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Chinese Officials Need a Better Photoshopper
A clearly photoshopped picture of three Chinese officials inspecting a newly laid road is becoming an internet sensation. The picture posted on a local council's website, shows the men hovering a few inches off the ground with the edges of their bodies blurred. Government officials offer the following explanation: "...a professional photographer had been employed to photograph the three men inspecting the road surface. But after taking a set of real shots of the officials, the unnamed photographer decided that the pictures were just not good enough. With true artistic temperament he set about 'Photoshopping' the three men onto the empty road to create something better." Plenty of parody pictures have popped up already, and I look forward to seeing where the trio end up over the weekend.
Maybe they really ARE hovering!
where can I find the parody pictures?
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So how does this beat gary busey meme?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
If you want to see more images about this, the keyword seems "floating officials". Anyway I can't see much.
-Woof woof woof!
Someone is going to find they have a new job soon. Farming rabbit droppings in Mongolia...
Why can't women be like Hedy Lamarr - beautiful, talented and inventors of frequency-hopping spread-spectrum techn
http://patriciachan.com/2011/06/how-to-not-photoshop-official-government-photos-funny-chinese-bad-photoshop-sensation/#respond
Direct link to small paragraph on story and contains many of the parody photos for those interested.
"the unnamed photographer decided that the pictures were just not good enough"
No, the unnammed photographer is not good enough! For flip's sake any photographer, amateur or pro could at least spot the difference in light between subject and background!!
This is what qualifies as news? I know /. has been slipping a bit lately, but seriously?
ChinaSmack has much more detailed coverage on this story, including translated Chinese netizen reactions and ton of photoshops. There are only a few ways that the Chinese can criticize the "ZF" (Chinese Government), these sorts of harmless mockery is one of them.
http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/floating-chinese-government-officials-stun-netizens.html
...you'd never resort to such crassness, would you?
http://www.mailwatch.co.uk/category/photoshop-disaster/
The men did in fact visit the road, as evidenced by a couple of real pictures in the article. It really seems to be an honest mistake by someone terrible at image editing.
they should get the Soviet Russia guys they did a better job with out photo shop or a pc.
to use the tag "from the I've-seen-a-few-in-my-time dept."
That Photoshop copy was probably either pirated or purchased for 10 yuan...from a guy who pirated it.
---
I can tell by the pixels
they should get the Soviet Russia guys they did a better job with out photo shop or a pc.
I've seen one example where they edited out Stalin(after he died, of course) in a film of he and Lenin together by superimposing the upper torso of a guy in a Red Army uniform on the film so that it covered up Stalin.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
This site provides them without having to click on thumbnails.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
I'd say an honest mistake would be something like using redeye reduction and removing all red in the photo. This was an attempt to create a new scene where they admired the road while showing off their godly powers of levitation.
I know it, I've seen "Croucing Tiger, Hidden Dragon"!
So say we all
The levitating road allows vehicles to sail and move by fan power with no friction for much greater fuel efficiency. China is right for being proud of this road.
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So ? This is no different than any fashion photo on the cover of a magazine.
"Sorry gov; I didn't realise my right hand was photoshopping the image".
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
If a poorly 'shopped pic is still better than the original, then maybe you need a better photographer.
I dunno. The Chinese Olympics broadcast featured digital fireworks and a little girl lip-syncing the national anthem because the little girl singing it wasn't pretty enough. At some point you move from "honest mistake" to "culture where appearances are deemed more important than reality" - to say nothing of material things, like their famously unreliable economic data.
Myself, I'm more of an "esse quam videre" kind of guy (to borrow the North Carolina state motto).
Stated in the article that the three men actually went to the site to see the new road; the photographer was not happy with the results and tried to make a perfect picture. Good job /.
I think they need to be inspecting the top of the WTC, ala the famous photo-shopped pic with the plane in the background.
"culture where appearances are deemed more important than reality"
Sounds like that other country I heard about.
