[WikiEN-l] Dealing with photoshopped images?

[Andrew Gray]

2008/6/30 Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com>:

> The sharpness of the monitor image does not correspond to the
> sharpness of the surrounding items. The monitor image is beyond the
> monitor screen at the lower left corner.

The white fuzzy line across the bottom extends just past the edge of
the image. Might it be an actual print, taped over the screen? That
looks vaguely like some kind of thin masking tape...

Other amusement: look at point 4 of the restrictions notice on the wall...

> Even if someone considers such an image to be suitable for using it in
> Wikipedia, it should be a standard procedure to at least mention the
> editing (assuming that there was one).

Yes, if it's been edited *by us*. As it is, this is exactly as it was
released by the source -
http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/040813-F-0000C-002.jpg -
you can see the odditites in the lower right and left of the monitor
screen there, too.

So we're in a quandary - maybe it's been edited, maybe it hasn't.
Should we really start making editorial remarks about Photoshopped
images when we're just surmising they've been edited? This is the sort
of interpretation that is likely to come back and bite us - we
wouldn't allow that kind of original meta-analysis of print sources to
be presented to the reader, after all.

(I do concur with the idea that if we're unhappy with the image, we
should find something better)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk