A few years ago, I had to use the men’s room at a bar in lower Manhattan. As I was about to wash my hands at the faucet, I turned my head up to look into the mirror, only to find there wasn’t one. Instead, there was a brown bulletin board surface on which someone had written in black permanent marker, “You look good.” And when you’re checking yourself out, that’s all you really need to know. On a similar note, there’s an interesting article on PCWorld.com about how inkjet printers automatically enhance the color and richness of your photos to make you subconsciously print more of them. In fact, HP marketing manager Thom Brown has admitted that, “We tune for what the customer wants, not for accuracy.”
So what is it in particular that makes HP photos more appealing to users? Robert L. Mitchell, the author of the PC World article, recalls that in comparing photos from the HP Photosmart C5180 and the Kodak EasyShare 5300, he found that while the “Kodak photos appeared a bit washed out, the HP photos were noticeably oversaturated.” And he confirms that he naturally “gravitated toward the brighter images.”
From a publicity standpoint, this revelation may not go over too well with consumers who already feel like they’re getting the wool pulled over their eyes by overpaying for OEM ink, and getting less than full disclosure on cartridge yields and ink volumes. And compared to Xerox’s user-driven Natural Language Color interface, it seems like HP’s automatic photo enhancement is almost telling the consumer, “if we want your opinion, we’ll give it to you.” That said, users like you and me aren’t exactly powerless in the process. OEMs and third party developers give us plenty of ways to edit photos on our own with software and online photo editing apps. And in our quest to create our own reality, we may not mind our printers doing some of the work for us.
(Photo via Morguefile)
