 128x128 preview image. The clarity is doubtless thanks to bicubic interpolation. It's noticably fuzzier than the original, but the interpolation just takes out the jaggies.

By: riffola

riffola — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:07:52 -0800

Matt, Image bloat: The unseen burden of the Internet.

By: kfury

kfury — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:11:37 -0800

This has nothing to do with image bloat. the link above refers to people not compressing as tightly as they should. This is about hidden previews, and why you should always use Save for web when you're going to be using it on the web, both to handle bloat and to handle extraneous metadata like thumbnails and custom document icons.

By: Nothing

Nothing — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:12:45 -0800

No, those are enlarged thumbnails, not hidden full resolution images. Did you see how big the eyes crop was? A full resolution picture would be 3 megapixels or more. I don't know how they were enlarged so nicely, but even so, you can tell they've been enlarged. They were probably captured with a simple screen cap of the Photoshop open file dialog box.

By: riffola

riffola — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:15:03 -0800

You can turn off previews by going to Edit > Preferences > File Handling. Image Previews should be the first option. Set it to either "Ask When Saving" or "Never Save".

By: Nothing

Nothing — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:15:14 -0800

Also, what a situation. Can you imagine? Especially with the way guys flock around geek women on the internet.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:24:27 -0800

does paint shop pro do this as well?

By: fatbobsmith

fatbobsmith — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:35:08 -0800

On the subject of Word documents: Word documents also have the great feature of including "file slack." When you save a Word document, it can sometimes catch remnants of other programs running on your system and tack that info onto the end of the file. If you can figure out a method of extracting the file slack, you can sometimes catch e-mails, IM conversations and other good stuff.

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:39:17 -0800

All seems like good publicity to me.

By: Dillonlikescookies

Dillonlikescookies — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:12:26 -0800

Meanwhile, back at Adobe headquarters, a deviously cunning sex-deprived programmer reaps the sweet, sweet rewards.

By: damclean2

damclean2 — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:28:54 -0800

"Finally!" he cries, as he curls up next to his C++ Compiling for Dummies handbook "My work is now complete."

By: bobo123

bobo123 — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:40:07 -0800

Wow, this is a pretty serious bug... what if the police or some journalist releases a picture of someone and they've cropped out some innocent person who they want to protect. What constitutes a "major change" in the image? Would blurring out someones face not change the preview? Bad bad Adobe.

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:03:06 -0800

You know you people are talking tech and, y'know, there's BOOBIES to ogle. From someone that's on TV!!!! And she's smoking. Just sayin'.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:06:01 -0800

Boobies yes. Worth looking at? no, not really.

By: taz

taz — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:24:54 -0800

kfury, the image was saved for web... as a .jpg, which is what makes this so unexpected, and potentially scary. I can see the image preview in the linked .jpg, but I haven't been able to reproduce the same preview effect in test images I've cropped and resaved with the same name. I suspect that flattening the image before saving would take care of the problem, but so far I can't test the theory.

By: taz

taz — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:26:57 -0800

Um. To be clear, test images I've created in photoshop then saved with a name like x.jpg, then cropped and resaved as "x.jpg".

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:39:48 -0800

"x.jpg" taz? Do you mean xxx.jpg? Hmmm?

By: mildred-pitt

mildred-pitt — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:58:14 -0800

If i try to reproduce this "bug" it doesn't seem to work... Does this work with a .psd file or a .jpg? Something seems fishy...

By: zarah

zarah — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 01:19:12 -0800

Wow that's an astonishing amount of morons that read her blog and post in her comments. quonsar - t r a c y tested this bug in PSP and so far it seems not to exist in it.

By: ruwan

ruwan — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 01:22:27 -0800

manero -- good post... more of this, less of bush would do mefi a lot of good.

By: klaatu

klaatu — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 01:55:37 -0800

bush? did i see the right pictures?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 02:11:22 -0800

Actualy, the best way to create pics for the internet is to use the "Save for web" option in photoshop. It'll strip out everything, and also give you nice previews of diffrent compression levels as well as gif/png optimization.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 03:24:32 -0800

I don't know if I really wanted to see that pair

By: taz

taz — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 03:49:12 -0800

elpapacito, did you actually mean to post that comment, or is this the result of some strange bug in your system wherein information that was clearly meant to be deleted is actually submitted? So... if anybody actually manages to reproduce this effect, let us know. I've tried at least a dozen ways of doing this, and my preview image always shows the cropped result. (and my image thumbnail preference is set to "always save".)

