#18 in a series of background briefs

Un/derstanding three similar words

  • 1. No TTG photograph need be “unmanipulated”

    The term “unmanipulated” is basically meaningless and is never used on this website to describe TTG photos.

    When the word “manipulation” is defined as broadly as TTG defines it, there is no such thing as an “unmanipulated” digital photograph.

    Every digital photo undergoes “manipulations” inside the device or camera from the instant it is recorded (before the photographer even sees the image on the screen). See also #3–5 here.

  • 2. No TTG photograph need be “unaltered”

    This term refers to the most original, least-changed version of the photo that can be obtained from the device or camera after any baked-in internal processing.

    The “unaltered” version of a photo is what will be used in VUOs.

    An “unaltered” image is focus maximized and undergoes no additional cropping, no additional color correction, no additional brightness adjustments, no non-optical bokeh, no non-optical perspective correction, and no changed lighting effects.

    See also FAQ {#2111} and see SOOC.

  • 3. But all TTG-qualified photos are “undoctored”

    . . . just as all newsphotos are.

    • The requirement of being “undoctored” is in P2

    • The term “undoctored” refers to a photo that shows “nothing other than what the camera lens saw at the moment the picture was taken.”

    The formal definition of “undoctored”

    Note that photographs can undergo some or all of TTG’s Allowable Changes and still be considered “undoctored.”

  • 4. “changes” = “anything done to a photo after it is recorded”

    TTG favors the word “changes” because the word “manipulations” has too many negative connotations to be useful for actions that can improve the trustworthiness of photos, such as color corrections.

    TTG’s Allowable Changes