Which of the following statements about digitals manipulation is true?

1.Digital maniplation is illegal

2.digital manipualation has ethical uses

3.Digital manipulation is a form of computer hoax

4.Digital camera negatives provide evidence of digital manipulation

1. Depends on the context.

2. Depends on the context.

3. Depends on the context. A lot.

4. No idea what do you mean by a digital camera negative.

I am thinking that your context is law enforcement and/or journalism. From the journalism stand point, photographers have been fired for doing things as seemingly harmless as color balancing a photo. These have very strict guidelines to make sure the information reported is exactly as captured.

For law enforcement it is probably the same. If the picture cannot be proven to be exactly as captured, it should not count as evidence.

On the ethical issues, it goes to reporting the truth as is. During the Israel/Lebanon hostilities earlier this year a photographer got fired for obscuring smoke, which made an attack look worse than what it really was. It was clearly unethical. Now, say you are taking a picture of Santa Claus at the mall, and you adjust the picture to make the suit a more richer tone of red. Everyone knows Santa's suit is red, so it is not like you are trying to manipulate the truth.

I think the third one is not true at all, because digital manipulation is part of a very rich and varied field of the visual arts.

As for the negatives, I still don't know. What I think can be done is when the picture is captured the camera could add a digital signature to the file, to make sure it can later be proved that the picture has not been adulterated at all. Since both #2 and #4 are definitely false, then, in some cases, both #1 and #3 must be true. So what are you trying to prove?