Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Is it ever alright to manipulate a photo?

News photos shouldn't be manipulated. In fact, use of software such as Adobe PhotoShop should be aimed at reproducing the image in as close approximation as possible to what a person with normal vision would have seen looking at the event.

John Dickson, photo editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer made that point last week during his presentation on photography to staffers at the P-I.

He made a number of other great suggestions about how to use a camera, that we'll try to get to in future posts.

But if you're interested in more discussion by journalists about manipulating photographs, mark your calendar for a Feb. 5 Poynter live chat with the institute's Sara Quinn and Kenny Irby with McClatchy's director of photo services, Harry Walker.

For more of my suggestions from the staff photo seminar and to get tips on how to use Picnik editing software, click here.

Finally, in case you missed it, Michelle Nicolosi also responded to questions about where you can find photos you can use on Flickr, and spells out how to tell if they're in the "public domain" or subject to copyright protections (click here for that).

No comments:

Post a Comment