As usual, when people bring up the subject of digital manipulation, I'm confused. Is it the "manipulation" of images (in this case, photos) or is it the "digital" that is getting everyone's knickers in a twist? Is it okay to create an artist's interpretation if the piece is intended for a museum, but not if it's for print somewhere?
Digital age... distort history? That's just bizarre. Fashion is not news. It is not history, other than in the study of culture.

Alice, you say that it is done to "greater extremes." What exactly do you mean by that? Only that it is more pervasive? I can go to just about any library and find (old) books with extensively retouched photos in them. I have found books from the 40s about how photo fakes were done. In the photo of my ancestors I mentioned above, my great-grandmother was added in the dark room. She was not present for the original photo. Adding someone to an image is pretty extreme.

Bee, you claim that "Earlier retouched photos were pretty obvious..." This is not true. Granted that amatuer jobs were east to spot, but a competent lab tech could create images that you cannot tell were touched. But the same holds true today. I've seen numerous images that were obviously retouched, the sure sign of a bad job. But a good job of retouching *is not* detectable. That holds for the past as well as today.

And why is it that photography is singled out? I can walk thru just about any business or shopping area and find women that have alterer their appearance with makeup and/or clothing. Do you think all famous people in the paintings all over the world really looked as good as the painting, or did the artist do a little "idealization" as he put brush to canvas? Before Hef and the skin magazines there were pin-ups (and I'm sure some of you remember when those were prevailent). Do you believe those drawings were accurate portrails of the models?

PHoto Shop (sic) is a tool. Hear, hear! It is no more a tool than brushes and paint, or pen and ink. Why can a painter capture his vision and be praised for it, but if we use digital means to create an image we are condemned for it?

DavetG - you write about not adding to the pressure or offending one group (those of small stones). Why is that group any more important than any other? Personally, and I'm not alone, I find the overly cautious, politally correct way of speaking to be offensive. If you have a bunch of nancy-boys toning down their language to keep from offending one group, they end up offending another. You can't please all of the people all of the time. So why should one group get preferential treatment over the other?

Karen Carpenter died before digital manipulation. So we're back to the question of "digital" or "manipulation"?