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"Aaah, there's certainly some Photoshopping in this picture, right?" - if I got a penny every time I heard that...

Image manipulation. What a dirty little word. For many people this word implies fraud and deceit. It implies that the photographer isn't saying the truth with their photography. That they lie to the viewer by making something out of a picture that wasn't there. In many people's eyes it also means that nowadays you don't have to take good pictures anymore. Photoshop will fix it for you. Right?

They couldn't be more wrong. Or as my friend Robin Preston, a great illustrator and photographer, usually puts it: You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Let me get on my soapbox and then together let's have a quick look at the different techniques that are used every day in order to "manipulate" photography.

1. RAW conversion. Most serious photographers use the RAW format these days. It has more dynamic range, and it allows for much more subtlety during post processing. A RAW file is like a negative. You have to develop or convert it. And this conversion process is the point in the workflow where the photographer can and should make decisions on things like white balance, contrasts, saturation. A first step in the manipulation of images. "But I only shoot JPG, so my pictures are untainted!" Well, not quite. At the point where you look at the JPG on your memory card, your camera has already made a whole big bunch of decisions for you. It has determined the white balance, it has played with the contrasts and color saturation, it has sharpened the image and compared to the RAW file, your camera has thrown away about 90% of the image data in order to compress it to a smaller size.

In short: relying on JPG, or rather on your camera to do the post processing for you is synonymous to handing off the image development decisions to someone else, in this case the computer that's built into your camera. Not unlikely to what usually happened to the films that you handed off to the corner drug store for development.

Did analog photographers do this? Hell yeah! Developing film, enlarging the image, choosing chemicals, temperatures, durations, types of film, types of paper, ... that all had an influence on how the images came out.

2. Straightening. Yes, I'm guilty of straightening at least one out of ten of my images during post processing. It just happens that I don't hold the camera exactly straight sometimes. It has become better since I've started using a grid screen in my camera's viewfinder, but I still don't always get it right. Why do I straighten? Because I don't like that horizontal line of a building right next to the left side of the frame of my image to be one degree off and shout at the viewer "HEY! LOOK! The photographer had a little accident here!". Skewed water surfaces are even more prone to cause some level of discomfort with the viewer. Even half a degree off and the image will start waving a little red flag. And I usually want my viewers to feel comfortable when they look at my photography.

Did analog photographers straighten images? You better believe it! It's one of the easiest things to do actually. Just slightly rotate the photo paper before you expose it.

3. Contrasts. If you've ever shot in the RAW format, you will know that these images have the tendency to look more flat and less contrasty than JPG images. This is on purpose. In the RAW mode, the camera will produce images that are specifically made to be post processed. And this includes the contrasts. Contrast is extremely important. Photography is not an absolute art but has a lot to do with how contrasts relate to each other. So managing the contrasts in your image becomes an integral part of the process.

Did analog photographers manage contrasts? You betcha! Ansel Adams' Zone System is all about contrast management. Choice of film, paper, chemicals, temperatures, durations, ... all of that will influence contrasts.

4. Brightness distribution. Brightening parts of an image and darkening others? Bring out your pitchforks!! Or.. wait. Back in the analog darkroom we did the same thing. Burn and dodge. During the exposure of the photo paper that usually took several seconds to minutes, we would allow for more light to fall on those areas that we wanted to darken down (it's a negative process) and we would temporarily block light from those areas of the picture that we wanted to brighten up. Ansel Adams did a lot of that too. In fact most of the time that he spent taking (or making?) a picture was in the darkroom, managing brightness/darkness distribution (let's call that contrasts) making use of his Zone System.

5. Local contrast enhancements. If you apply a large radius unsharp mask filter (USM) to your image, you will effectively increase the local contrast. Smaller structures will appear more contrasty. You have control over this by varying the radius and amount you set for your unsharp mask. Now this MUST be cheating! Right?

Well, not exactly. At least there is nothing specifically digital about it. It's a technique which again derives from the analog world. It has been used to enhance contrasts and perceived image sharpness long before we had computers with Photoshop.

So what's the verdict? Are digital photographers cheaters? Is it wrong to adjust an image digitally? Let me hear your opinion in the comments!