How you can tell if someone’s photoshopped their pictures…
Nov 13 2007
Ok, it is not always this obvious but it is REALLY funny when it is! Sheesh, people, could you make your site look more cheesy?
78 comments to “How you can tell if someone’s photoshopped their pictures…”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment. Not a member? Registering is free, and you do it here!
Dude, those win at life. Srsly.
Wow… I think a website full of “artwork” like that would make my eyes bleed.
I especially like the sales ads that have the horse mirrored to look like you’re seeing the horse from both sides, but it’s really all one side. Grrrr!
LOL. The funny thing is that as a creative director who came up as an Illustrator, I was taught how to do these things properly. And that also teaches you how to spot the fakes. LOL.
My fave? Making a 73 year old woman look “40-ish” LOL. But I did it. You can imagine the shock of people who actually met her after seeing her pic in the corporate report.
-rotflmao-
if i ever put something that awful up (unless it’s a joke) i give full permission for the members of this board to dispose of me as they see fit.
Don’t ALL arenas have mountains in the distance like that?
I think the only way to make it any better would be to place the Neuschwanstein Castle in the clouds, above a picture of a fluffy breed (Fresian or GV) with a long haired hoochie posing on it’s back.
OOPS! silly me- almost forgot, the farm name would have to be Magic Dream Farms and the horse would be named Mystical Star. SOmewhere on the website you would also find unicorns. LOL!
Forget the Photoshop, what’s up with the rearview mirrors and headlight?
Wow… just… Wow.
I believe the words “Epic Fail” may do some justice… but only some.
*Shakes head*
Ya gotta have headlights and mirrors so ya can see who’s riding up behind you at night… we all do that, right? Right?
Wait until you see my nifty hazard lights. Mandatory for fuglies.
What really makes it special is when the light in the background is so obviously coming from a different angle than the light on the horses..
Unless these were taken on a planet with two suns?
WOW haha.
The bad thing is, is that photoshopping done the RIGHT way is a very scary thing and really can make a bad horse look good.
Clearly, these guys are crap at it.
However, photoshopping is also fun for things like this:
http://tinyurl.com/2252xe
- Elliott
Thats not fair FHOTD, we want to learn how to tell the “realistic” ones not the blindingly obvious LOL.
You know, like the Dove ad or some of the other You tubes I found showing how evey woman, no matter how scary in the original photo can end up looking like a model (just a shame you can’t photoshop your self in real life). That one that (can’t remember who- starrynight or summit) of the chesnut horse in the bridle with the shed in the background. That was a great job and no obvious at all even when you did see the other photo.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Here is a great photoshop story. I used to work at one of the major breed registries. There was a foal registration that the association was requiring DNA parentage verification before the foal could be registered. The mare was deceased and did not have DNA on file, so the “powers that be” said that if the foal owner could show them a photo of the mare and foal together when the foal was little, they would register it with sire verification only.
Well, the photo came in and looked good. I got the file ready to send to the committee to approve the registration, and I happened to notice that the foal’s stance looked familiar. I looked back at the original photos they had sent of the baby, and yep – you guessed it. They photoshopped mom into the pic. Geniuses thought we would not notice that the foal was in exactly the same position in both photos. Needless to say I don’t think that baby ever did get papers!
OMG…that’s too funny!
Hah. “Every day we jump them off the side of our ring!” If they had that on there I would be even more delighted.
Or maybe wings? Horns? Magical pink photoshopped ponies? This is hilarious. I mean sometimes it is fun to make for art, but when it comes to seriously selling horses, you can’t kid around with making your horse different looking, or with a fancier background like in this one.
Surely these aren’t sale pics, just someone having fun.
Ooohh I do like the first one. I wonder how my gelding would like the bouncing light though. ROTHFL
OK, these are totally cheesy, but I have to admit that my last x-mas card was of all of our critters and us with moose antlers because we had moved to Maine. It was hilarious and it looked good, well as good as horses, cats, dogs and people can look with moose antlers!
Dear CutNJump,
Not all arenas have mountains in the background BUT for those of us in the Pacific Northwest we DO have lots of mountains. The problem is that people can br born, live, and die in Seattle without ever once seeing Mt Rainier in all The Great White Father’s glory. Natives Seattlese for “nice weather” is “the mountain’s out.” And if anyone shows at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond OR there is a panoramic vista of snow covered peaks. Real ones. Admittedly the only vista from my home arena is Rattlesnake Mt whose claim to fame is being “the highest land above sea level in the continental USA without trees.”
