Digital manipulation also feeds political humour. Since September 11th, the Internet has been flooded with digitally enhanced parodies -- most often at Osama Bin Laden's expense. Images like "Dr. Evil and Mini Bin" and George Bush as "The Turbanator" are just a few of the hundreds of digitally enhanced images that have been making the rounds via e-mail.

Photo manipulation has long been used for propaganda, and digital manipulation only makes this easir. As early 1930s dictators such as Stalin would use photo manipulation to make their enemies "unpeople," retroactively erasing them from history. Doctored photos have been used to justify the invasion of Iraq, most recently, to disguise a mis-firing Iranian missile, copying the image of one that fired successfully and pasting it over the dud.

It didn't take long to discover that this image was from the "Tourist Guy" Web site -- a digitally manipulated "Where's Waldo" photo gallery of the hapless tourist plunked into a wide variety of historical and humorous scenarios.

Photographic Truth in the Digital Era

In November 2001 the National Capital Commission, the Crown corporation responsible for planning and developing Canada's National Capital Region, caused some controversy when they published a promotional brochure for the city ofOttawa that featured a digitally enhanced photo on its cover.
The brochure blended a view of Parliament Hill from one end of the Rideau canal, with a more picturesque section of the "world's longest skating rink." Even the section of the canal they selected was inverted, in order to create a more symmetrical image. At issue wasn't that the NCC had used a compilation of photos, but rather that they had presented this image as a real Ottawa scene.
Advances in digital technology mean that anyone with a computer and image-manipulation software can easily cut and paste a wide range of images into an apparently seamless whole. The old advertising slogan "Is it live or is it Memorex?" takes on a whole new meaning when trying to separate truth from fabrication in photos that appear to be real. Pranksters, hucksters and even journalists are proving that more often than not, we can't believe everything we see.
Examples exist in all visual media. In October 2001 the National Post featured an article about the Queen being given a cell phone for her birthday, accompanied by a photo of a smiling Queen Elizabeth waving her Telus cell phone. When alert readers pointed out that this model of phone was only available in Canada, the Post had to 'fess up that the cell phone had been digitally added to the photo. Film makers routinely integrate digital manipulation to enhance special effects in movies -- a few examples include, Tom Hanks' image digitally integrated into actual historical footage in the film Forrest Gump; Jurrasic Park's Dinosaurs; the creatures, space crafts and worlds in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace; and, of course, the technical (if not critical) triumph of computer generation, Final Fantasy. On television, advertisers display virtual ads on the playing fields of sporting events. These ads appear to be part of the scenery, but they can only be seen by the television viewing audience. A more obvious example of digital manipulation is when cartoon spokescharacters "interact" with the live children who appear in cereal and snack food commercials. In magazines, photos of models and celebrities are routinely doctored to make the subjects more appealing. And, of course, digital manipulation is thriving on the Internet, where there are few gatekeepers and countless opportunities for misinformation.
Digital manipulation can add credibility to urban legends and hoaxes. In the days following the horrific attack of the World Trade Center, a photo of a tourist being photographed just seconds before the tragedy was widely circulated. Supposedly, the camera containing the shot was found in the rubble of the twin towers.