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World Press Photo Winner Accused of Photoshopping

Posted by timothy on from the stock-characters dept.

vikingpower writes "The winner of this year's World Press Photo award, Paul l Hanssen, is under fire for allegedly having photoshopped the winning picture. The Hacker Factor is detailing the reasons and technicalities for the accusations. ExtremeTech also runs an item about the possible faking. Upon questions by Australian news site news.com.au, Hanssen answers his photo is not a fake. The whole story, however, is based upon somewhat thin proof: three different times in the file's Adobe XMP block; this does not necessarily mean that more than one file was used in order to obtain a composite image." Update: 05/14 20:04 GMT by S : World Press Photo says the photo is genuine.

3 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. The author has the RAW file. Case closed by gaspyy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The gritty look on the picture can be achieved with a local contrast filter. Combined with contrast and saturation manipulation, it's pretty easy to do. In Lightroom is just a matter of setting a few sliders - Darks, Highlights, Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation.

    Furthermore, the author says he has the RAW file and it was examined by the jury. Personally I know of no software that can currently reverse a jpeg into raw. It should be possible in theory to fake a raw file, but I sincerely doubt it's the case.

    Analyzing jpeg artifacts is snake oil. My photo workflow is this: shoot in RAW. Edit in Lightroom. Convert to ProPhoto 16bit/channel. Open in Photoshop, make any fine adjustments if needed. Output to jpeg. Only fools edit and re-save jpegs.

    This is simply one of the "fake moon landings" conspiracies, started by people who don't understand photography.

    1. Re:The author has the RAW file. Case closed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      A side by side comparison of the photo that won the prize and the same photo published the day after it was taken.

      There was a lot of work done on the light levels in the prize winner, but it is the same photo.

  2. Re: Minor observations by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 5, Informative

    The photographer has already explained the lat the photos have been retouched to affect lighting and dynamic range, he just didn't do what he was accused of, which was splicing different images together.

    --
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