I came across an unusual problem while working on acquiring photographs for a recent story.

Via AP Images, I found the perfect Associated Press image of President Bush giving one of our members a medal. But when I downloaded the 300 dpi version, I found some digital artifacts. It appeared the Associated Press had sold me a digitally altered image.

Note: The arrows and tight cropping are mine, the unusual blotch the arrows are pointing to belong to the Associated Press.

Though this is a very small portion of the original image (fair use), you can see what appears to be a sharpening effect around the subject’s face.

The face wasn’t traced very well, causing the effect to cross Bush’s hand, face, shoulder, and the stripes of the subject’s shirt.

I gave the AP the benefit of the doubt and figured someone simply uploaded the wrong image. I wrote:

“I downloaded this photo and noticed that it has been digitally altered. I suppose this would have been okay, except for the alterations are poorly done. May we have a copy of the image without alterations? Otherwise, I don’t think we’ll be able to use this image. Please advise.”

Here was the AP’s terse response:

“Please explain, we do not service altered images and we do not permit others to alter our images. The integrity and credibility of the Associated Press, and its new gathering would be compromised.”

Yea. I understood that, which is why I thought it was unusual that I was able to download and purchase an AP image that appears to have been digitally altered in the first place.

When I called the AP sales rep, he said he wasn’t an expert and was unable to say if he was able to notice the strange blotch appearing around the subject’s head. To this day, I still haven’t received an explanation or a blotch-free-image.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.