There are few things the Daily Telegraph loves more than a digitally-altered front page. But you might have noticed that they’re not quite as plentiful as they once were.

The often-controversial, mostly-political photoshopped front pages had their golden age under former editor Paul “Boris” Whittaker, who is now editor-in-chief at The Australian. 

It was during his tenure that the infamous Peter Slipper-as-rat front pages were published, and intricately-altered splashes were extremely common.

Labor party leader Bill Shorten was a favourite subject for the Tele‘s artists this time.

But the mock-ups weren’t restricted just to Labor:

Current editor Chris Dore told Crikey he’d made a conscious decision to move away from the volume of doctored front pages when he took over the top job at the paper at the end of 2015.

“I have deliberately wound back on photoshopping since I arrived at The Daily Telegraph,” he said. “The Tele had previously done a lot of them under Paul Whittaker, and in fact as editor of The Courier Mail I certainly did more than we do here now … But for the purposes of impact, it is best to use the story-telling device sparingly.”

Since Dore has been behind the wheel, the Photoshop love is still fairly evenly distributed among the parties, including earlier this year, railing against all politicians:

And while the Tele‘s most memorable digitally-altered front pages are overwhelmingly dedicated to politics, the State of Origin lead-up this year brought a story of great hope to NSW: that this year could be the year of redemption for the Blues. 

In 2013 the Australian Press Council warned the Tele (and other publishers) about the use of Photoshop in images, saying these images are not the same as cartoons and could be more at risk of breaching principles. The council gave the warning in finding that the Tele‘s infamous ‘King Rat’ headline about Peter Slipper had not breached its standards.

That warning, though, hasn’t stopped the Tele repeating the motif earlier this year for a front page story about Cory Bernardi’s defection from the Liberal party.

And for the record, Dore has a couple of favourites from his time at the Courier Mail, which also embraces Photoshop on the front page: