For the record I made no direct accusations. I simply corrected the photos in accordance with standards used in digital graphic arts. The items that suggested to me that there were enhancements made were, in the first photo, specular color in the driftwood was as red as the fish and in the second photo the specular color was neon purple. "Specular" color is the color of the reflected light that is near to white or in darker colors, off-white because most of that light is reflected instead of one set of frequencies being absorbed. This is often the easiest error to detect in altered photos. Another item that is easily visible is "Saturation". When one color is over-saturated from increasing it to unnatural levels, the color gradient normally decreases to a single color instead of many shades of that color over the body of the object being modified as in the original pictures. Lighting that causes these kinds of effects is just as dishonest as if the photo was altered because the effects are the same. I only corrected the photos to what you would see under 6500*K lighting. Roughly equivalent to daylight frequency(as far as the human eye is concerned . There are many pictures on MFK that are slightly questionable and I would never dream of accusing someone under those circumstances because I have seen even my own pictures come out weird looking some times because I have a cheap camera. However when a photo or set of photos shows insane levels of alteration. I have no qualms about posting corrected photos. I understand that the parent fish my be truly red and the photographer/artist only wanted to reflect the possibility of color that those babies could someday attain under ideal conditions but those fish are not yet at that point.
As to why I would point all this out on his first post? I never even noticed it was his first post. I was sufficiently certain of alterations, either pre-digital or post-digital, to feel comfortable making that post.