By: dgaicun

dgaicun — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 03:55:56 -0800

Awesome. Now does anybody know where to find naked pictures of the Thunderbirds?

By: sageleaf

sageleaf — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:01:38 -0800

I can see the full thumbnail if I save the picture through "Save target as," but I get the cropped thumbnail if I just save the picture off the page.

By: sageleaf

sageleaf — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:14:59 -0800

But I can't seem to reproduce the effect with other pictures, in either PS 6 or 7.

By: dg

dg — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:26:08 -0800

So... if anybody actually manages to reproduce this effect, let us know. Voila!

By: taz

taz — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:36:09 -0800

Great dg! What did you do, exactly? Also, do you think there could be different results in different platforms? I'm using pc/windows.

By: dg

dg — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:41:04 -0800

Oh, I guess you want to know how I did it? PhotoShop 6.0 on Win XP Pro. Grabbed screen capture, created new document with same size as screen, pasted screen capture, saved to desktop as .jpg file, cropped picture, saved again, and there you have it. Only one problem - I couldn't reproduce it when I went to double-check to document the process after posting the above (I know, I should have done that first). Most weird and now I will not be able to sleep until I can reproduce the effect :-(

By: taz

taz — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:00:07 -0800

yes... the same process definitely doesn't do it for me (I'm also using 6.0). So - don't sleep until you can reproduce the effect!

By: dg

dg — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:06:38 -0800

There goes my weekend :-(

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:22:18 -0800

It's a Mac thing. You wouldn't understand. Spoken as a PC user hoping to find naked ladies everywhere on the Internet but can't reproduce this behavior on a PC. Looks like I won't be spending the weekend downloading images off that Flying Nun fansite after all.

By: alumshubby

alumshubby — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:39:09 -0800

She has pretty breasts, but those eyes of hers are to die for.

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:42:54 -0800

That's a lot of effort to see some raccoon-eyed chick sitting naked and huffing butts. Make me think of when I dated that girl I met in rehab...

By: vito90

vito90 — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:55:59 -0800

Well, I think her boobs are very, very nice. The clarity is doubtless thanks to bicubic interpolation Thank you bicubic interpolation!!!

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 06:14:37 -0800

I've been using photoshop for years and years, and I didn't know about this bug either. I can't seem to reproduce it on the PC...weird.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 06:37:46 -0800

Now does anybody know where to find naked pictures of the Thunderbirds? Okay! Or did you mean this?

By: teradome

teradome — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:00:25 -0800

kfury, the image was saved for web... as a .jpg, which is what makes this so unexpected, and potentially scary. I doubt that, taz. "Save to Web..." exists to export only image data. No previews, no extras, except perhaps metadata to the file. This sounds exactly like someone simply using the standard Save... command in Photoshop. And this is not a new issue. Lots of hi-res source images are sold as JPEG and so Photoshop is designed to treat them as with as much care as it would PSD files, unless you specifically tell it not to—which is why the "Save for Web..." option is there.

By: hilatron

hilatron — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:25:34 -0800

Man, there are a bunch of sourpusses around here. You're complaining about the quality of free boobies. Free boobies! I'd really like to see the high level of perfection of all the breasts you've previously interacted with, that you are now so picky. Jeez. (Plus, I think she's cute.)

By: crunchland

crunchland — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:29:40 -0800

I think it's interesting, in her blog entry, that she seems more ashamed that she smokes than that the nude images got out. And I suspect that if nude images of the guys who sneered got out on the internet, they'd be pretty horrified (and horrifying). (PS: get a realistic image of what a beautiful woman looks like. It has nothing to do with the siliconed women in your jerk magazines.)

By: jpoulos

jpoulos — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:36:45 -0800

I was able to reproduce the effect in photoshop 6.0 on win2k. I just did Save Picture As... to the original file (the big one, behind the link) then went into Photoshop and did Open... Select the pic, and the preview shows the original, uncropped version. Also, what crunchland said. Real women are beautiful.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:37:06 -0800

Metafilter: That's a lot of effort to see some raccoon-eyed chick sitting naked and huffing butts.

