(“Q2” = Qualification #2 of the three qualifications
that all TrustImage-qualified photographs meet)

This website often says that “Many newspapers allow more
manipulations than Q2 does but none allow fewer.”
Why does Q2 employ the “strictest common
denominator” of the newspaper industry instead of
a more relaxed set of practices from that industry?

For two reasons:

1) To maximize trustworthiness: if all other factors are equal between two photographs, the photograph that undergoes the least manipulation will be more trusted by viewers.

Since the purpose of TrustImage is to help reassure viewers about the trustworthiness of unfamiliar photographs (including photos created by photographers they’ve never heard of!), in order to maximize “trustworthiness” Q2 had to be constructed such that no widely accepted photography standard allows fewer manipulations than it (Q2) does.

2) Because every photograph that qualifies as TrustImage has to be “Free of content manipulation.”

As it says often on this site, the TrustImage label was created to label exceptions to the growing public assumption that “Photographs are content-manipulated unless labeled otherwise.” That means that Q2 cannot allow for ANY manipulations that any experienced observer would construe as “content” manipulations.

Q2 cannot leave any room for reasonable viewers to say, “I can’t believe TrustImage allows that in a photograph that is considered free of content manipulation!”

By limiting itself to the only four manipulations allowed by every newspaper in the world, Q2 is designed to head off any objections that it allows “content” manipulation.

Any readers who “can’t believe TrustImage allows that in a photograph that is considered free of content manipulation” — i.e., anyone who feels that any of the four kinds of manipulations allowed for in Q2 constitutes “content” manipulation even when that manipulation is not done to excess, as stipulated by Q3 — may want to contact a newspaper that allows that particular manipulation in reportage photographs and ask why it is allowed. {FAQ #135}

Not coincidentally, the definition of “content manipulation” used on this website mirrors Q2.

_____________

Every time photographers cuss at Qualification #2 (and they do!), they should remember that (for the two reasons above) Q2 has to meet the strictest consensus definition of “content” manipulation, not a more moderate or popular definition of that term.

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