The Importance Of Ethics In Photoshop

At what point does the pursuit of aesthetics violate ethics? The point that photo manipulation violates ethics for me is when the manipulation is done with the intension to deceive the viewer. When you correct, manipulate, and enhance images in Photoshop, you must deal with questions of both ethics and aesthetics. Ethics are a set of rules that we invent that define what we think is good and bad. Ethics are a set of moral principles or values. Aesthetics, on the other hand, deal with the nature of beauty, art and taste, and things that are pleasing in appearance. With digital processing, there is almost no limit to what can be done to an image, and many things are done to images with the best intentions. The question is when can does the pursuit of aesthetics violate our ethics. Changes can be to images that are undetectable, so much so that there is now discussion that photographs will no longer be allowed as evidence in courts of law. Today’s viewers however are very sophisticated visually. They know that anything can be done to an image. Problems arise though because viewers expect to be fooled and feel betrayed when they are fooled in an allegedly factual medium such as the news business. Everything will fall along a continuum and it is humans who decide the rules for what is considered ethical behavior and these rules can and do change over time. The fact we forget is that when we take a picture we do not make a perfectly objective recording of reality. What we make is an interpretation of reality. Another problem in the recording of nature is inherent in the choice of technology used by a photographer. It is also a fact that color is created in the mind of the observer. It is not a physical property of objects in the world...

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... images with Photoshop some people are questioning whether images are real or fake wondering if they can believe anything they see anymore. But people have been faking photos since the invention of photography this is nothing new. Lots of people get enjoyment out of it. As long as the purpose of the art is not intentionally mislead or misinterpreted and the artist is clear of his methods and intentions no one gets fooled. There are some art forms such as magic that intentionally meant to deceive the viewer and the viewer goes along with it. It only becomes a problem and question when the artist or photographer lies about his motivations, methods and conclusions and present the image with the purpose to deceive the viewer. Overall I think it the line is drawn when the image is manipulated and enhanced to deceive the viewers. This is my opinion of photo manipulations.