Between opening a file and publishing it there are four possible levels of modification, and only one of them raises a real problem. Confusing the four is what leads cautious brands to ban any retouching at all, and careless ones to change things they cannot then stand behind.

The four levels, separated

  1. Technical improvement of the file. Reducing noise in footage shot in poor light, stabilising a shaky shot, correcting white balance, raising the resolution of an old file. It does not change what is seen, it changes how well it is seen.
  2. Modification of the product's appearance. Saturating the packaging colour, removing a mark of use, changing the texture of a fabric. Here you are already touching what the buyer will receive.
  3. Modification of the result shown. Smoothing skin in a before and after, slimming a silhouette, whitening teeth, making a stain disappear more than it did. You are touching what the product promises to achieve.
  4. The advertising claim. What the piece asserts, in pictures or in words. It is the level at which everything above is judged.

The useful distinction is not between "retouching" and "not retouching". It is between levels one and two, where the work is production, and levels three and four, where the work becomes a statement about the product.

Why AI blurs the boundary

Because the same tools do all four with the same gesture. A button that "enhances" a video may raise sharpness, correct colour and, along the way, smooth skin. Nobody decided to move from level one to level three; they simply accepted an automatic setting.

Hence the check cannot sit in the intention, it has to sit in looking at the result and comparing it with the original material.

Where the line actually is

The question is not whether there was modification. It is whether the resulting representation misleads about the product or about what can be expected of it.

A sharper image of a product is still that product. An image of the same product in a colour it does not have is no longer that product. And a before and after where the improvement happened in the edit, not on the skin, asserts something that did not occur.

The practical test is a question you can ask out loud in front of the finished piece: if the buyer saw the original material next to the published one, would they feel misled? When the answer is uncertain, the answer is yes.

The before and after case

It is the format where this line is crossed most often, and almost always without bad faith: the light is matched between the two shots, the colour is corrected, and the result looks better than it was.

The answer is not to ban the format, it is to fix it. Same light, same framing, same distance, same camera setting on both shots, and no treatment applied to one that is not applied to the other. An honest before and after is reproducible; if it cannot be repeated, it should not be published.

What the general advertising law says

Spain's general advertising law treats as misleading any advertising that in any way misleads its audience and may affect their economic behaviour. It does not enumerate techniques, which is why it reaches all of them, including those that did not exist when it was written.

Two practical consequences for a brand:

It does not matter whether the retouching was automatic. That a tool applied it by default does not change who publishes the piece or who benefits from it.

It does not matter whether the creator did it on their own. The advertiser answers for the commercial communication it distributes, and that is why the brief has to say what is allowed.

The sector code, on top of the law

Spain's advertising self-regulation system maintains codes of conduct that develop these principles for creator content. Complying with them does not replace the law, but it is the reference the industry itself uses when a complaint arises.

The industry objection

"Everybody retouches." That is probably true and changes nothing, because the legal test is not comparative: nobody judges whether a brand retouches more or less than its competitors, they judge whether its piece misleads. A practice being widespread does not make it permitted, and in a complaint nobody asks what the others do.

There is also a commercial consequence that usually weighs more than the legal one: in a category where everybody retouches, the brand showing the real result stands out without spending anything.

What to write in the brief

Four lines are enough, and they avoid the awkward conversation after delivery.

Technical correction permitted. Noise, stabilisation, neutral colour, resolution. No limit, it is production work.

Product appearance: untouched. Not the colour, not the shape, not the texture of the packaging or the item.

Result: untouched. No skin smoothing, no slimming, no whitening, no correction of the area where the product acts.

Delivery of the original. The untreated file accompanies the delivery. It is the only thing that lets you check any of the three points above, and asking for it afterwards never works.

Who looks, and against what

A well-written brief is worth nothing if nobody checks the delivery, and that check is quick when the original exists and near impossible when it does not.

The original alongside. You open both files, the raw and the publishable one, and switch between them. Level-one changes are barely noticeable when alternating; level-three changes jump out immediately, and that jump is exactly the criterion.

Small details first. The edge of a logo, text on the packaging, the hairline, the transition between skin and background. That is where automatic processing leaves traces before the overall image does.

The frozen frame. In motion almost everything passes. Stopping the image at the key moment, above all in a before and after, shows what thirty seconds of video hide.

When there is no original

Then nothing can be checked, and that is the only reason asking for the raw file is part of the brief. A delivery with no original is not incomplete out of formality: it is a delivery that cannot be verified, and publishing it means accepting whatever it contains.

Archive upscaling, the easy case

Raising the resolution of old material so it can be reused is the least problematic use of all, and the most profitable: it turns a catalogue shot in low quality into publishable material.

Two things are worth checking. That the process has not invented detail where there was none, which shows above all in small text and logos. And that the product on screen is still the one being sold today, because an old package upscaled to impeccable quality is still an old package.

Sources

Checked on 8 September 2026. This guide is not legal advice. Where this guide and the official source disagree, the source prevails.