Today, we look at how a Playboy model became the standard test image for image processing algorithms for DECADES.
MAGAZINE URBAN LEGEND: A Playboy pinup was the standard test image for image processing algorithms for decades.
In 1973 Alexander Sawchuk, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Signal and Image Processing Institute, and one of the graduate students at the school were looking for a good image to scan for a colleague’s conference paper.
They wanted something glossy and they wanted something with a human face and, most of all, they wanted something that seemed a bit out of the ordinary – something that would pop a bit more than the standard test images they always used.
Well, someone happened to have a copy of a recent issue of Playboy (I don’t know if it was the LATEST Playboy or not) and the men decided that, hey, why not use a pinup from the issue?
Little did they know how famous this photo would become!
The centerfold was of Lena Söderberg (who Playboy changed to Lenna Söderberg because she hated that people pronounced her name as LEENA, when it should be pronounced as Lenna, so they changed it to the phonetic spelling. She currently goes by the name Lena Forsén). The image (originally photographed by Dwight Hooker) was cut a bit before being used so that it would be a perfect square (512×512 pixels).
Here’s the test image:
Here‘s the original image.
The whole “out of the ordinary” nature of the image, plus its very nice texture (depth, shading, etc.) plus, of course, the whole “it’s a Playboy pinup” thing, made the image a bit hit. Soon, it was used basically everywhere.
In fact, the Society for Imaging Science and Technology brought Ms. Söderberg out for their 50th Anniversry conference as the keynote speaker!
Naturally, there were some critics of the use of the image.
On one one hand, some folks feel that it was fairly sexist to use a Playboy centerfold as the main test image, and that its use was a statement about the mostly male-dominated field.
On another hand, some people feel it was wrong to use a copyrighted image in such a manner (Playboy, for its part, while they normally aggressively protect their copyrights, eventually decided to let them “get away” with using the image, figuring it was good publicity).
Amusingly enough, according to Playboy, the issue with the Söderberg centerfold was their highest-selling issue EVER (Playboy‘s popularity as a magazine peaked in the early 1970s).
The image is used MUCH less frequently nowadays, and a number of journals have told people that they are either OUTRIGHT prohibited from using it, or at least it is heavily encouraged to not use it.
The legend is…
STATUS: True
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