Can you believe your eyes? People have manipulated images since before the invention of photography. Today's digital technology has simply made it easier and more common than ever.

• Author: Marsh, Bill
• Position: MEDIA

How amazing the first photographic images must have been to their early-19th-century viewers-the crisp, unassailable reality of people and events, without the filter of an artist's paintbrush. And what an opportunity for manipulation. It didn't take long for schemers to discover that with a little skill and imagination, photographic realism could be used to create manufactured realities.

"The very nature of photography was to record events," says Hany Farid, a computer science professor at Dartmouth College and a detective of photo fakery. "You'd think there would have been a grace period of respect for this new technology."

But in fact, fakers had already had practice before photography became widespread in the second half of the 19th century. A famous engraving of President Lincoln from the 1860s is actually Lincoln's head stuck on top of a senator's more regally posed body from an earlier engraving. The manipulation continued in the early days of photography: re-arranging the guns and bodies on Civil War battlefields to look more dramatic for the camera, and later, erasing political enemies, literally and figuratively, from the picture.

In recent years, with digital technology, it's become easier than ever to manipulate photographs. Now, anyone with a computer and Photoshop can do it.

"With just a few keyboard strokes and a click of the mouse, any of the imperfections that may come along with the reality of life may be removed," says Kenny Irby, head of visual journalism at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "Aesthetics now drive the value of an image more than the authenticity."

That's made it hugely tempting, Irby says, for photojournalists to retouch and "improve" their pictures in sometimes

subtle and often powerful ways. Most news organizations have strict rules prohibiting this.

Less clear-cut, however, are "photo-illustrations," which typically involve pasting together several images for editorial effect rather than deception. News organizations generally require that images be clearly labeled as photo-illustrations so that readers know they're not single photographs. But even when those rules are followed, such composites can be controversial since many people fail to read the fine print, and the overall effect can be misleading.

The fashion industry has never been subtle about retouching images, with skin blemishes removed and bodies frequently slimmed down (or enhanced in the case of fitness magazines). In 2003...