In the film era, no choice usually needed to be made:

There were so few ways to doctor photos without detection that photos with optimized “appearance” usually were not compromised in their “trustworthiness”: photographers generally could optimize both characteristics in the same photo.

But in the digital era, it is now so easy to doctor a photo without detection that photographers often have to make that choice:

• Optimizing a digital photo's “appearance” often means performing manipulations that compromise its “trustworthiness”

• Optimizing a digital photo's “trustworthiness” means not performing manipulations that would optimize its “appearance”

The Trust Test and its linked pages list those manipulations.

More on the challenge of undetectable manipulation in the film era

More on the ease of undetectable manipulation in the digital era