By: bkdelong

bkdelong — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:39:19 -0800

This year's DEF CON will be a whole lot more er intriguing if she shows up with a film crew again.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:48:31 -0800

And you really have to wonder how this mcbiggins guy stumbled onto this discovery.

By: tr33hggr

tr33hggr — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:50:19 -0800

I'd hit . . . oh wait . . .

By: Frasermoo

Frasermoo — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 08:10:34 -0800

fap fap fap fap... ah...

By: signal

signal — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 08:24:26 -0800

1) it was a mistake... you all lucked out... BIG time. ;-) Beautiful, gracefull and a sense of humour!

By: nofi

nofi — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 08:34:40 -0800

Personally, I think she is stunning. (If this was Fark, there'd be 328 "I'd hit it" posts.) FWIW, I was able to reproduce this 'feature' on a Mac using Photoshop 7 by DLing the original files. As a aside, perhaps someone could create a bot to roam the net looking for image files that contain similar gems.

By: cowboy_sally

cowboy_sally — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 08:44:00 -0800

delmoi, el papacito-- Howsabout you show us *your* tits, gorgeous?

By: clevershark

clevershark — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:10:10 -0800

If this was Fark, there'd be 328 "I'd hit it" posts. That's probably a conservative estimate... I can only speak for myself but I think we did 'luck out BIG time' :-)

By: frenetic

frenetic — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:13:21 -0800

Now I require topless photos of Leo and Patrick! Bring them to me, my pretties!

By: quonsar

quonsar — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:18:16 -0800

this SO stinks of self promotion and mass gullibility. so, just to clarify this for my extremely rigid, unbeleiving mind (i said rigid mind, damn you!): the .jpg header format accomodates the storing of image thumbs within the file format itself? can anybody answer that question definitively? if so, what ELSE does the .jpg format accomodate?

By: angry modem

angry modem — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:18:57 -0800

Ten bucks says she did it on purpose.

By: angry modem

angry modem — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:20:03 -0800

oh, hi quonsar.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:24:14 -0800

if so, what ELSE does the .jpg format accomodate? Apparently, boobs.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:30:50 -0800

i wish someone would take the question seriously, because the first half-dozen comments here, which either poo-pooed the story, or opined that this was too sleazy for mefi, were arbitrarily wiped out by matt, who replaced them with his own totally accepting comment which appears as the first comment in this thread now. i have NEVER heard anything of the sort, my observation of paint shop pro (a totally different piece of software, yes) is that it generates its previews on the fly and i wonder why would paintshop STORE a preview thumb? in the file itself? as it stands, i think this is bullshit. if i am wrong, i simply want to know!

By: riffola

riffola — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:41:03 -0800

quonsar, as per the JPEG File Interchange Format info @ w3.org, the ability to store thumbnails was added in, and has been around since at least 1992.

By: Fat Elvis

Fat Elvis — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:45:22 -0800

Most recent digicams put thumbnails in JPEG files - the technology is called EXIF - and in addition to thumbnails it includes all the info on the picture's technical details as well as timestamps. ACDSee also does (or can) do this as well. I use EXIF thumbnails for putting digital photos up on the web - it saves me making a seperate thumbnail file. My PHP code just scans the EXIF info for the thumbnail and spits it out to the browser. If a file doesn't have a thumbnail I just add one with ACDSee - which can also automatically re-write the thumbnail when you rotate a picture, for example. Or, say, when you crop out boobs.

By: Hackworth

Hackworth — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:46:58 -0800

quonsar: look up info in exif headers.

By: Hackworth

Hackworth — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:47:36 -0800

uh, yeah.

By: talos

talos — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:49:45 -0800

if so, what ELSE does the .jpg format accomodate? The following: Three six-packs of beer, a whoopie cushion, Newton's Principia in spoken word format, a family of political refugees from Tadjikistan and a copy of the -possibly apocryphal- Protocols of the elders of MeFi, a book purporting to uncover the secret of a leftist cabal intent on imposing world communist domination through control of the web.

By: riffola

riffola — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:51:41 -0800

Fat Elvis, could you share the code?

