In the latest development in the ongoing hue and cry over image retouching, researchers at Dartmouth College have come up with a new tool that could enable you to see exactly how much airbrushing is going in most fashion ads and magazine spreads.

Inspired by recent proposals in Europe that recommend mandatory labelling on ads and photos that are retouched, Dr. Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth, set about devising his own method of sussing out altered images of celebrities and models.

Alongside Ph.D. student Eric Kee, he's created a new photograph-analyzing tool that is able to quantify the amount of retouching that's been done to a photo, reports the New York Times.

The pair's research, which appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, proposes using an image software tool for measuring how much fashion and beauty photos have been altered.

Farid and Kee used sets of genuine before-and-after images provided by magazines to create their mathematical model. The resulting algorithm is able to score photos on a 1-to-5 scale that ranks images based on those that have undergone slight retouching to those that have undergone major alterations.

Would you like to know when magazine images have been retouched? Why or why not? Will a photograph analysis tool or image labelling help to combat self-image problems linked to advertising? Share your comments below.

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