This Wall Street Journal article gets at what constitutes “transformative” — the use of an original to create another work in a different medium.

As Daniel Grant’s story points out, the law is gray, particularly in light of the ease with which images can be copied and/or downloaded from the Internet.

And you thought image tampering came about with the advent of Adobe Photoshop?

Quite the contrary–it’s as old as photography itself. While digital imaging software has certainly made tampering easier and more accessible, the practice of altering photographs was alive and well in photographer Mathew Brady’s time.

Here at top is a photo of General Ulysses S. Grant and his generals, well almost. General Blair, at far right, was added later (bottom photo). Notice too how the background changes and the table or pedestal at far left in the foreground disappears in the bottom photo.

This excellent research paper from Dartmouth’s Image Science Group provides multiple examples and demonstrates that deception in photography was alive and well 142 years ago.

While photography is less than 200 years old, deception is eternal.