The premier’s office says a Ford Fest photo that appeared to have been edited to make protesters look like supporters was the result of “routine” colour correcting.
Officials offered the explanation Monday, after a photo posted online by a pair of Progressive Conservative MPPs over the weekend raised eyebrows for what appeared to be a digital alteration.
Meanwhile, experts who examined the picture told the Star they are skeptical at best and that government leaders have a responsibility to ensure an image’s message isn’t altered even if the edits are routine.
“Photos from Ford Fest, including the aerial shot posted by two MPPs, had default saturation applied to correct an orange hue,” said the statement from Doug Ford’s office on Monday. “This type of colour correction is standard and routine practice. The images were not otherwise edited or altered in any way.”
Attorney General Doug Downey and MPP David Smith’s X accounts on Saturday posted several pictures from the annual free barbecue celebrating “Ford Nation” — including a birds-eye-view image depicting most people in the crowd near the main stage in blue shirts.
As documented by the Star, most of the crowd in that part of Thomson Memorial Park were wearing purple Ontario Public Sector Employees Union (OPSEU) shirts protesting the provincial government.
Protesters turned their backs to Ford shortly after he got on stage. His remarks were drowned out by protesters booing, chanting and blowing whistles. After his speech, Ford immediately left.
Downey’s office has not responded to requests for comment. Smith’s office redirected the Star to the premier’s office. While Ford and some other members of his cabinet posted pictures and video compilations from throughout Ford Fest, they didn’t post the aerial image.
“That justification is ridiculous. This is manipulation,” said Gaëlle Morel, curator at Toronto Metropolitan University’s The Image Centre and a photography historian. “What I’m understanding is they’re trying to hide the purple colour.”
Morel said whatever the reason for wanting to correct the hue, when the significance and symbolism of an image substantially change, and it’s associated with certain information, then it shouldn’t be disseminated or published.
In this case, Morel continued, attendees depicted in the colour blue — especially at Ford Fest where political staff were wearing blue — can easily be associated with support for the Progressive Conservative government.
“They’re saying they’re trying to balance the tone of the photography. But you can’t just do that if it changes the photograph that much, then you’re manipulating the image,” Morel said.
Morel also said it’s unclear why about eight protesters are still depicted in purple shirts, if a colour correction was applied to the entire image.
Geoff George, a professional photographer who frequently works with colour adjustments, said it’s impossible to ascribe intent, but that a major ethical tenet in his line of work is not altering the intent of an image, no matter the edits it gets.
George said colour correction to fix an orange tint is indeed routine, but the explanation from the premier’s office doesn’t hold water.
“Saturation is irrelevant to why (the shirts) changed colour,” George said, noting saturation only changes the intensity or vibrancy of a colour, not the colour itself. If the goal was to correct an orange hue, it would also change the colours of everything else, George continued.
Alex Olson, acting head at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Analytics & AI Engineering, said it’s possible the premier’s office statement is using incorrect terminology.
But with the statement provided, “changing the saturation has no impact on what the colours are … It looks like this image has been selectively recoloured, as opposed to a single universal recolouring of the entire image.”
Also, “default saturation is what comes preset, as in the default you have before you start trying to add or subtract colour and saturation,” George said.
Olson noted there is no evidence to suggest one way or the other that AI was used.
Several other experts the Star reached out to said it’s difficult to definitively conclude what happened to the photo. Some said they’d need to know the camera and drone type, the exact settings and other technical details to make a confident assertion.
The image has since received widespread backlash online, especially toward Attorney General Downey, whose ministry is responsible for administering Ontario’s justice system.
“Imagine getting booed at your own party, then editing the photos so the protesters look like fans. Trumpian,” Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said in a post on X.
The Liberal party also weighed in: “Ford thinks he can rewrite reality with photo editing. He’s wrong.”
With files from Robert Benzie.
