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The Clinton camp is being accused of darkening Obama’s skin in this ad. Looks darker to me. What do you guys think???

I think this is a ludicrous or at best paranoid anti-Clinton smear.

I love a good anti-Clinton smear, but this is clearly photoshop filtering, even his tie is darker. It's a Clinton smear tactic possibly, but noting anti-Clinton.

http://uglydemocrats.com/democrats/United-States/Hillary-Clinton/hillary-bill-clinton.jpg

They must strike back and use the pic of Clinton ! LOL!

Well from what I have read on the DailyKos is that yes the add is darker, and yes sometimes in the past politicians have used tactics like this in campaigns, is this a sensative issue when one of the nominees is a person of darker skin color, I will let you be the judge. Let me say this though, I would imagine that high quality is what you want in a finished product, that does not mean sharp and clean necessairly as sometimes blurry or different kinds of lighting give a more emotional resonance with the audience. Whatver the case may be, I think it is deliberate, maybe not out of bounds but it worries me that Clinton would not care about the possible racial undertones? That said I think political correctness is over-rated, so my conclusion is that this is something that Clinton does not mind doing which is why I would not vote for her, unless its between her and Johnny McBush. And if this election or I should say nomination goes to Hillary then I will remain apathetic about Washington and the way that Clinton has gone about this campaign will always be with me.

it's exactly what one would expect from a Goldwater Girl...

Heh, I just submitted this. Didn't see yours. I have a hard time believing this, and yet, she's been capable of the unbelievable so far.

I find it more objectionable that the ad clearly attempts to smear Obama by massively distorting the truth. I guess that is just the more literal version of smearing Obama's face with a little photoshop filter.

If you knew nothing about the Senate or Obama you would think from this ad that he had personal jurisdiction over Afghanistan policy. In fact he heads a SUB-committee on Europe that could possibly review NATO policy toward Afghanistan, but just how is up for debate. problem is the ad never uses the words Europe or NATO. It says Obama is too busy (or lazy) to fight the bad guys in Afghanistan. That's a lie in some many ways and in some ways far worse thant he 3am phone call BS.

Pearl, I suggest you put that in the form of a question unless you want the world to think you are an irresponsible idiot.

This is idiotic. Those of you who found this story at the Church of Barack Obama (DailyKos) will notice, if you read the comments, that quite a few people are distancing themselves from both the story and DailyKos itself. It is this sort of thing that is destroying the last few shreds of credibility that Markos has left. Let's hope that doesn't happen here.

I've been more or less undecided between the canidates, but every word I read by Obama supporters drives me closer to supporting Senator Clinton. This bullshit story may be the last straw. Senator Obama may be relatively clean, but his supporters are right up there with Karl Rove. Good job, guys, you're destroying your own candidate. If the candidate is ANYTHING like his acolytes, he deserves to disappear from public life altogether - permanently.

I don't post reader blogs, so I don't know who writes the headlines. But I assume from what you are saying that you didn't write "Clinton Camp darkens Obama's skin in Ad." Because that's a pretty declarative statement. And please don't tell me that you are so naive that you didn't realize campaigns routinely use an unflattering picture of their opponent. As a matter of fact, Josh does it all the time with pictures of Hillary.

So your position is that Clinton's campaign believes that America is only willing to vote for a light skinned African-American? And that there would be no repercussions in the Democratic primaries if they did darken his skin?

It is hard to imagine something more likely to backfire. I realize you neither like nor understand Hillary but do you really think that she or her campaign or Maggie Williams are that dumb?

Get a life!

In what seems to me another lifetime I was a trained professional photographer, and though I haven't worked in that for decades, I seem to remember that photographing black people was always quite ccomplicated. Any change in exposure or contrast affects skin color in people of all colors, but black people are very sensitive about this and like to appear as light skinned as possible. At school we were taught (I seem to remember) to use flat lighting and a very full exposure when photographing black people.

