Photoshop, a very powerful tool for fixing photos and working with images, can also be used to distort news or history. This week it was the Kerry + Fonda photo. Back at the start of 2003 an LA Times photographer in Iraq was fired for altering a photo.

We also learnt recently that Adobe and others have added code to their photo editing software to prevent users from scanning in or manipulating images of bank notes.

Digital photo and image manipulation can be a very useful tool, and a lot of fun when used responsibly (I’ve used it to “relocate” people to exotic places, cut pictures of objects out of their background for use as floating images on web pages). It is a shame that some people out there want to use it to manipulate facts or break laws.