oh for the love of god

[solarbird]

Anyone who has worked with photoshop for 10 minutes knows how this picture (Reuters, hosted on Yahoo News) was doctored.



I mean, what the fuck, people? What the fuck?

ETA: In "Load of Crap" news, the photographer says he was just trying to remove dust specks and blames poor lighting conditions for, apparently, um, problems viewing his monitor. I really, really don't think so. He's been canned. Now the editor that approved it needs to be canned.

Comments

[avram]

Holy crap. I’ve read about photographers fired for much lesser alterations than that.

[solarbird]

Both the photographer and the editor who let it go out need to be canned.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

That story? Ridiculous. Wow. I do some sharpening and color enhancement on almost all of my photos, specifically for the reason the photographer stated - presenting a better image of what was actually seen, rather than how he had to shoot it for whatever reason. To fire someone over that? Absurd.

The stuff talked about in the article - nothing was removed, nothing was added that wasn't there before. Just...wow.

[avram]

I know. Old-time film photographers used all sorts of tricks in developing to make their photos come out better. Photo editors must just be paranoid about the possibilities of Photoshop, and figure it’s easier to have a blanket ban on alteration than to have to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

The thing is, editorial/news photographers know they're not supposed to do that sort of stuff, so if they do it and get caught, I really don't have much sympathy for them. It's a totally different world than creative photography.

[avram]

Reuters has issues a kill on that photo; here’s what they say is the original.

[britzkrieg.livejournal.com]

OK... I feel really stupid, but I don't think I see what you're talking about here.

One of the plumes looks like a fist to me, but that's about it... what am I missing? Is there a penis in there somewhere?

[solarbird]

They did several things. First, that repeating pattern in the clouds isn't natural; it's a telltale artifact of the photoshop "clone" tool, used to duplicate one area of an image over another area. Secondly, the dark plume on the far left doesn't look right, I think it's been altered at least to be more dense. Thirdly, and this is harder to see even for regular photoshop users, I see what appears to me to be use of a particular Photoshop "scatter" brush, a tool nobody uses because it sucks.

Looking at the original - which, quite frankly, also shows signs of manipulation, on the left coloumn - it looks to me like the intent of the alteration was to take one bombing site (and/or the appearance thereof) and create the appearance of several scattered over a larger area.

[britzkrieg.livejournal.com]

OK, I see. After staring at the photo a little more I did notice that the left plume looked way too dense and columnar.

The cloning definitely still leaves me with the impression of a fist, though. My husband noticed it, too. People who know the photo has been doctored could read that as some kind of political statement, whether intended or not.

[solarbird]

Those repeating circular curves in both clouds, made of lighter areas around darker areas? Each one of those is a clone mark. Click, click, click, or, more likely, someone trying to copy too much at a time over a given area to get an edit done quickly, and then cloning their already-cloned area to fill more sky.

[kvogel.livejournal.com]

They also duplicated the landscape, in some places at least two additional layers of the same buildings. The overall effect appears to be to enlarge the cityscape, lacking a higher angle view, and very badly doctoring the smoke.

[banner.livejournal.com]

go to littlegreenfootballs.com they show the clones of the buildings as well to make the damage look worse than it is.

[mysticalforest.livejournal.com]

Rueters admits error. (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3286966,00.html)

[solarbird]

I'm glad they didn't list it was an "error" themselves, I'd have been pissed off. But again, whoever let that thing through needs to be gone.

[banner.livejournal.com]

They didn't admit to it until a blog storm here in the US brought a lot of pressure to bear. Notice that no news outlets have picked up the story of this blatent fake either.

[janne.livejournal.com]

They have over here, anyhow... http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=125602

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

This is exactly the kind of crap that leads people to distrust the media and it needs to stop.