Look here:
http://www.equine.com/Horses/ad_details.aspx?lid=483273&search_id=912a6147-5d2e-48e0-90e6-34e497e8812b&p=7
Fishing!
That Photoshopping is hilarious.
I personally make photoshopped pictures of horses, and those are below the noob line.
can it be any more obvious that those are photoshopped?
The color is off, the backgrounds are WAY lighter than the other picture in it. And seriously, if you lived with a mountain behind the arena, you wouldn’t be near the top of it
:]
Aww now you’re just being mean. Do you think they honestly think those are fooling anyone? Looks to me like they’re just having fun & being silly.
If I could photoshop myself 20lbs lighter and doing the kama sutra with Michael C Hall I’d be all over that.
jflan… I don’t think those are photoshopped.
A couple of years a go I had a photo taken of my older stallion at a led show which I chose to get blown up (and have since lost – got it out one day to shoe someone – hadn’t got it frame yet – and haven’t seen it since). She said she could either fade out the background clutter of put him on a fake background. The demo one was a stream surrounded by wild flowers etc and a snowcapped peak or two behind. Not the kind of scene that springs to mind in dusty old Oz (NZ maybe). Too cheesy for words. We went for getting rid of spectators, dogs and peoples gear propped up around the ring.
“Show someone” – my horses are either barefoot or wearing metal shoes. I don’t send them out in paper mock ups.
Reminds me of catalog pictures for curtains and things, where they photoshop a nice scene outside the window. As a child, they puzzled me with their unreality, until I realized that they were, indeed, fake!
jflan,
“Look here:
http://www.equine.com/Horses/ad_details.aspx?lid=483273&search_id=912a6147-5d2e-48e0-90e6-34e497e8812b&p=7
Fishing!
That Photoshopping is hilarious.”
If they shopped that one they paid an imense amount of attention to detail on it. The reflection is perfect and so are the ripples in the water caused by the mare’s soft breathing.
I really don’t think it was shopped at all.
I did a better job with photoshop as a 12 year old.
I also photoshop images, but usually do an excellent job. People pay me to do graphic design for them. However, I refuse to make the horse look significantly different. That, for me, is dishonest. I will make the color richer, swap out crappy backgrounds, and use layers, but i won’t do that.
blackfluffyhorses said…
That one that (can’t remember who- starrynight or summit) of the chesnut horse in the bridle with the shed in the background. That was a great job and no obvious at all even when you did see the other photo.
thanks! :0)
I agree, it would be be nice to see a real entry about discerning photoshopped pictures, but not knowing Fugly’s abilities at photoshop, my guess would be that it would have to be a guest or collaborative blog.
Wow. Just… wow.
Even on a quick photoshop fix, I can’t imagine doing that poorly.
We have some people in poms (pomeranians) who think they are “gifted” at doctoring photos to make their dogs look “perfect”. Many are fooled but for someone like me, who has many years experience with photoshop, it just makes them look STUPID!!! LOL Just today I caught someone stealing a photo I took of a dog and RIDICULOUSLY doctoring it to make it look “different” and then put it on their site as their own dog. Boy was I steamed…
hmm… funny loking horse…
I wouldn’t even know where to begin with photoshop. Mine would end up being photochop-chop!
FHOTD and all:
How interesitng that you posted this topic today!
Just recently I found a website with a photo that troubled me. There was something definitely funky about one of the stallions. So much so, that I saved the photo to my computer, opened it in MS Paint, and zoomed it to 600% to see what I could see. It looked altered to me.
I then looked at other photos on the site and found some on another stallion that was way strange to me…
Will you guys take a look at these two stallions and just tell me what you see? I’d rather not say what I saw, but let your fresh eyes make observations. I’ll post again on Wednesday when anyone who wants to look at them has had a chance. (URLs are broken so they won’t get lost)
http://www.bentwoodplace.com/
view.php?c=1&id=4
http://www.bentwoodplace.com/
view.php?c=1&id=3
Thanks for looking at these. I look forward to everyone’s comments.
>>I then looked at other photos on the site and found some on another stallion that was way strange to me… < <
S/B “something on another stallion” of course…
losvagos-
The grey stallion (2nd link, DrB Pasion) looks legitimate to my untrained eye. The only thing that looks a little strange is his tail- it looks clumpy or stringy, but the leather strap that hangs over the top of the tail is also a little misleading.
