Image integrity and digital manipulation

The announcement of World Press Photo awards, followed swiftly by Adobe's announcement of the 25th Anniversary of Photoshop highlights the contrast in the acceptance of image manipulation and image integrity.

The World Press photo awards, preempted any speculation of award winning images being manipulated, by stating that in the penultimate round of judging, RAW files were asked to be submitted to compare against the Jpeg images entered. It transpired that 20% of images were disqualified for failing to meet the basic ethics of journalism. The integrity of the images were compromised. The Sports Stories category was notable, as they were unable to award a 3rd prize due to everyone else having been disqualified. It was reported that every category had images disqualified. The New York Times published an article on the World Press Photo awards, with insights from the awards Judges and comments on the extent of manipulation NYT article

Excessive crop to image top and base to achieve a composed aspect ratio, is it image manipulation?

In 2014, World Press Photo produced a Research Project report by Dr David Campbell titled 'The Integrity of the Image' - Current practices and accepted standards relating to the manipulation of still images in photojournalism and documentary photography'. The report provides guidance to News and Documentary photographers, on what is and isn't ethical in manipulating a digital image. Integrity of the Image report.pdf   It makes for compelling reading and some salient points from the reports Executive Summary are

'4 Manipulation is seen as involving material changes to an image through the addition or subtraction of content, and is always deemed unacceptable for news and documentary pictures. Manipulation is therefore a specific form of processing, where the material change to the image through the addition or subtraction of element(s) is designed to deceive or mislead the reader/viewer.
5 Adjustments (such as limited cropping, dodging and burning, toning, color adjustment, conversion to grayscale) to photographs are accepted. These are usually described in terms of “minor” changes being permitted while “excessive” changes are prohibited.
6 What constitutes a “minor” versus an “excessive” change is necessarily interpretative. Respondents say that judgment is on a case-by-case basis, and suggest that there will never be a clear line demarcating these concepts.
7 We are now in an era of computational photography, where most cameras capture data rather than images. This means that there is no original image, and that all images require processing to exist.
8 A further consequence of this is that the darkroom analogy is no longer a useful guide for debates on manipulation. This is the case firstly because all manipulations are possible in a darkroom, and secondly because digital photography has changed image-making more than is usually appreciated.'

The insights into Digital Forensic technology hinted at the sophistication of fraudulent images, if not the scale. The scale was hinted at with the statement on page 5 'increased levels of fraud in scientific research images was one area of particular concern'. A Google search, suggested the Scientific Community are all to aware of image manipulation and a succinct article published in May 2007 in the Journal of Biolological Chemistry titled 'A JBC Editorial Photoshop: Friend or Fraud?' highlighted the issue, concluding with the words 'The integrity of science relies on a very high standard of conduct upon which the public trust and the progress of science depend'.

Foot prints in Snow - ethical to clone out?

By coincidence, Adobe then announced Photoshops 25th birthday link   Photoshop is also used across a wide spectrum of users as the software of choice to creatively work with digital images and it is the Industry Standard for the graphic arts.  Adobe also produces Photoshop Elements and Lightroom software tailored specifically for photographers, with a much reduced feature set of 'creative' features. Surveys suggest that Photoshop is still the preferred software for photographers, by some margin too, if the survey results are to believed. 

After 25 years Photoshop is a mature and complex software, requiring a significant investment in time to understand the tools and capabilities. To facilitate the learning process are an industry of authors, trainers and workshop providers to educate and enlighten users on the software, most often for a fee. There is also an extensive online presence of websites, forums and blogs dedicated to photoshop enthusiasts.

It's fair to suggest that in contrast with the early years, Adobe now actively markets the photoshop software with an emphasis on its 'creative manipulation' abilities, as on the same blog are posts titled :

Celebrating Manipulated Photography with the Photoshop ‘Faking It’ Contest link

Show Off Your Image Manipulation Skills in the Photoshop ‘Faking It’ Contest link

Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop link

Magenta/Reds/Yellows heavily desaturated - acceptable image manipulation?

