Where should we draw the line between presentation edits and technical evidence in civilian hobby-drone photos?
Aerial images can serve very different jobs: a clean project photo for sharing, a build-detail photo, troubleshooting evidence, or an input to mapping and photogrammetry. The same edit can be harmless in the first case and misleading in the others.
My working rule would be:
1. Keep the untouched original, including its metadata, as the reference.
2. Label a presentation image when the background, sky, framing, or appearance has been changed.
3. For build or troubleshooting photos, limit edits to crops and global tonal changes that do not hide wiring, fasteners, cracks, clearances, prop condition, mounting angle, vibration blur, or other diagnostic details.
4. For mapping or measurement inputs, avoid object removal, reconstruction, generative fill, canvas extension, local geometry changes, or synthetic detail. Preserve EXIF/geotag data, orientation, calibration context, overlap, and the original pixels.
5. Put arrows, labels, masks, and comparison overlays on a separate derivative rather than baking them into the only evidence image.
6. Record the edit history when a derivative is shared in a technical thread. AI Photo Editor
This is not about whether an edit looks convincing. It is about whether another builder can still tell what came from the camera, what came from post-processing, and what can safely support a technical conclusion.
Would you use a similar boundary for build logs, flight troubleshooting, and aerial mapping, or should mapping inputs follow an even stricter no-edit rule?
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