Something is up with the palomino (1st link, LVPP Halcon de Oro) though for sure! He may have been copied and pasted onto the background, but the real issue is with his body coloring. The RF leg looks patchy and grainy, as if he was originally not standing square or something. There are weird patches of color along the side of his barrel and flank. There is a “band” around his heartgirth, like maybe a saddle was edited out? The shadows look ok, and the mane and tail look normal, but I would guess that his RF leg was “tweaked” and that he possibly had some body work done too. He also seems to stand out a little too crisply against the background- there is a lot of contrast between, say, the crest of his neck and the white part of the barn door.
I agree tylly. There is NO way that fishing one is photo shopped. Why would someone go through all that work? Everything from the shadow, to the reflection to the breathing ripples says it’s real.
losvagos
the first stallion appears to have been wearing a saddle. His mane (where the saddle would go) appears to just be a white blob. Also you can see where the girth would be. His front legs are messed up. Not sure whats going on there. I am not great with photoshopping, but I can tell there is something up with the first one. He looks way too fake.
The only thing funky with the second one that I can see is the hind legs at the bottom. But they look kind bad. Someone wouldn’t photoshop them to look worse, would they>
Oh, I love this stuff _because_ it’s so cheeeeeezy! I especially love the magician’s-mare-sawn-in-half trick in the middle of that one pic.
I’m with Blackfluffy; I don’t think any of this is serious, is it?
http://www.sfu.ca/~jdickers/photoshop
Heres an example of a more useful and realistic photoshop job, one I did in roughly half an hour of the colt pictured one posting down. not a hideous animal originally, but definitely made better in my opinion(yes, I like arabs so he look a bit more arabesque).
I fixed top and bottom lines, shortened the back by about 1/3 overall,corrected the ewe neck, defined the throatlatch more, adjusted the head and neck size in relation to the body, did miscellaneous little shape tweaks all over, and then did a general retouch of color, saturation and sharpness.
I’ve done my best to make it look authentic, but as I said it is a quickie job. Some of the major tells are in the grass and the difference between the grass in front of him and the grass between his legs. where I shortened his back the grass look overly detailed and compressed horizontally, and in front of his legs where I lengthened and adjusted the neck the grass is sort of stretched and blurry. the tree over his head also has horizontal lines from stretching using a warp tool. The other noticeable thing, though I’m sure others will find more, is the difference in sharpness between, his hip, neck and face. His face look over sharpened, his hip is the original photo, and his neck looks kind of blurry.
I think this is an example of what the average seller could pay someone $30 to do, and fool a lot of buyers.
So, for $30, any takers? starving student here
LOL
…I photoshopped a photo of a ring steward handing me & horse a blue ribbon. The horse was perfect! Head up, ears pricked, standing square, 3/4 profile. Really one of his best-ever pics.
We were in dressage tack and the ring steward was a “Mr. Greenjeans” type, wearing overalls with a sportcoat over top. Not a slender fellow, either.
You’ve just gotta believe the photo looked SO much better without him. Really, trust me, it was the right thing to do. LOL
I also had lots of fun messing with a scan of a watercolor. It’s a cute painting of butt-end of an Airstream travel trailer going down the road (we’re Airstreamers). I photoshopped all my pets into it.
The cats and dogs went into the windows and my horse is running alongside. It came out really cute – not perfect, but cute – and will hang in the trailer.
Sounds like I don’t have enough to do, doesn’t it?
Hey Vittra, nice photoshop job! I am not buying any horse from you unless I see it in person
I checked out your blog, and was really interested to see your stuff. How is the SFU design program? What is the main focus? I commuted past SFU for 4-5 years myself.
Vittra wow nice job and like the rollover thing for comparison. Even just fixing the light/colour helps though, but I like his new neck
.
Does make you never want to buy something sight unseen.
JustKreepingUp,
Thank you. And I love my design program, I’m in Interaction Design in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology. I love looking at design from the users perspective instead of just form or function. To see more of what I do, check out my portfolio, http://www.sfu.ca/~jdickers/ and feel free to email me with questions. My blog will update over xmas with all this semester’s projects.
-vittra
justkreepingup – no, you shouhld buy a horse from me instead. I swear, this picture doesn’t do him justice at all! ;0)
Octavian
Ooooh! Yes, starrynightxxi I will buy that horse right away! Do you take paypal? It’s just… he seems a bit…I don’t know…a…bit…parrot-mouthed, maybe? What sort of bit do you use?
Nice work StarryNightxxi. I really enjoy Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s photos, especially the Iberian breeds, the gorgeous baroque types. I think that a roman nose looks great with all the robust curves and flowing lines of those horses. I have to confess that I am rather fond of fugly standardbred heads too, partly because of the rest of the horse that goes with it.
