At what point does the pursuit of aesthetics violate ethics? Where photo manipulation violates ethics for me is when the manipulation is done with the intention of deceiving the viewer. When you correct, manipulate, and enhance images in Photoshop, you face both ethical and aesthetic issues. Ethics is a set of rules we make up to define what we think is good and bad. Ethics is a set of moral principles or values. Aesthetics, on the other hand, deals with the nature of beauty, art and taste, and things that are pleasing in appearance. With digital processing there is almost no limit to what can be done to an image and many things are done to images with the best of intentions. The question is: when can the pursuit of aesthetics violate our ethics? The changes may involve images that are undetectable, so much so that there is now discussion that photographs will no longer be allowed as evidence in courts. Today's viewers, however, are very visually sophisticated. They know you can do anything to an image. Problems arise, however, because viewers expect to be deceived and feel betrayed when they are deceived in a supposedly fact-based medium such as the news world. Everything will fall along a continuum and it is humans who decide the rules for what is considered ethical behavior and these rules can and do change over time. What we forget is that when we take a photo we are not making a perfectly objective record of reality. What we do is an interpretation of reality. Another problem in nature recording is inherent in the choice of technology used by a photographer. It is also a fact that color is created in the mind of the observer. It is not a physical property of objects in the world… half of the paper… photoshop images some people wonder whether images are real or fake wondering if they can believe everything they see anymore. But people have been doctoring photos since the invention of photography, it's nothing new. Many people get pleasure from it. As long as the purpose of the art is not intentionally misled or misunderstood and the artist is clear in his methods and intentions no one is fooled. There are some art forms such as magic that are intentionally meant to deceive the viewer and the viewer goes along with it. It only becomes a problem and a question when the artist or photographer lies about his motives, methods and conclusions and presents the image with the purpose of deceiving the viewer. Overall I think the line is drawn when the image is manipulated and enhanced to deceive viewers. This is my opinion on photo manipulations.