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There is always this question of ethics amongst any type of work – be you a journalist, a banker, a lawyer, a doctor, a tele-marketer, or even a local janitor. From a photographer’s point of view, there is always this ethical question when it comes to post-processing the photos that has been meticulously framed – how much editing should be done before it is considered unethical/fake/cheating/misrepresented?

• Would the use of graduated filter in photoshop to make blue skies bluer considered unethical?
• Would the use of the clone/heal tool in photoshop to clone/heal out that unnecessary distraction/zits away considered unethical?
• Or even adjusting the brightness/contrast/exposure to make a certain shot “perfect”. Would that be considered unethical?

One may argue that a photographer is an artist - besides capturing/framing the moment, the photographer is also allowed to tamper his creation as he wishes.

Another may disagree with the statement above and claim that a photographer is a “scanner” – he/she should represent his subjects as accurately as possible, just like a scanner – any use of photo-editing software is considered unethical and the photographer should be prosecuted for the slight “misrepresentation” of the subject.

While the majority (I think) would probably be sitting somewhere in between the fence, post-processing of photos, to us, is quite acceptable, BUT, to a certain extent.

Now the question again is – how much is too much?

The following shot of the Red Bull lady in Murdoch Open Day 2008 was edited using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0.

This, is the original shot (NEF converted to JPG).

So, would this be considered unethical/fake/cheating/misrepresented?

Tell me what you think in the comments section below. Cheers!