Actually, it makes me wonder - the story says the photographer is the same one who's been accused of staging recent rescue scenes. I wonder if he could be part of Hezbollah's "media department" in some way.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Reuters has members of the PLO and other terrorist organizations on their payroll (why else would they refuse to call terrorists, terrorists?) They've made a habit of publishing propaganda peices for a while now, as well as propaganda photo's. The whole Qana thing was so blatently staged, yet they got away with it. So emboldened I guess this photographer (who was part of the whole Qana scam) decided to push the limits.

Why is anyone surprised by this? Reuters hasn't been reliable and has been heavily biased towards the islamic terrorists for years now.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

Let me get this straight, the fact that Reuters decided not the use the word "terrorist" (a decision I disagree with BTW), that's *proof* that they must have "members of the PLO and other terrorist organizations on their payroll?" Brilliant logic!

[banner.livejournal.com]

Once again, you misread it and get it backwards. They refuse to use the word terrorist because they have members of terrorist organizations working for them as reporters and stringers.

Do a google search on their writing staff in the middle east sometime, compare it to the lists (known) of people working for the PLO. There was actually a couple of news stories written about this back in 2001 or 2002.

You are so incredibly dense, you know that? I guess anything that inmpinges on your world view must be mocked rather than investigated. Now go do some investigating because I know you wouldn't believe me if I told you the sun comes up in the morning.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

No, I've never seen any reliable story that showed proof that Reuters hired PLO members as reporters, but then I don't spend my time reading Free Republic and Newsmax and other questionable "news sources." (and I did a search and didn't come up with anything).

And it's highly amusing to see you criticize the news media and then turn around and claim that the fact that there are similar names between the two lists is "proof". Were they able to establish that they were in fact the same people? There are a lot of people in the Middle East with similar names (the ME equivilent of John Smith) so if that's the extent of the proof then I think it just reinforces my belief that you are without a doubt the king of putting out ridiculous claims you can't support.

Just below you make the claim that Reuters knew the guy was faking photos ("Guess what? They're finding more and more faked pictures by this guy! Guess he's been doing this a while and Reuters apparently just looked the other way.")

Any proof they knew? Now I agree the photo editor who passed those recent photos should be fired, but that's a huge difference between that and claiming they knew and didn't care.

The difference between our world views is that I'm a fan of Occam's Razor and you see conspiracy where ever you go (unless it has to do with Republicans, in which case it was "just an honest mistake.")

[banner.livejournal.com]

I never said it was a conspiracy, please stop putting words in my mouth. And why has Reuters pulled all 900 of the photo's they bought from him? Maybe because they're finding more that are faked?

Occam's razor may apply to science btw, but it does not apply to human endevors, because people do not behave logically.

[foibos.livejournal.com]

You are so incredibly dense, you know that? I guess anything that inmpinges on your world view must be mocked rather than nvestigated.

If I recall correctly, you were stating in another thread that Islam is waging war on the USA. "Incredibly dense", pfft.

[banner.livejournal.com]

They are. You are living in a fantasy world if you think otherwise. Haven't you been listening to the statements of ALL their leaders? They want a 'worldwide' what?

[foibos.livejournal.com]

It would be (mildly) interesting to know your definition of what a 'leader of Islam' is, and your estimate on how many of them there are...

No, I haven't been listening to the statements of ALL their leaders. You haven't either, obviously.

Who else do you consider to be waging war against the USA? Christianity? Alcoholics Anonymous? The Klingons?

[banner.livejournal.com]

You sir, are a Moron.

And yes I've been listening to the statements from all of the leaders of their countries, all of the Imam's of note, and even some of the ones who don't get much play. This includes not only the Imam's in the Middle east, but those in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, France, Denmark, Italy, England, Canada and the USA. The only ones who I am unable to find stuff by anymore are the ones in the 'breakaway republics' such as Chechnya. I've been following the religion, its leaders, and its actions since the 70's. I know a hell of a lot more about it than you obviously do. I've even read the Koran.

