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Dear all, 
    to simplify the discussion I would say that we should consider three 
cases:

1) when an image is altered to allow a better representation and these 
changes are decleared
2) when an image is altered to appear better, but actually at the end 
really misrepresent the original data
3) when an image is willingly altered or forged to demonstrate something 
not real

I do understand your concern because to fight 3) and minimize 2) we all 
aspect that the majority of us (hopefully 1) will be damaged. Let say, like 
for the health and safety offices, created to the benefit of the 
researchers, often they do not improve (real) safety, but obstacle our work.

Modifying pictures as you all described in comparison also with older 
methods should be just fine and should be fine also to delcare it. For 
instance if you make ratiometric imaging, you will surely mask the 
background and rescale the data... it is obvious and this will be clear 
also by material and methods.

On the other hand, if you have immunocytochemistry and you treshold the 
background and alter non-linearly the contrast, you will hide the 
specificity of the stain. Therefore, beside forensic imaging that somehow 
compromizes the relation of trust that there should be between scientists 
and editors, what is missing is training of people. Courses about ethics in 
science and, specifically, about image processing should be more common, 
but they aren't.

Now, what about the people that willingly alter their data? Who forge data 
will be always protected in the peer-review. The point is that you do not 
have to alter the image, you clealy can alter even tha sample!! Reviewers 
and editors should judge manuscrpits in the assumption that are not forged. 
It is the scientific community that by reproducing the experiments will 
judge that work and, if will be clearly false, the authors will pay the 
consequences.

Why people modify images too much (2) or unethically (3)?

First (2), if you are from an unknown lab and you have a dark spot on a gel 
you are sure to be criticized for the low quality of the image (although 
the data is there and real). Often, the problem is that nowadays the 
researcher thinks "who cares then I have photoshop". However, equally 
often, it is impossible to obtain a perfect image and you have just to live 
with that. In this case, editors should not consider reviewers that ask for 
a better image otherwise the authors are obliged to use post-processing 
when not scientifically needed, just to improve the esthetics and risking 
to cover unwillingly some important details.
In brief, editors should try to defend authors from non fair comments of 
reviewers more often, because the attitude of a large part of the reviewers 
is to kill a manuscript, another part is "ok, I do not want to read it so 
publish it" and fortunately there is another part that is trying to help 
authors and editors to improve it. (you write the fractions :) )

Second, people publish forged data or unwillingly alter the meaning of the 
data because want to rush their publication because of the peer-review 
cycle in science. Again, who forges from scratch their data is 
undetectable, they are criminal and soon or late the scientific community 
will discover them, so why bother.

For all the others, yes we should pay more attention, as authors, group 
leaders, reviewers and editors. However, there is a bug in the system. You 
need to publish often and on high impact factor journals to get a grant, 
you need a grant to publish. It takes years to make a good (really good) 
scientific work, but do you really have that time, considering also that 
you could get a paper published in a month, a grant in three months, but 
often you need a year for each of the proceses? In my opinion, the peer-
review process of articles is almost fine, I would really like just 1) 
faster reviewing (though Nature is fast already) in all journals (1 month); 
2) editors that kick asses (sorry for the expression) of bad reviewers.

Therefore I am ciritc to the peer-review for funding. I started only 
recently to write grants and it is a ridicolous world. When a funding 
agency (practically) asks to predict your future findings, to predict that 
you will save the world from a disease or a natural catastroph, the system 
becomes morally corrupted at the source. ok, sorry, I am going away from 
the point, but I want to make another example. 

A group leader has 10 PhD students on the same project and want to publish 
only on Nature. Who will be the first author of that nature paper? Or the 
honest and genius student, or the lucky one, or the one that makes of any 
autofluorescence a good GFP signal. Of that 10 students, the one that cheat 
will be awarded, the genius one will go ahead anyway, and it does not 
matter if the other 8 are good or bad, they are out from science. The group 
leader will publish his Nature, that it will grant a part of the money to 
get other 10 PhD students and make carrier... 

When after 10 years the paper will be retracted by the senior author now 
dean of the university) accusing the PhD student or young post-doc to have 
caused the problem, all will be fairly fixed, will be? 

I apology for the long opinion on the topic :)

In brief: 
1) post-processing is fine whenever declared, but should be used not just 
for trivial esthetic purpuses (but we do)
2) more lectures should be given at universities on this specific propblem 
for PhD students and any other researcher that is new to the imaging world.
3) faster and simiplified peer-review processes for journal and funding 
would help always science and also on this aspect
4) try to punish and not reward the wrong behaviour of authors, reviewers, 
group leaders and editors... each of them has its fault in the system-
science

Cheers, 

Alessandro
Laser Analytics Group - University of Cambridge (UK)
http://home.quantitative-microscopy.org