From the Guardian
"A certain amount of scepticism is a healthy thing in journalists and readers alike. Going through the thousands of photographs that
the Guardian picture desk receives each day, we try to keep a critical eye on anything that could be the result of digital retouching software like Photoshop. We are kept on our toes by eagle-eyed readers, always alive to the possibility of artifice.
The most common complaint is the "flipping" of a photograph. This often happens accidentally when using images from picture libraries that have been scanned from negatives or transparencies. But there is also an old tradition in newspaper design for a picture, especially of a person, to face into the page or story that it illustrates, and subeditors have a tendency to want to "flip" to achieve this. But
it is against our guidelines.
Our rule about the use of Photoshop and other picture-manipulating software is that cropping and toning – basically anything that might have been done in a darkroom – is OK, but the moving of pixels or "cutting and pasting" is forbidden. We have to trust our photographers and the agencies we deal with not to indulge in anything that might go against our guidelines, but usually it's difficult to spot. I suspect the odd door handle, light switch and extraneous elbow may have been retouched by perfectionist photographers, and most of the time this probably doesn't matter because the pictures are being used in a non-news context – a portrait in the arts pages, for example."
How about changing the Club competition rules to say that " use of Photoshop and other picture-manipulating software is that cropping and toning – basically anything that might have been done in a darkroom – is OK, but the moving of pixels or "cutting and pasting" is forbidden."