So please take your insults and troll elsewhere. You're attempting to sound intelligent on a subject you really don't know anything about and you're really just a waste of time.

[foibos.livejournal.com]

:-) Yeah, right.

[avram]

According to Reuters, they refuse to use non-netural, emotive terms like "terrorist" and "freedom fighter".

I just googled for reuters "tamil tigers" terrorists (to get some perspective outside of the Middle East), and I didn't see any instances of Reuters using "terrorist" as a descriptive term outside of quotes or characterizations of other people's descriptions.

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

What is it supposed to be?

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

Apparently, it is simply supposed to be burning buildings after an Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5, 2006.

However, when I read Solarbird's post saying this photo was an obvious face, I wondered why she was bothering to critique it. I missed seeing the news about this Reuters photo, so I presumed that the photo was one of those obvious fakes shown in supermarket magazines like the World Weekly News with a silly caption like, "Angry Spirit Rises over Beirut!" It looks like a fist and head of smoke, and I thought that that was the intent of altering the photo.

Photographer Adnan Hajj drew a series of repetitive smoke patterns with Photoshop and did not even notice that he had drawn a fist? I thought photographers were supposed to be observant about images.

Even if the intent had been to create an figure-of-smoke picture as a work of art, so that the shape of the smoke is part of our suspension of disbelief, the photo has other signs of being a fake. I noticed the duplicated building under the fist, and saw that the smoke cloud was casting the wrong shadows on the buildings beneath it. Check out what Reuters was determined was the original photo: its shadows match its smoke.

Erin Schram

[epawtows.livejournal.com]

I thought it looked more like smoke-filled bubble wrap than a fist.

[janne.livejournal.com]

Truth is the first casualty of war, as ever. I find it instructive to compare news coverage of the war on websites on various sides of the conflict. Norwegian media has shown a lot of pictures of dead and dismembered civilians in Lebanon (including a rather gruesome bit of footage recently of people picking up the remains of bombed people in Tyre, while a little blood-splattered girl watches), while sites such as CNN seem to focus mostly on the Israel incidents. (Casualty figures vary -- ten libanese for every israeli is my best bet so far, but who knows?)

Perhaps if one spends time enough to look at all the angles the truth will crystallise out in the intersection of views, but who wants to spend that much time getting depressed :( The Qana footages have been particularly awful, little unnaturally limp childrens bodies all grey with dust being carried out of the ruins. I really, really can't understand the mindset that says 'might as well have the war now instead of trying to stop it'. There are real humans behind those pillars of smoke, doctored or not :(

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Weird thing is, assuming their 'revised' picture is legit, there's plenty of smoke in it already... it's a perfectly decent image.

But yes, that sucks, and they need to fire (I guess they're not employees, but you get the idea, quit using) that photographer; no excuses for something like that.

Why the surprise?

[tinlail.livejournal.com]

Anytime I have had personal knowledge of what was happening in a news story the media has gotten it wrong in some major way. And that was when the people had no personal care about the matter, they were just lazy.

Hire a bunch of locals to do your reporting on the cheap, and of course what you are going to get is propaganda from the most powerful thugs in the area.

And Reuters should of known that that is what they are getting for years.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Guess what? They're finding more and more faked pictures by this guy! Guess he's been doing this a while and Reuters apparently just looked the other way.

[blues-kun.livejournal.com]

...you know it's a bad 'shop when you can spot it immediately in the thumbnail.

[solarbird]

As dumb as it is, one of the things that really torques me about this one is the ineptitude of the fakery. Not even the part of that which means it should never, ever have gotten past the editor (who still needs to be fired) either. Just the part that they'd throw out that kind of crap as genuine. It means the photographer/manipulator must think we're really stupid.

[avram]

Y'know, I don't know what their workflow system is like. I know Photoshop, but I also know that large-scale high-speed workflow systems are complicated, and sometimes somebody clicks the wrong button or something and the wrong thing goes out.