TTG Plus > Key {can this be shortened?}

What is a “minor” change?
What is a “major” change?

  • 1. Claiming “I only made minor changes” is as old as photography

    Inserting AI-generated content in a photograph is only the latest in a historic line of photographers’ rationales that “I only made minor changes to the photograph! The change was really rather small and insignificant.”

    For AI-GC, as with many other changes, no distinction is made on this website between “minor” and “major” changes to non-“light”-related aspects of depicted in photographs. (The technical behaviors of photographs follow no such distinctions. )

    A photograph either meets the Trust Test or it does not. Period.

    (Any addition of AI-GC always disqualifies an image from TTG.)

  • 2. The word “minor” often reflects “wishful thinking”

    Creators of “doctored or aigmented photos that look undoctored” are often eager to play down how radically the photo has been changed.

    That’s because the viewer will think more highly of the photographer if the viewer believes the photographer has successfully met “the greatest challenge in 21st century photography” (see here and FAQ #418).

    But after the exposure has ended,

    . . . depictions of things that photographers are likely to characterize as “minor” (e.g., a discarded cigarette butt, a piece of litter, an overhead power line)

    . . . are no more likely than are “major” things (e.g., a house, a car) to disappear, move, appear, become more out of focus, reshape themselves, or resize themselves.

  • 3. It’s not just about the subject

    As with things, no distinction is made on this website between “minor” and “major” degrees of post-exposure changes.

    • For example, to move the depiction of something in a photograph by “just a pixel or two” disqualifies the result from TTG just as surely as moving it to the opposite end of the photograph would disqualify it.

    • For another example, to resize something within a photograph “just a teeny bit” disqualifies the result from TTG just as surely as would a radical enlargement or shrinking. (That includes the moon.)

  • 4. As one photographer quipped, “If I do it to my own photos, it’s a ‘minor’ change, but if another photographer does it to his, it’s a ‘major’ change.”

    Viewers should be skeptical when they hear, “This photo was only changed in a few minor ways” without any specifics provided.

    The definition of “minor” too often varies between photographers and viewers for the term to be of any practical use.

    A change that the photographer is eager to characterize as “minor” might be considered “major” by viewers if they found out about it.