Image processing software offers a lot of opportunities for image modification

Generally, this is work that could have been done in the darkroom with film images, but it would have taken non-professionals days, rather than minutes.

Most of my photos would fall within the rules laid down in the “Adjusting your image”
paragraph in the BBC / NHM Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition (if only they were good enough to enter …), in that adjustments (white-balance curves, exposure adjustment etc.) are applied to the whole of the image.

Other adjustments can be identified by a suffix to the filename, preceded by an underbar.
This may be followed by a version number (where - for example - multiple crops are made).
These categories have been adapted from the submission guidelines on the SeaPics photo agency website, which was really helpful.

• “_C” - the image has been “cropped” (i.e. outer elements have been excluded)
• “_M” - Areas of the image have been “retouched” digitally.
  This would typically include removing backscatter or smudges on the lens
• “_DM” - digitally manipulated - e.g. “cloning” out a brightly coloured fin
• “_DC” - If I ever do produce composite photos (made up of two images), this is how they’ll be labelled