Sir

Your News Feature “CSI: cell biology” (Nature 434, 952–953; 2005) raises questions about the legitimacy of editing images. In this context, I am regularly surprised at the essentially binary appearance of many published fluorescence microscopy images, with the apparent absence of both intermediate intensities and Poisson noise.

This may predate Photoshop and arise at the time of acquisition, when alterations to the offset of photodetectors can be used to suppress low or intermediate signals and the gain setting used to produce detector saturation by the remaining portion of the original signal.

Although attempting to curtail illegitimate manipulation of digital images is very important, it is also relevant to consider the veracity of raw images. A solution would be to require a statement about detector settings in the methods section of publications and, further, to require that original unenhanced digital images, in the proprietary format, which will usually contain details of the microscope settings, are included in online supporting material.