Really? Of COURSE we take PayPal, and good news, he’s not gelded! We don’t know who his sire is – some fly-by-night stallion – but as you can see, he is well worth our asking price anyhow. We’ve been informed by many experts in the field that he will outgrow his “parrot-mouth” as you call it, but in the meantime suggest keeping him away from small mammals.
He’s only halter trained but I think that he will do very well in dressage. He’s shown an extreme affinity for airs above ground.
-lol- oh, i’m just SO clever ;0)
I love his photography, and his ingenuity. Studio shots with horses are not easy and his solution to that problem lets him get images that you could NEVER get in a traditional studio.
I also have to admit a love for big roman noses and thick necks, something iberians have in common with poorly bred fuglies the world over.
Heh heh heh….all they need now is a macro, and they’re all ready for the internets.
“Can I has cookie now?”
starrynight-
That was really clever.
Too clever…
How many BYBs do you have banging down your metaphorical door willing to take a parrot-mouthed “rare breed” so long as he is able to get some serious suspension in his stride?
–raised eyebrows–
I ain’t gittin the hole deal with them newfangled internets. Ain’t pickin’ up on yer PayPal ideer, but I think I unnerstan what yer gettin’ at. My cuzin Earl’s got himself a real nice lady friend and he pays ‘er by the hour. I’ll git him ta send ‘er over to yer neck of the woods right quick, and she’ll do ‘er bidniss and bring us back yer ol’ stud colt. I ain’t to worried ’bout the parrot mouth- me and ma and pa and all my cuzins got onna dem too and it ain’t hurtin’ the way I kin eat pork rinds one bit. Britney will be on her way now, y’hear? We’ve got 10 rescue mares that need breedin’ so we can’t be waitin’ long for yer stud horse.
worth1000.com has incredible PS work
HA HA HA HA HA
Let’s all take a second to pray, meditate, whatever you do – that these weren’t supposed to be serious.
I think the horses actually look embarrassed. Especially the poor guy in the first picture with the moon and moron.
losvagos, that palomino was really worked on. Outside of a saddle being removed, all of his lines have been “cleaned up”. If you open that picture in photoshop and enlarge it, there are a lot of solid lines between him and the background. In a normal picture, you get more a feathered effect, not a 1-3 pixel wide band of solid color. The line of his rump/tail and his neckline are the most noticeable. That RF foot was really messed up. It almost looks like someone cut&pasted a section of ground over his foot. Enlarged, his RF hoof has a square chunk missing from it.
There’s also something really funky about his chest line and front legs. Someone repainted the entire vertical white stripe in the barn behind him from the chest down and I’m trying to figure out why … I think they built this photo out of at least two different photos, one for the top and one for his legs. Maybe more for his front legs since there are a lot of horizontal bend lines in them.
Needless to say, this guy is a definite “see & vet” before you buy.
Photoshopped? Take a good hard look! lol.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v726/
canadagirljackie/DSC01991-1.jpg
losvagos said…
I think… the palomino, and possibly the grey have also had their legs…streached??? I know that paso’s usually have bigger body/shorter legs and it looks to me like that has been altered. Palomino definitly looks a TON funky.
Most of my ‘photoshoping’ involves getting the gaits, trucks, barns, poles and other crap out of the background of a decent picture. I try to never touch the horse in the picture, just clean up the background.
*LOL* the headless horse needs a headless horseman!
ilovefuglies, if it is, it was a darn good job. I don’t see any of the artifacts I normally look for … random blurry sections or weird devisions between feathered color or solid. It may look impossible but I think its genuine.
I don’t think the horse is headless, just has his head turned to the side and back, as there is a small ear peaking out on his chest.
>>I agree, it would be be nice to see a real entry about discerning photoshopped pictures, but not knowing Fugly’s abilities at photoshop, my guess would be that it would have to be a guest or collaborative blog.< <
You’re right. I’m not an expert. I can see it a lot of times but I’m sure good photoshopping gets past me. I’d love a guest blog if someone would like to send one!
>>Let’s all take a second to pray, meditate, whatever you do – that these weren’t supposed to be serious.< <
Oh, it was for real. The ENTIRE SITE looks like that.
See for yourself
And yes, her collection of (blech!) stallions qualifies for this site on their own, um, merits.
RE: Photos I think were altered (links again, for reference:
http://www.bentwoodplace.com/
view.php?c=1&id=4
http://www.bentwoodplace.com/
view.php?c=1&id=3 )
IMO, Jo’s – and some others – are totally on the right track.
