You already know how digital media can be cropped, filtered, trimmed and layered. Today you will try to spot those edits in other people's work.
When you see a finished photo, clip or soundtrack online, can you tell what was done to it?
| Your call | What it means |
|---|---|
| As taken | No good reason to think the capture was changed. |
| Fair editing | Changed for clarity, length, framing, quality or privacy, without inventing a false story. |
| Altered to mislead | Changed so people believe something untrue. |
You will use tells, which are clues you can see or hear, instead of guessing.
Not every change is a trick. Cropping a sports photo so the goal fills the picture is an ordinary edit. An edit becomes a problem when it is hidden and makes the viewer believe something untrue, like cutting a sentence from a speech so the meaning flips.
Today you will use three verdicts:
- As taken: nothing important has been changed.
- Fair editing: the changes make it clearer, shorter, better framed, better quality or more private, without telling a false story.
- Altered to mislead: the change is meant to make people believe something untrue, or is likely to.
As a class, look at each item below and read its caption. Your teacher will play the clip and the video for everyone, twice each. Then talk it through, saying what changed and whether that tells a false story, and agree on one verdict. Choose your verdict in the activity below before you reveal the reasoning.
Item 1: the parade photo
Posted on a community page: “The band marches through town in the rain.”
| The photographer's original | The posted version |
|---|---|
 |  |
Item 2: the councillor clip
Shared on a community page: “Councillor wants to close the youth club.” The post does not include the full recording.
Item 3: the storm video
Reposted phone video: “Storm batters the coast as a walker fights to stay on his feet.”
Once the class has decided on all three, your teacher will open the originals in the fold-out section below the storm video.
Only after the class has called all three: the originals
The councillor's full recording:
The storm video as it was filmed, at normal speed, with no sound added:
The photos and the video are real, but the captions, posts and councillor are made up, and a computer made the councillor's voice.
As taken, fair edit, or altered?
On your own or with a partner, judge these two items. Look carefully at each picture before you read its caption, and then write three short lines about it.
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
|---|---|
 |  |
| Source: a local photographer, named in the post Caption: “The waves came over the harbour wall this morning.” | Source: a page with no name, shared thousands of times Caption: “Shark seen off the beach this morning. Keep out of the water!” |
Click a photo to see it full size.
Verdict: as taken, fair editing, or altered to mislead.
What may have changed?
The one tell that decided it.
Look closely at where things meet. A real object touches what is around it: it casts a shadow, and water moves around it. If something has a hard, clean edge that nothing else in the picture has, look again. Also check that light and shadows fall the same way across the whole picture.
Before you finish, check that you have:
- a verdict for both items
- one clear tell named for each
- at least one item where you can say why it is as taken or fair editing, rather than altered to mislead
When everyone has a verdict for both photos, open the answers below.
Only after you have decided: how each photo was made
Item 1, the waves: as taken. It looks almost too dramatic, but this is a real photograph, and we changed nothing in it. The spray, the wall and the sky share the same flat light, nothing has a cut-out edge, and the caption says nothing the photo does not show.
Item 2, the beach: altered to mislead. The fin was cut out of a different photo and pasted on to this empty beach. Nobody saw a shark. The caption, “Keep out of the water!”, is what the edit was for.
Now look at the fin up close. The waves around it break white, but the water does not move around the fin at all: no ripple, no spray and no wake. Its edge is hard and clean, and it is lit differently from the grey water around it.
- Look at where things meet. A real object touches what is around it, and water moves around it.
- Check that the light and the shadows agree across the whole picture.
- Ask who posted it and what the caption wants you to do, and whether the edit is there to make you do it.
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