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Digitally Altered - definition - dos and don'ts


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I have some pictures of dogs in a park.  On some of the images I may have photo-shopped out a leg that got in the way, a tree or debris attached to the dog which wasn't supposed to be there.  I may have warmed the grass up from the blue scale towards the yellow scale.  The result - an image which could still have been taken naturally quite easily.  The location has no identifiable features - it's just a park - it could be any park.  It's not like it is an identifiable place and someone could go there and wonder why the sky wasn't purple or something.  Do I need to say that image was digitally altered?

 

If I photo-shop out debris in a street (e.g. chewing gum, litter, cigarette butts) do I need to say the image was digitally altered?

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Colour balance alterations, no. That's processing.

Fag ends, no. That's spotting.

Dog legs, yes. That is alteration.

In my book, if you could have done it in the darkroom, short of the full Henry Peach Robinson treatment,  it's not altered.

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LOL :-) Poor dogs...  To clarify - for example - if there is a distracting human leg in the background I'd choose to take it out as the focus of the image is the dog...  Those legs always get in on the better shots of the dog...  I'll have others with no stray legs in the background but the image of the dog may be inferior...  It's kind of spotting.  Big spotting, but still - you're taking out something that shouldn't be there, rather than something which is a permanent fixture.

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So if you are digitally altering the image, 'Digitally altered?' = yes.  Simples.

 

There's nothing wrong with saying they are digitally altered - if I take out something like a aerial etc., I just say 'yes' to digital alteration and in the description field I give a note of what the digital alteration is. I think that buyers would want to know what I have altered so that they know that the 'truth' of the image has not been messed with (in the case of editorial images at least). They may not use them, but I think it's just best to be honest about it. 

 

Alamy do not penalise you for digital alteration unless you make a hash of it.  

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I'm with Lastrega unless as Ann question it is a news image. Then removing anything at all is a no-no, even if you had waited a second and it wouldn't have been there - so why didn't you wait the second?.

 

In my experience not quite correct, about the waiting one second. I have waited a fraction of a second, and the image was gone for ever. In the middle of a moving crowd where a speaker uses a megaphone f.inst.

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In these cases i would upload 2 versions.

 

1.. The original unaltered, with leg...

 

2.. The altered version without leg. marked as digitally altered. 

 

I would then cross-reference the images in the description field saying "this image is digitally altered ... <description of edit> ... unaltered version available in image <alamy ref> " and visa-versa....

 

Then the client decides...

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The point with 'digitally altered' was to make sure if you had moved the Duomo a little to the left and added another tower in the background, it was marked as such. 

 

 

Not to quibble with you, but I've never seen that explained here - either it's been before my time, or I have missed it entirely. The only thing I have to go on is Alamy's explanation :

 

Whilst many images may be altered to a certain degree, if the original scene has been changed significantly we define it as digitally altered. This includes adding, moving, or removing items and major changes to saturation, contrast and levels. Essentially, a digitally altered image is a distorted image of the original scene.

An image should not be classed as digitally altered if it has been cropped, converted to black and white or if minor changes have been made to levels and saturation.

Editorial customers (e.g. newspapers, magazines, book publishers) need to know if an image has been altered such that it no longer has the exact appearance of the original. Some customers need to be guaranteed a degree of authenticity.

 

Anyway, I am not saying what others should do - I am replying to the OP with what I do and some of the reasoning I have for that, in the spirit of offering help. Mostly I do it because the question is there and I would rather say 'yes' than deliberately say 'no' if I know the image to be altered. 

 

I'm not able to comment on degrees of alteration or what other people think of as alteration, I can only speak for myself and interpret the above explanation as best I can.

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No alterations without stating it - but there has to be a minimum space for microscopic improvements. No two camera brands sees the image alike. No two sensors with dead pixels creates the same image in microscopic detail. Dust buns and spots will have to be removed. A very distant bird in the sky looking like a dust spot may disappear.

 

Always according to the spirit of the rules, not the fundamentalist readers' strict letter of the rules.

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Reminds me of the furore over the legs removed from a shot under the banners of 5 players who had died in an accident (top photos in link). It was then found the photographer had consistently submitted photos that had been digitally altered. These were for news though and the guy got sacked.

 

http://www.toledoblade.com/assets/pdf/TO16827415.PDF

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This is the definition according to standard press practices... ignore at your peril ;-) 

 

http://www.epuk.org/the-curve/image-manipulation 

 

Julie, someone has manipulated your link.  :)

 

 

Try now - sorted I think...

 

 

 

Thank you, Julie - i'm sure I remember you posting on a similar thread previously. The five step explanation is very helpful, thanks.

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Excluding news images:

 

I hold that the spirit of the "rule" is more important than any single exact rendering of same.

 

For example:

 

Camera on tripod. I shoot an image of landmark, but some idiot photo-bombs me, leaping in front of my camera, with the result being him covering the right third of the image. So I shoot again (the landmark stoically refuses to change one iota between both shots)--same idiot, same photo-bombing attempt, only this time he covers the LEFT third of the image.

 

In post-processing I combine the two images, thereby allowing me to remove the two photo-bombings to show a perfect image of landmark. I would not mark that as digitally altered: the landmark is exactly as it was when I photographed it.

 

dd

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From Julies link.

 

"5. Image montage – using elements of more than one image to make a photograph that is no longer a genuine representation of the scene."

 

 

 

There are some very good examples on Alamy of this type of image, NOT marked digitally altered, with the same image of a person in more than one picture, even mirrored in some of the shots.

The pictures are really good, and not news pics, but not marked as digitally altered.
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Here is one of mine that the original is not altered.  I removed electrical lines in Photoshop because the original image had been zoomed a few times but never sold.  The altered image sold last year shortly after it was uploaded.  In the description I note that electrical wires were removed.  I am not sure if the exposure changes are because of the way I visualize it or if it is because of what the newer version of Lightroom is capable of.  Its a 4 year difference.  It never hurts to upload both versions of a photo.  That way a customer can see exactly what has been done.

in-n-out-hamburger-in-modesto-california
in-n-out-hamburger-restaurant-in-modesto

 

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