A fashion photo is intended to be a work of art, not an accurate record of government officials' actions (even actions as boring as admiring a road while levitating).
Thats a cultural bias that you are expressing.
It could just as easily be the other way around.
"His name was James Damore."
is symbolic of everything wrong with "Made in China" = cheap, poorly engineered and poorly manufactured with inferior parts
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The photo of the government officials was a pretty accurate record. The picture of the three men was taken when they were admiring the new road, and the background was an actual picture of that same road.
The photoshopped picture was merely a small cosmetic change to remove the glare on the road that was originally in the background.
That photographer is either dead or in a work camp by now.
Thats a cultural bias that you are expressing. It could just as easily be the other way around.
Yes, I know. The Communist cultural bias is that portrayals of government actions or photos depicting actual reality should be works of art, molded for best propaganda, but fashion is a worthless endeavor and everyone should wear gray and red. That doesn't mean that my cultural bias isn't a better cultural bias though.
Come on, you seriously think only in Communist China do people lipsync on stage?
And what's wrong with digital fireworks? Do you think realistic computer rendered animations are bad too? Or do you believe that every single bit of the movies you watch are "real"?
Gosh you guys (you and the moderators who modded this up) are dense.
Don't quote me on this.
This reminds me of the Chinese 'spacewalk' with the bubbles rolling around the astronaut. Whatever happened there, did we just accept that they actually did a spacewalk?
-Styopa
They're so used to lying to the people that they will lie even when they don't have to.
Circumcision is child abuse.
When they replace one individual with another, which they did the fellow that's not facing the camera, it's not an honest mistake or bad chopping skills anymore.
Some alright parodies, but when it hits the level of the Ed Hightower parodies, then I'll be impressed. They are not all winners, but there are some gems in there.
Come on, you seriously think only in Communist China do people lipsync on stage?
Lip syncing happens a lot (Ashlee Simpson, Brittney Spears, et al.) but at least they usually lip-sync to their own prerecorded voices. Not really the same thing here.
And what's wrong with digital fireworks? Do you think realistic computer rendered animations are bad too? Or do you believe that every single bit of the movies you watch are "real"?
A person watching a movie knows what they are watching is not real. Again, it is not really the same case as when watching a "live" broadcast.
Funny. I love the shadow.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Look, I understand it's the Chinese, and we officially don't like them or their human rights record, but if this sort of picture rises to the level of "propaganda," then we need to call what used to be named "propaganda" (i.e.: Pictures that inflame nationalism, demonize a political enemy, or move people to high emotion over what is actually mundane, or at least literally mislead or lie about the nature of something important) something else.
This is a publicity shot, as is every ribbon cutting ever filmed in the States or Britain. Not everything the Chinese government does rises to the level of "propaganda."
The Photoshopping is just "incompetence." Again, I don't think it rises to the level of "propaganda." It's hilarious, but not nefarious.
"culture where appearances are deemed more important than reality"
Oh, you mean like the USA? Here we value appearance over reality every day.
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This photo was obviously created to show the world that Chinese people can fly, now we all fear them... duh
The classic photo demonstrating the impressive photoshopping skills of Soviet journalists(50 years before Photoshop appeared is the one with Stalin and Yezhov: before and after.
That photoshop isn't really that much worse than what the whitehouse released as obama's birth cirtificate. Whats the big deal?
Vampires don't cast shadows. I'm just saying.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2282088&cid=36639318
And, I really do NOT like you talking behind my back either... but, show up there, and we can discuss what I brought up (see you there).
APK
That person is in the second real picture from the article. He seems to have really visited the site. I don't see how that bit of editing is any different from modifying the background. The overall image shows that the three visited the road, which takes both of the other pictures to get across.
I would I could mod this funny. By "mistake", I meant the incredibly low quality of the final image was a mistake. In retrospect that usage is a bit non-standard.
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shop them standing on bacteria or an ameoba.