What may be changed in a news photograph, and what may not

The line that newsrooms draw sits in a consistent place, and it is easier to state than to hold: you may adjust how the frame is rendered, and you may not adjust what it contains.

The permitted side

These are the operations that take a captured frame and present it faithfully.

Global tonal adjustment. Exposure, contrast, highlight and shadow recovery, applied to the whole frame. This is the digital equivalent of choosing a paper grade and a development time, and it has never been controversial.

Colour correction. Setting white balance so that the scene reads as the eye would have seen it. Correcting a colour cast introduced by mixed lighting is restoration, not alteration.

Cropping. Trimming the frame, with the important qualification discussed below.

Removing sensor dust and scan artefacts. Marks introduced by the equipment are not part of the scene, and removing them restores rather than alters.

Converting to greyscale, where the publication's format requires it and the caption does not depend on colour.

The common property is that none of these adds anything that was not in front of the lens, and none removes anything that was.

The forbidden side

Adding an element. A sky from another frame, a person composited in, an object placed. This produces an illustration, and it must be labelled as one.

Removing an element. A bystander cloned out, a sign painted over, a piece of litter erased. This is the alteration most often defended as trivial and it is the one that does most damage, because it is invisible and because the removed element is frequently the one carrying context.

Moving an element. Repositioning a subject within the frame to improve the composition.

Selective adjustment that changes the reading. Burning down a background until a figure appears isolated, or lifting a face out of shadow it was actually in, changes what the picture reports even though nothing was added or removed.

Reversing or flipping the frame. Left and right are facts about the scene.

Cropping, which sits on the line

Cropping is permitted and cropping is also the most common way a news photograph is made to lie.

The workable test is whether the cropped frame supports a conclusion the full frame does not. Cutting empty space from the edge of a portrait fails nothing. Cutting a protest photograph so that a sparse crowd fills the frame changes what the reader is told about the size of the protest, and no amount of arguing that nothing was added makes that honest.

Where a crop passes the test, use it and say nothing; it is ordinary editing. Where it does not, either run the wider frame or state in the caption what falls outside it.

Crops made for privacy — obscuring a child's face, cutting graphic injury — are a separate case. They are legitimate, they change the frame, and they should be recorded in the asset so that a later use begins from the knowledge that the published version is not the whole one.

Photo-illustrations

A composite, a staged image, a reconstruction or a heavily manipulated frame can all be published. What they cannot be is published as news photographs.

The label goes in the caption, at the start, in plain words. A credit line reading "photo-illustration" is not sufficient, because credit lines are routinely stripped by syndication partners and aggregators while captions are not.

The test for whether a label is needed is simple: would a reader who learned how the image was made feel they had been misled? If yes, label it.

Keeping the evidence

The original file is the only proof that the published version is honest. Where the camera produced a raw file, that file is the record; where it produced a JPEG, that JPEG is.

Keep it unedited, in the library, linked to every derivative made from it. Store the adjustments as a non-destructive edit or an export recipe rather than flattening them into a new master.

This matters less often than people fear and more than they prepare for. Most frames are never questioned. The ones that are, are questioned months later, by somebody outside the building, and a desk that cannot produce the original has no answer.

Conclusion

Adjust how the frame is rendered; do not adjust what it contains. Crop to remove what is irrelevant, never to remove what is informative. Label anything that would change a reader's understanding if they knew how it was made. And keep the original, because the rule only has force if it can be checked.