Some folks are questioning whether the Page A-1 centerpiece photo in Thursday's paper intentionally and artificially blurs the logo of Fox 4 -- the station that carries "American Idol" locally -- in signs that several people are holding at a watch party for David Cook's appearance on the show's finale.

Wow -- that's a really serious allegation.  Several photojournalists have lost their jobs over digital manipulation of images.  Of course I had to look into it. Luckily, it's very obvious what's going on when you look at the photo in full resolution. 

As you can see from the small segment of the image on this post, the only thing that's really in focus is the face of the girl holding the pink sign.  Download the full-res version of the image here and study it.  Even the top of the pink sign is dropping out of focus slightly.  Absolutely everything between the girl's face and the camera is quite blurry -- which is just what happens when any photographer uses a long lens like the one used here.

There are algorithms that can analyze digital images to see if any fake blur has been used on them.  I don't own that software, but I'd welcome anyone to run this through and check it out.  Skillful digital manipulation can be hard to spot with the naked eye, but easy to suss out with the computer. 

I think a lot of the confusion happened because the only versions of the photo the public sees are either from KansasCity.com, where the image size and resolution are a tiny fraction of the original, or in the paper where it's been mechanically separated into four colors of dots, and subsequently of lower resolution than would appear in a print on photo paper.

For the record, I asked Joe Ledford, assistant managing editor for photography, if he'd ever permit an alteration like this in a news photo.  His reply was quick and to the point: "No way."