Composite/Manipulated Images

Manipulation: to handle or control in a skilful manner.

Photo Manipulation: this is the process to transform a photograph into a desired image.

Ethical and Personal Perspectives on Image Manipulation

The dictionary defines ethics as a set of moral principles or values. As photography is the way of capturing nature more realistically than any other means, there are ethical issues to consider when manipulating an image. When editing an image through editing software such as Photoshop, the limits to which a person could change the image are endless. This, in a way, betrays the viewer of the image as it makes the finished product 'false'. One of the biggest examples of ethical problems when manipulating images is the manipulation of peoples faces and bodies. The two people who are most effected by this are the model and the viewer. This could damage the model as they would see what other people think of their bodies and would perhaps make them focus on their 'imperfections', and it could damage the viewer by making them want to reach an unrealistic body goal. Although, there are some circumstances where image manipulation would not be so controversial and 'wrong', for example if the photographer were to edit the lighting or the filter of an image in order to make the image sharper or brighter/darker. 

In What Areas of the Art and Design/Photography Industries Are Manipulated Images Used

Image manipulation is used in almost all areas of the photography or art and design industry, but it is the degree to which images are manipulated that varies. For example, the National Geographic photographers are more than likely to only touch up their images in terms of lighting balance as their job is to photograph nature in its realist form. In comparison, a photographer for a magazine such as Vogue are likely to photoshop their model's to an extreme extent as the company which they work for focus on beauty and fashion. This would also apply to the film industry, as shown in the image above which is a poster for a movie. The poster would have been edited to this extent to make a movie seem more appealing to someone seeing the advertisement for the first time. There is also the fact that some people may manipulate images for conceptual reasons, for example, artists or photographers who work with surrealism. The ability to manipulate images allows these artists to create their work in many different forms.

National Geographic.

Demi Moore - HR Magazine.

Surrealism Photography.

My Opinion

I believe that, to an extent, manipulating images is okay. In my opinion, I believe that editing should only be used in order to improve the overall quality of the image and not to change the appearance of something, as this creates a false image and, if the object edited is a person, is ethically wrong. I believe it to be ethically wrong as it implies that the person photographed is imperfect and needs to be 'fixed'. It could also have a bad effect on younger audiences, as manipulated images of women's appearance could give them unrealistic beauty standards as they would strive to achieve a certain look that has only been created through photoshop.