Reuters Issues A Ban On Images Processed From RAW

A better path for Reuters to take might be to simply say to photographers: "If you misrepresent the truth by manipulating a photograph, we will (1) end all future contact with you, (2) announce your behavior to the public, and (3) sue you for damages."

Simply trying to stop manipulation of photo data does nothing about the photographer that misrepresents what is being photographed, who is being photographed, when they were photographed, or where they were photographed.
 
How will they check? It's not as if EXIF can't be falsified easily.

Say I get a Pulitzer-worthy set of shots all under-exposed by two stops. Should they not be used?
 
I toiled for what was, in the past, the world's largest news gathering organization, as a staff photographer. Making changes is for such a firm is like trying to turn the Queen Mary liner around vs turning a small sailboat. It is silly to expect them to do the perfect thing. Most of the time they don't even do it right. No need to get one's underwear in a twist. I suspect they want to cut the download time more than anything else.
 
Please *read*.

If you want to shoot raw images that’s fine, just take JPEGs at the same time. Only send us the photos that were originally JPEGs, with minimal processing (cropping, correcting levels, etc).
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This is a general workflow issue. And full resolution JPGs these days are typically good enough for anything.
 
That's interesting. I would find that problematic for shooting certain situations, like high school sports. We use RAW for that because it allows us to pull up an image that was shot in some very dark places. I've shot in gyms where even with the ISO cranked to 12800 we were still underexposing at f2.8 and a shutter speed that would freeze the action. So having a RAW file allows us to at least get some kind of a workable image.

Adjusting exposure, white balance, highlights & shadows, along with cropping are all we do. But doing those on a RAW file, then compressing to JPG, gives the news organization a much better file to work with than if you did those adjustments on a JPG, then compressed again on the file you output.
 
filmdood said:
I suspect they want to cut the download time more than anything else.
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And even more so the editing time. I'm in the radio industry now, and can confirm that editors do get annoyed when the reporters try to pile the editor's job on top of their regular duties. There is no need to "improve" a image (or interview) out in the field on a sub-notebook - it will be worse than letting the experts deal with it back in the main office, and it will waste significant amounts of time (in many situations there are enough photographers around taking virtually identical pictures of an event that the first agency on the market will make most of the sales).
 
Editing time. You are right, I didn't think of that. And yes, the first agency on the market gets the bucks. We at the wire service used to say we had a "deadline every minute" (24-7) and this was before the Internet.
 
Why not just ask for minor adjustments only? Are JPEGS really harder to "fake" with than RAWs?

What about redeye?
 
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