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The big problem, frankly, is that it is fundamentally impossible to 
create a any image without image processing.  The creation of any 
image itself requires exactly the kind of processing that some folk 
call fraud.  Every image is a human construct.

Discussions such as this get bogged down in the details of whether a 
bicubic or bilinear interpolation is more true when the real 
questions are more fundamental, such as do the pictures accurately 
illustrate for colleagues or are the images showing a new biological 
(or pick your field phenomenon) process and are not the result of the 
instrument itself.

When the first telescopes and microscopes were invented, some people 
didn't believe that what they saw was a reality out in the sky or in 
a drop of fluid; they said that the new instruments created the 
images.  Lesson:  understand the technologies you use to study and discover.

Also, the fact is that the scientist who tells the story in the 
sexiest way wins.  Is the story itself one of merit?  That's of far 
more import than whether the images are silver grains, pixels or hand 
drawn sketches.  We all prefer aesthetically pleasing images; do they 
represent the real in a justifiable manner?

Yes, we do need norms or guidelines for honesty and adherence to a 
system or paradigm for assessing "truth", but this nitpicky stuff is 
just way too, well, nitpicky.

-Michael




>The big problem, frankly, is that it is fundamentally impossible to 
>create a digital image without image processing.  The creation of 
>the image itself requires exactly the kind of processing that some 
>folk call fraud.  The only difference is *where* you do the 
>processing -- in the camera, in the computer, or in the 
>display/printer.  The implication is that image processing is OK as 
>long as it's done ignorantly.
>
>The idea that there is some sort of pristine image in the camera 
>sensor that must be preserved is analogous to claiming that it is 
>fraud to develop and print photographic film because both the 
>processing and the printing require "processing" the image -- 
>dealing with issues of contrast, brightness, color balance, etc., 
>etc., etc..  To claim that analogous processes in digital imagery is 
>some sort of fraud is silly.  Is color calibration "fraud?"  I think 
>not.  In fact, I think a better argument can be made that there 
>could be a greater misrepresentation without color calibration, 
>gamma correction, etc.
>
>Attempts to say you can't do such things is merely requiring that 
>the user be willfully ignorant of what's happening and use the 
>default parameters (or last set parameters) of whatever imaging 
>pipeline is used.
>
>As I've noted before, this was a hot topic in the forensic imaging 
>world a few years ago.  One set of best practices guidelines adopted 
>by many forensics labs (the Scientific Working Group on Imaging 
>Technologies, or SWGIT) guidelines are pretty explicit.  See:
>
>http://www.theiai.org/guidelines/swgit/index.php
>
>and look at Section 11: Best Practices for Documenting Image Enhancement
>
>Basically the document divides enhancement methods into basic 
>processes commonly used in image production and/or analogous to 
>commonly accepted darkroom film processing (brightness/contrast 
>adjustment, cropping, rotation, inversion, white balance, file 
>format conversion, etc.) and "advanced" techniques such as 
>deblurring, noise reduction, image restoration, etc.
>
>For basic processes, it is only necessary to indicate that they are 
>done through some SOP or similar documentation.  For advanced 
>processing, all parts of the pipeline must be documented:
>
>"Documenting image enhancement steps should be sufficient to permit 
>a comparably trained person to understand the steps taken, the 
>techniques used, and to extract comparable information from the 
>image. Documenting every change in every pixel value is discouraged 
>because it adds nothing of value to the analysis.
>
>Exploratory enhancement operations not incorporated in the final 
>image do not need to be documented. Test prints and/or intermediate 
>images resulting from a variety of techniques not incorporated into 
>the final image should be discarded.
>
>Minimum requirements for documentation include identifying the 
>software application and/or techniques as well as the settings and 
>parameters used. Automated processes, such as running user-defined 
>macros, require only documenting usage if the process is
>defined in the agency documentation."
>
>billo

____________________________________________________________________________
Michael Cammer, Senior Light Microscopist, Analytical Imaging 
Facility, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park 
Avenue, Bronx, NY  10461
URLs: microscopy http://www.aecom.yu.edu/aif/ and art http://coxcammer.com/