Palomino: Jo’s comment about the hard vs. ‘feathered’ or blended pixels is right. It’s very easy to see in the front of the palomino’s right knee against the barn.
Regardless of whatever else more or less cosmetic was done to or for this photo, concentrate on the front legs from the knee down.
Even at normal zoom the horse doesn’t stand right …seems to be on tippy toes. Pastern position wrong for the rest of his stance; hooves are set on wrong, wrong …both steep, long, at the wrong angle and not quite straight.
Magnified I think I see enough changes that it looks like the fronts were either completely rebuilt or set in from another photo, perhaps?
Now, here’s a hint on the gray stallion: Whatever was done was done more skillfully than the palomino but — If I’m not totally insane here (…possible!) –there’s something WAY wrong here too.
Do this: Magnify the image a bit, and then focus on the hind quarters. Starting at the facing hip, (that’s his left hip) trace the leg to the ground. You’e arrived at a hoof …where is it relative to the other hoof and the rest of the horse?
Anyone see anything physiologically improbable here?
Looking forward to observations!
Losvagos – I saw that too. Its optical illusion pony!
losvagos…
I agree! That is why I said they look worse. I wasn’t sure what it was, but the one hoof DID look farther back then it should. One has to wonder WHY that picture was photoshopped?? In all the time and effort it takes to photoshop something couldn’t they just take another picture? How hard is it to get a horse standing square? Sheesh.
If I WAS ever going to breed (all mine are geldings, so no foals in my forseeable future), things like this would make me want to see a prospective stallion in person, not just from a website. I guess a video would help, but still. You never know what is really going on until you see the horse in person.
For those that are wondering about the headless horse. I can assure you the picture is real and I took the picture myself. It was taken only a few moments after this one.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v726/
canadagirljackie/DSC01989.jpg
She just happened to nip at a fly at that exact moment I snapped the picture. She did it so fast it was really one of those things you can only photograph by accident. You can make out the tip of her ear off her withers.
Starrynight–LOVE the hippogriff. Very nicely done; he merits a bow–as do you.
Heather–Don’t! I just sprayed coffee across my keyboard. Actually, I think hippogriffs might not mind snacking on pork rinds…Dear God…I’ve never photoshopped anything, but you should all be glad I can’t. I got a visual involving a hippogriff making off w/a bag of pork rinds in a group of people w/a family tree like Celtic knotwork. And topping it all off, I now hear banjos in my head.
BTW, he may be parrot-mouthed, but I’d go for breeding him to Gypsy Vanners; he should have a lot of feather on him.
this blog reminded me of this ad, which made me laugh and laugh for days…
AAAAhhhhhggg …having trouble signing in! And I lost a long and stunningly witty and insightful post.
ilovefuglies, look again. The left hoof ends up on the right side. Figure that one out? Replacing the legs and/or altering them significantly means, to me, that they don’t like what they’ve got for some reason…
>>this blog reminded me of this ad, which made me laugh and laugh for days…< <
The way he hangs his knees, if he really were downtown, he wouldn’t make it up the curb safely!
horror-fied said…
this blog reminded me of this ad, which made me laugh and laugh for days…
Wow, all things aside I wonder how he can jump that high if he weighs 12,000 lbs.
horror-fied said…
this blog reminded me of this ad, which made me laugh and laugh for days…
They really missed a marketing opportunity there. With the name ‘Aslan’, they should have photoshopped a lion’s mane onto him as well. Maybe they should have asked Starrynight to do it for them.
-lol- you people are too funny
The horses look well cared for, well trained and sane. You cant photo shop that. Its cool.
note to owner of tacky buckskin – no need to dress it as an alien, thats what it already looks like.
losvagos-
VERY observant of you re: the grey’s “potty stance”
A good lesson in being a little more aware for me.
ilovefuglies- love the headless picture. If you don’t mind, I’d like to save it for myself just for fun. She’s a flexible gal for sure.
kokorami- sorry to ruin your coffee
Yes, I think breeding him to a Gypsy Vanner would be a good call. I’d hate for him to pass manure overhead though… ick! Gives a whole new meaning to teaching him to “ground tie!”
Love this blog. LOVE LOVE LOVE.
Thanks for all the fun!
I did not realize that they were headlights and mirrors. It looked like he was a satellite orbiting the moon. My bad.
That sure is a beautiful farm though. Damn, why do the cheezsters have the nice places? LOL