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Reuters Bans RAW Photo Format (petapixel.com)
grcumb writes: Reuters is the latest agency to join the ranks of the technically clueless who think that ethical problems can be solved using technical means. They recently issued a circular to their contributors, stating in part: "In future, please don't send photos to Reuters that were processed from RAW or CR2 files. If you want to shoot raw images that's fine, just take JPEGs at the same time. Only send us the photos that were originally JPEGs, with minimal processing...." The problem they claim to be addressing is doctored images, but they don't explain how they plan to ensure that the JPEGs weren't simply exported from RAW files with their EXIF data altered, or heck, just altered as JPEG. They also assert that getting JPEG files straight from the camera is quicker, which is fair enough. Lots of professionals shoot with RAW+JPEG at newsworthy events. They can send the JPEGs off quickly to meet the first deadline, then process the RAW files at leisure for higher quality publications.
And it's an insult to my intelligence. What makes it more galling is the number of people this kind of ass covering pacifies. When a doctored photo slips through they'll say, "see, we did something but it happened anyway!" as though it's relevant. People are fucking retarded sometimes.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
As a former photojournalist, I can saw that you simply blacklist them and/or fire them from being a contributor/stringer/staffer at that image bureau. There are ethical standards in the professional photography world, and it is nothing bad to those of us who upheld our high ethical standards to see someone get fired for unethically altering images and cheating and breaking the rules. I doubt this is as much a problem from a "who altered their photos?" problem as it is the photographers are submitting larger files (even if lossy down converted into JPG from RAW) and Reuters is having problems handling so many large files in their infrastructure and pushing photos out in distribution to their newsroom client "on the wire" servers. I know in my past when dealing with AP, if you uploaded a file that was too large they either rejected it, or WORSE, applied their lossy compression using whatever software they saw fit. When what your image looks like is everything to a shooter, and when a perfect images is ruined by crap third party compression due to file size, the lesson is hard learned and PJ folks are pretty savvy getting the best bang per MB.
They're not trying to prevent "doctored" images.
The original memo reads:
I’d like to pass on a note of request to our freelance contributors due to a worldwide policy change.. In future, please don’t send photos to Reuters that were processed from RAW or CR2 files. If you want to shoot raw images that’s fine, just take JPEGs at the same time. Only send us the photos that were originally JPEGs, with minimal processing (cropping, correcting levels, etc).
And a follow-up quote reads
While we aim for photography of the highest aesthetic quality, our goal is not to artistically interpret the news. [...] Speed is also very important to us. We have therefore asked our photographers to skip labour and time consuming processes to get our pictures to our clients faster.
Which doesn't mean they're trying to prevent people from faking photos; as that line is clearly referring to the "minimal editing" part of the above guidelines, and the "JPG not RAW" is just for workflow-related reasons.