Bottom line:
If Hillary or McCain come out a little redder, yellower or grayer, no problem, but if Obama moves from latte to cocoa there is.

WHY THE CLINTONS WON'T BE RELEASING THEIR TAX RETURNS?...

http://thememlingindex.com/hillary_clinton_net_worth-wealth.html

Wait - Obama is black?

Just when I thought the Obamabots couldn't get any more desperate.....

It's not that the picture as a whole was darkened. Look at the contrast between the skin tone and the white collar. In the reference shots, the photo with the whitest collar has the lightest skin tone. In the Clinton ad, the collar is very white, while the skin tone is very dark. So the skin tone was selectively darkened.

As a campaign tactic by a Democratic candidate, this a deal breaker for me, as was Clinton's "endorsement" of McCain over Obama.

I voted for Edwards in my state, and haven't had to chose between Clinton and Obama. But if I did, I would now choose Obama, looking to the future strength of the Democratic Party and what it represents.

As an advanced Photoshop user, I can say, fairly confidently, that the photo has what's called increased contrast. That makes light tones lighter (for example, his shirt whiter) and all dark tones darker. You'll recall a similar trick was used on Time magazine's cover photo of OJ Simpson after he murdered his wife and her friend. At that time there was a large outcry from the public accusing Time Magazine of playing the race card. Time and the artist, Mark Mahune (I'm sure I've misspelled his last name) as I recall, apologized.

This is nitpicking in the extreme.

I'm a professional photographer (and Obama supporter) and it looks to me like all that was done to the photo was to increase the contrast (blacks are blacker, whites are whiter) The photos you show for comparison are very low contrast. A boost in contrast isn't even necessarily intentional, it can happen just by changing image formats. Contrast is also different on every TV and computer monitor. The ideal contrast for this image is somewhere in between yours and theirs. I'm sorry, but to accuse Hillary of race-baiting because she boosted the contrast in an image is to venture into loony-land.

Hope your enjoying the trip!

Well "advanced photoshop user.""

It's quite obvious to me that the "lighting effects" spotlight was put on that photo, see the text next to the photo? It's the spotlight, all right. Adds contrast, darkens the edges and lightens the middle.

{gasp}

This just goes to show that graphic designers are evil people.

Oh wait, I'm a.....

Nevermind. It's appalling that there re two threads devoted to this drivel.

Obama clearly appears darker in the add. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I think the effect desired (if intentional) was merely to cause the picture to become more unflattering. Simply darker does not necessarily mean unflattering, but the purpling (making up words, sorry) and blurring in the image adds a dodgy or unsavory element to it. It takes away the warm human quality of the photo. It's a slimeball move, but nothing new and not necessarily racist in my eyes. For all we know, Clinton may prefer to be viewed under that contrast, although I reserve serious doubts.

I think questioning it is appropriate, but to claim an outright racist attack from the Clinton camp is borderline paranoia. This is coming from a pretty staunch Obama supporter. It's not even in the same league as the fearmongering attempt with the traditional Somali garb. The ad as a whole is distasteful in my opinion, but like many others posting on this page from both camps, I don't buy into the allegedly deliberate attempt to inject race again in this instance.

Quoting ( I hope, as I don't remember how this works) Economides excellent point from above in this thread, the larger point is that more than the photo was distorted. The ad attempts to sway voters based on misinformation. I don't want the nominee of the Democratic Party to be selected based on misinformation.

I find it more objectionable that the ad clearly attempts to smear Obama by massively distorting the truth. I guess that is just the more literal version of smearing Obama's face with a little photoshop filter.

If you knew nothing about the Senate or Obama you would think from this ad that he had personal jurisdiction over Afghanistan policy. In fact he heads a SUB-committee on Europe that could possibly review NATO policy toward Afghanistan, but just how is up for debate. problem is the ad never uses the words Europe or NATO. It says Obama is too busy (or lazy) to fight the bad guys in Afghanistan. That's a lie in some many ways and in some ways far worse thant he 3am phone call BS.