So, what has this got to do with Landscape Photography? Well, if you declare yourself a fine art landscape photographer or a contemporary landscape photographer, there's no real standards or ethics for landscape image integrity. Pretty much anything goes in manipulating your images to match your artistic statement and creative vision of what YOU saw, but the unemotional camera failed so miserably to capture. Yup, clone away anything that creates tension, enhance a sky, or just cut, paste and blend in another sky. In fact pretty much anything can be added i.e sun beams, sunlit foreground, added drama in the sky, an oversized moon, some extra colour or saturation for the emotional impact ...  There are layer masks for saturation, luminosity, sharpening and colour space channels to be blended. There are blending modes, opacity sliders, different images exposed for shadows, mid tones and high lights can be blended, the creative manipulation potential is endless.  It would be surprising to discover a fine art landscape photograph(s) that hasn't been manipulated.

A few years back many landscape photographers would have a statement somewhere on their website declaring that they didn't digitally manipulate their images, you have to search long and hard to find a similar statement today.  More truthful, were the claims made that their digital processing never exceeded what could be achieved in the traditional 'darkroom' with film, which as it turns out was quite a lot. Todays landscape photographer statement is some vanilla flavoured fluff, with the words; joy; privilege; natures beauty; wilderness untouched by man; photographs are the culmination of years of experience; creative vision; blah, blah, blah ... Any reference to digital image manipulation is avoided or digital 'processing' (cough) of an image is a necessary evil, to accurately reflect the memory of the photographer of the scene captured. Of course.

If anyone raises the integrity of digital landscape photographs and photoshop, the usual replies will be
- Everyone else does it.
- Worse was done back in the days of film.
- Ansel Adams manipulated his images.
- It is the digital 'darkroom'.
- It is my artistic vision.
- Photography is a manipulation of reality.
- The genie is out of the bottle and you can't put it back in.
- The photography world has moved on.
- No ones telling me what a real photograph is.
- I only clone out man made objects.
- It improves the composition.

Which suggests that what defines the integrity of an image, rests heavily with the photographer and their own ethics.

For myself, starting out in landscape photography, I invested heavily into photoshop as that was the recommended software for processing digital images. I was at first beguiled by and then with time, all too aware of the tools and commands to change the essential truth of an image in content, lighting and colour. To become familiar with photoshop you need to use it on a fairly regular basis to remain up to speed, I discovered if I hadn't used it for few weeks, then I had to spend time re-familiarising myself with short cut keys, tools, commands etc Then thankfully in addition to the Camera manufacturers RAW image developing software, two  additional products were released, Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom.  For me, this was a timely development, as I had already come to the realisation that improvements in my composition, awareness of lighting, weather conditions, experience in the field and better camera gear, were rewarding me with better photographs, that required far less time spent in photoshop. Come to think of it, I can't ever recall a Photoshop acolyte suggesting that the radical idea of improving your photography was a better investment of resources for more rewarding images. Apple's Aperture was first on the market, I tried it, found it intuitive, liked it and have used Aperture ever since, I only take single shot images, all edits are at the RAW level and it also has a direct printing capability. My last Photoshop edition was CS2 and from an upgrade feature perspective, it at least underlined the maturity of the software for photography image processing.

What sealed the deal, were comparisons of images processed in Aperture compared with Photoshop both for print and computer display. A set of images were processed and printed and then stored away. A couple of months later the images and prints were again viewed and with one exception, I preferred the less 'over processed' look of Aperture. The one exception, was a less than optimally crafted photograph, that photoshop produced a better image.

Ethical to clone or crop out car headlights?

Aside from the early days where images were manipulated to 'see what was possible', my philosophy has always been to convey a truthful representation of the scene, there's less personal angst with morals.  Certainly with the switch to Aperture my processing has been in pretty much in accord with the World Press Photo guidance for digital processing of image files - if needed lens corrections; clone nothing out or in, except for dust and sensor blemishes. I generally agree with only minimal cropping of the image, my current view finder has 97% coverage and that 3% sometimes needs cropping. However I will also crop to an aspect ratio that I have deliberately composed for in the field, this doesn't apply too often with a 21MP sensor, but I definitely envisage more panoramic aspect ratios with much higher MP sensors. Tone, saturation and contrast are from minimal dodging/burning/curves/levels in a RAW developer, but I am conscious that my current camera manual WB and AWB have issues with dawn/dusk/twilight colours as they lack my eye's chromatic adaption.
So, if in the unlikely event of Landscape Photography ever having guidelines and standards akin to those set out by World Press photo,  I'd like to think my images would meet the criteria of image integrity.