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 10:06:53 -0800

The clarity is doubtless thanks to bicubic interpolation. Wouldn't that be biboobic interpolation?

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 10:15:15 -0800

what ELSE does the .jpg format accomodate? I believe there is a header flag for "application-specific data," which would be basically anything an application wants to include. I know that by default Photoshop embeds ColorSync profiles in JPEGs when using "Save As" (it doesn't when using "Save For Web," which is one reason "Save For Web" images are much smaller). A good file format is extensible by design. The way you do it is, you specify the file format as a series of "chunks." Each chunk begins with a signature that indicates the type of data in the chunk, followed by a length field that tells how long the chunk is. That way, programs that don't recognize a particular type of data can easily skip to chunks they do understand. Obviously, image data is only one type of chunk that can be stored in a JPEG.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 10:23:35 -0800

thank you all for the information. i humbly admit to my wrongness, and wish to assure to that my mind has returned to the flaccid state you all know and love. and now, to the boobies!

By: squirrel

squirrel — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 10:33:11 -0800

Technology continues to make it easier for the modern nerd to harvest unearned fruits. *Lovingly pats CRT*

By: crunchland

crunchland — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 11:17:20 -0800

well, maybe she's not so gracious after all. If nothing else, she knows how to keep the ball rolling.

By: jragon

jragon — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 12:13:17 -0800

Actualy, the best way to create pics for the internet is to use the "Save for web" option in photoshop In my opinion, the best way to create pics for the internet is not to use Photoshop. I've used Macromedia Fireworks for years and (unless I need to do Photoshop-specific things) will never go back.

By: punkrockrat

punkrockrat — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 12:19:45 -0800

Considering: 1) Popular Co-host of a wholesome tech show on Tech TV. 2) Works for a company and has major visibility of someone who is supposedly "Tech Savy" I wonder how her employers feel about all this?

By: calwatch

calwatch — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 12:38:12 -0800

This isn't "tech-savvy" though, more like never used all the features of Photoshop. Considering there are literally hundreds of them, I'm not surprised that someone looking for this could find it. The employer will probably welcome any increase in ratings on the program, as TechTV is pretty low rated, even among its target audience.

By: shadow45

shadow45 — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:02:55 -0800

I'd hit it! that being said, the main attraction is not her boobrs (although nice).. it's those beautiful eyes. *fap fap fap fap*

By: shadow45

shadow45 — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:10:40 -0800

After reading some of the bullshit remarks by people on her messageboard, I have a new (lower) opinion of the common goodwill of mankind. Assholes, don't upset her over a mistake. Could have been your shitty 80s MP3 list or your twig and berries.. be grateful it was a nice looking woman- who apparently smokes some sort of Bidi or leaf-rolled cigarette. And whoever said it was pot is just trying to start shit :)

By: centrs

centrs — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 17:06:15 -0800

yes, there are some indian chocolate flavored cigarettes that look like that.

By: dg

dg — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 18:03:44 -0800

I'm with crunchland and jpolous in admiring her looks generally, as opposed to the airbrushed, silicon pumped bimbos who are passed off to the world as good looking women nowadays.

By: taumeson

taumeson — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 18:38:48 -0800

hmm...her site's down. traffic, or malcontention?

By: nath

nath — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:09:17 -0800

Yeah, I'm with you guys. I dig the eyes, too. My favorite of the pictures from the link, of all things, is the first one. With the eyes, the cute freckles, and that little hint of a smile. I love a good face. (Resisting the "fap fap fap" joke that seems so obvious...) I just downloaded one of the pictures, and tried the Photoshop preview thing myself. Man, that's freaky.

By: britain

britain — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:24:37 -0800

dgaicun: Awesome. Now does anybody know where to find naked pictures of the Thunderbirds? You mean like full-wooden-body photos, or closeups of [Gerry Anderson or a production assistant's] naughty bits?

By: Guy Smiley

Guy Smiley — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:49:57 -0800

punkrockrat - "Call for Help" may very well be a "wholesome" show, but TechTV also runs shows like Unscrewed and Wired for Sex. I don't think Cat has anything to worry about, employment-wise.

By: mary8nne

mary8nne — Sun, 27 Jul 2003 22:31:45 -0800

I'd hit it!

By: kfury

kfury — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 06:16:52 -0800

pshop'd.