All digital photographs are “manipulated” inside the device or camera from the instant they are recorded, usually with little or no awareness by the photographer of exactly what’s going on in there.

Smartphone photographs are instantly and extensively “manipulated” before they appear a fraction of a second later on the review screen.

Because in some situations the device or camera makes changes that in other situations a photographer makes,

on this website, the term “manipulation” refers to any change made to a photograph, whether that change is made deliberately by a human, automatically by a device or camera, or by any other means.

When the term “manipulations” is defined as broadly as TTG defines it above, it is difficult to argue that any published photograph can be completely “unmanipulated” (not even news photographs).

Thus the term “unmanipulated” is never used on this website to refer to TTG photographs (TTG photographs only have to be “undoctored,” not “unmanipulated” or “unaltered”).

For any actions done on photographs, TTG uses the term “changes” rather than “manipulations.”

The word “manipulations” often has negative connotations, while many changes made to photographs positively impact those images’ trustworthiness. TTG’s Allowable Changes

• See also FAQ #5

• Points #3–5 of this brief discuss the effects on the mindset of the photographer of device-performed manipulations