Photographs are a huge part in today’s major publications because with every story or news article, photos are used to bring the story to life and make things more enjoyable to read. In order to get photos to fit nicely among publications, alterations of these photos are often necessary.

Photo manipulation, which is defined as transforming or altering a photograph using various methods and techniques to achieve desired results, is very commonly used while working with photos. A simple photo manipulation is necessary and ethical, but it’s important for publications to avoid a different, unethical type of photo alteration: photo distortion, which is a change, twist, or exaggeration that makes something appear different from the way it really is.

For the school’s yearbook club, it’s important for the members to make photo alterations on a regular basis so they work nicely in the yearbook, but they also have to be careful enough to not actually distort the photo creating an unethical issue.

Yearbook teacher Laurie Hansen and her students deal with photo alterations on a regular basis in their club, and are careful to avoid any edits that may be unethical and wrong to do.

“When editing a photo you shouldn’t remove things that were originally there. We aren’t allowed to add things or take things out that would imply something happened that did not,” Hansen said. “Adding and subtracting things from a photo would be considered too far, but fixing things up like blemishes and scratches is totally fine.”

In yearbook, the bulk of changes made to photos are just small things that are necessary to fit the photo on the page correctly or fix a lighting issue to make the photo easier to see.

“We change photos in yearbook all the time. It’s usually nothing too serious, but the photos need to be changed in order to benefit the finished product of the page,” senior Sarah McCarthy said. “A common edit I make to every photo is to simply crop the photo. Cropping removes out extra background content that isn’t needed in the focus of the photo. I also will change the brightness or contrast of a photo a lot, especially if the lighting of the photo is bad.”

Other common edits made are to simply improve the quality of the photos to make them look better to the eye and make sure that they are easy to see. If the photo has any issues that gives it poor quality, the club will use their photo editing skills to fix the photo to look nice enough to use.

“Sometimes in yearbook, we will retouch facial flaws, or take blemishes off people’s faces. Often times when parents send me baby pictures they will be cracked or scratched and I can take out big gashes,” Hansen said. “But, most of what we do is correct color. One time I had to photoshop a foot onto a boy in a photo, but that’s as far as I would go to keep things ethical.” 

Although photo distortion is greatly avoided in the school’s yearbook, there is a way to use it in a positive way as long as the club follows one rule that gives them the right to actually do it. All they have to do is simply label the photo as a photo alteration, to let the public know the photo has been changed.

“You can alter an image if you label the photograph as an alteration and not a true photograph. As long as the public knows that the photo has been digitally manipulated it’s totally okay to do,” Hansen said.

The ability to alternate a photo comes in handy all the time in the club. “I definitely think distorting an image is worth it because it takes a lot of time to just get the photo so if you can use the skills you have already with photoshop you will save yourself time in the end,” senior Maddie Huntley said.

Although in major publications, digital alterations can be used inappropriately to distort a photo in a negative way, the school’s yearbook really takes advantage of being able to edit photos and does it in an ethical way. The club is careful to be aware of the boundaries they have, and edit their photos only in a positive, helpful way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_manipulation

What is Lens Distortion?

https://stillwaterschools.org/schools/high-school/stillwater-area-high-school/clubs/yearbook-kabekonian

https://stillwaterschools.org/our-staff/laurie-hansen