tonr.co
About
Photography has a long history of racism. Design is supposed to be unbiased but as we all know, intentionally or not, there is always room for human error and subconscious prejudice. When film photography was first developed, technicians measured good contrast, color and brightness using a reference photo that included a white model; these were called ‘Shirley’ cards. As a result of film manufacturers only using images of white people as reference, film has been notoriously bad at producing good images of people of color.
Our society is pushing towards representation of more types of faces, more bodies, more identities. Some of the more popular social media platforms include filters that emulate film but do not correct for the racial disparities. Many filters literally whitewash people of colors’ skin, either by overexposure or changing contrast of darker tones.
With tonr, our team wanted to create an inclusive app with a variety of photo filters that amplifies how beautiful a variety of skin tones are instead of washing them out. The goal of tonr is to create filters that affirm that black, brown and other skin tones are beautiful. We looked towards deepening the subjects’ skin instead of lightening, emphasizing the richness and saturation of melanin and playing with interesting color overlays.
How to
Upload an image, select a filter, download and post to your favorite social media platform. To check out our interactive display demo, visit tonr.co/demo
Team
Design
Development
License
Copyright (c) 2016, Vox Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
BSD license
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
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Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.