Truth in Photoshopping: Digital Tricks by Digital Billboard Boosters

The exaggerated $191 million figure? Maybe I could point out that the guy behind this website shares an office with Tony Strickland in Westlake.

All good topics, and there's many more, but for another day. The topic for today is Photoshop. 

The centerpiece of the site is a before & after slideshow that ostensibly shows what certain stretches along the railroad would look like if Measure S were to pass. It's a clever idea – though I suspect it would be a bit more clever to simulate the digital billboards that Measure S would build (two words: animated GIFs). 

The problem is, the these shots are just dishonest. Here's an example:

There's the cheap lie: the "before" pics have gray skies muddy colors, while the "after" pics have blue skies and boosted colors. And then there's the really awful lie: many of the disappearing billboards are those that coming down as part of a separate deal passed minutes after the ordinance (we now know as Measure S) was passed by the council. These boards that are coming down no matter what, even if Measure S fails.

So with that in mind, here's a new feature I'm calling "Truth in Photoshop"

There's an important distinction to be made: since the original ordinance was passed a few minutes before they passed the deal to remove the Edwards billboards, the measure says 118 billboard faces. By law, the measure has to say what the referendum says, so it's not dishonest for that language to appear on the ballot. But it's absolutely dishonest to campaign as though it's literally true. Whenever a proponent says that 118 billboards would come down from Measure S, they are lying, because about a third of those are coming down already.