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Comment by normalaccess | Hacker News Reader

It's all well and good that you feel that way but what do you offer to replace the Lenna photo? It's easy to say it needs to be replaced but it's actually quite a different matter to find something so universally recognized. Everyone knows exactly what it's /supposed/ to look like and that's why it's useful as a reference to judge image processing.

Just my two cents.

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The Nature-family of journals have banned its use, and recommends ‘Cameraman’, ‘Mandril’ or ‘Peppers’ as alternatives. In other words there is a well established alternative and you just didn't try googling for it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-018-0337-2

If only they included the sample images. The top Google hit for cameraman doesn't seem very useful.

The images came from this database: https://sipi.usc.edu/database/

Of Pirate, Cameraman and Peppers, only Peppers seems to remain:

https://sipi.usc.edu/database/database.php?volume=misc&image...

Or I'm being thick.

(Edited to add: Mandrill is still there, but the paper doesn't recommend it.)

I still feel like I must be missing something obvious, but I found the complete set of images here:

https://github.com/PLEX-GR00T/OpenCV_Tutorials/tree/master/I...

Sure, let's pick a new image. How about an astronaut.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mae_Carol_Jemison.jp...

This is a NASA photo so it's in the public domain in contrast to the copyrighted Lenna image.

According to wiki, Playboy (copyright owner) decided to not pursue copyright infringement for that centerfold.

    > Although Playboy is notorious for cracking down on illegal uses of its images, it has decided to overlook the widespread distribution of this particular centerfold.

I personally have no problem if it was a different photo but lets look at some theoretical objections to the one you provided.

An astronaut? Some would see that as classicist. Blue and Orange? This impacts people with deuteranomaly and protanomaly color blindness. NASA? They are a capitalist space program that hired Nazis after WWII. A woman? Sitting? A person of color? Rectangular dimensions? ect... ect...

These are, of course, completely absurd objections. But someone somewhere would complain about your choice as firmly as you complain about the Lenna photo. And would you think their objections are as absurd as some think your objections are? Probably.

Standards are standards because they provide a solid reference that everyone can use and they should, by definition, be resistant to change. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

BUT if we do change it, I vote for a cute cat photo. https://www.photos-public-domain.com/2018/04/26/cat-with-blu...

She wants us to find something else.

"I retired from modeling a long time ago. It's time I retired from tech, too... Let's commit to losing me." -- Lena Forsén

Sounds like a fake problem. Just include the original image for comparison. Problem solved.

There are a ton of universally recognized images.

Put the Linux mascot. Use the Windows XP background image. The Monalisa or the Sixteen Chapel.

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