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World Press Photo Winner Accused of Photoshopping
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.
The "photo" looks like it was CGI'd from the ground up. It looks like it was meant to look that way.
It looks like a Final Fantasy cutscreen.
I believe the correct spelling would be Newsweak.
News for people who don't want to know but find People magazine too deep.
No brain, no pain.
I am not agreeing with or denying what Hacker Factor is saying, but I would like to point out some minor issues with the analysis.
First, as to the lighting of the faces being brighter than in other pictures taken during the same procession, it is entirely possible there was a reflective surface to the crowd's right (picture left) which is making the faces appear brighter than one would think they should be in the alley way. Think of the reflective nature of the moon's surface which conspiracy theorists always ignore when talking about how bright things are in shadows. While the Photoshop effect could be the issue, note the wall to their right (picture left) which does have a reflective surface.
Note also the man on the far left, next to the wall. Note how there is sun shining on the white cloth directly below his face. As everyone knows, a white surface reflects large portions of light falling on it which would also produce the lighting effect seen on the man's face.
Second, as to the dirt on the girls face appearing differently in the photos, note the different angles of her head. In the winning photo the forehead is almost at a right angle to the picture taker whereas in the second photo it is pointing almost directly at the camera. The lighting in the second photo is much more diffuse than the first which could explain the difference.
Also note that in the winning photo, the crowd is in a part of the alley which has exposure to much more sunlight than in the second photo.
Again, I'm not saying the person didn't do what has been accused, I'm only pointing out possibilities to explain what is being shown.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I think most of you will agree, though, that the photo simply feels fake
I was surprised they didn't simply go for "you can tell by the pixels."
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The supposed proof of 'fakery' from the article seems entirely consistent with what the photographer says it is, different regions with different light intensities from the same raw file.The light angles seem entirely plausible, I guess the article writer hasn't heard of reflection. Even the moon landing nutters come up with better stuff than this.
The only true thing is that (as the photographer also says), the light intensities are differing.
Why wouldn't the photographer be allowed to change light intensities? Every single digital image, ever uses some kind of processing to turn photons into pixels on your screen, and there is always some level of subjectivity in how that is done, even if it's done right on the chip. Why is that an issue?
Yeah, but if all they have as evidence is an XMP block, that just means an Adobe product touched it in some manner. It could have been something nefarious, or he could have just used it to crop the photo. Whatever the truth, it's really hard to prove.
there's more than just adobe product touching it.
also, just forgetting to bring the original to a place where many people had disbelief in the photo... how the fuck did he get the award without the original?
at the very least all the levels on the picture were adjusted severely to bring out the pop - at worst composited from entirely different pictures.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It looks to me as if he went for an HDR treatment of the image, which would also explain the alleged 3 RAW files in it - if he used the same RAW each time but with an altered exposure level to get the dynamic range he wanted.
Looks brightened up a bit, but not other images thrown in. Can photographers not brighten/tweak contrast on a pic? Posting the original RAW file (if it still exists) would cover him for these sorts of accusations. Wouldn't it be prudent for a news agency to have a backup of the RAW files for A) these sorts of accusations B) their own tweaking of the pic for print/display?
Waiting for an amusing sig.
This photo is supposed to show mourners in Gaza City carrying children who died in an Israeli air strike
No, it really does show mourners in Gaza City carrying children who died in an Israeli air strike. There's no dispute about the factual content. The only dispute is about dramatic enhancement. "Supposed" is an attempt to cast uncertainty about what happened on the ground, when the only uncertainty is how pretty the photographer made it look.
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.
As a retoucher for 20 years, as soon as the image popped open on my screen it was yelling at me... "I've been retouched" The light and it's intensity is all over the place. It maybe the shot the photographer took, but he ruined it with terrible retouching.
Find a job you love, and never work a day in your life.
If Israel started shooting hundreds of unguided rockets into Iran, how long do you think it would be before Iran retaliated? If South Korea shot hundreds of rockets into North Korea would they let it be? If we started shooting rockets into Canada what would happen?
ELA is complete and utter garbage, and can not be used to show anything at all. It's like looking at tea leaves.
Whatever the truth, it's really hard to prove.
It would be easy if the photographer supplied the RAW image like he was supposed to. He conveniently "forgot" to bring it. Instant disqualification in my book.
But you can other tricks such as taking a second photo using the same negative to similar effect. A bit more challenging, but still possible
It looks like it's be run through lightroom which is what he says he did to it!
If you're not familiar with lightroom, its what professional photographers use to get brightness and depth into photos. It's a set of filters coupled to some workflow and archiving tools. What it isn't is Photoshop editing. He didn't put the dead children into the shot, or composite two separate dead children into one shot.
https://photographyconcentrate.com/15-snazzy-lightroom-and-afters/
Israel really did kill children, they really did die, they really were carried by grieving families along the street. It really is a tragedy, and pretending it's fake, and by implication that the dead children are also fake is a misleading argument.
I take your point, However, I don't see a better alternative. Without photojournalists showing the horrors of tragic events what does that leave, Only writers are allowed to tell the story's without photos? Or, perhaps discussing tragedies in any form is bad? I personally think we need more photo journalist willing to go to the battlefields and in the case of the photo Gaza city so that more civilized people like you and me can sit at our computers and have a debate about whether or not what they are doing (taking photos of emotional, bloody events) is worthy or not. That way I don't have to get physically dirty.
TODO create witty sig.
Because no camera out there captures what your eyes see. Your eyes are the result of millions of years of evolution. DLSRs are the result of, what, 30 years of engineering? HDR was invented not to make unrealistic images but to make images that look like what you'd actually be able to see. It may look fake only because you're used to seeing images on the computer screen which have a "normal" compressed exposure range. Sorta like how when people watch high-framerate images on TV or movies, they complain it looks weird, because they're used to the slower framerate.
Granted, plenty of people go overboard with HDR, and I don't know if the actual scene looked that way.
He does indeed claim he did it with one raw file. "The Hacker" makes a lot of hay about it being loaded/converted three times on two separate dates. Which sorta sounds like the guy is saying "He didn't do it how I would have done it, I can't see a reason to do it how he did it, therefore it must be a fake. To prove it, LIGHTING! Which is based on stuff I can't see."
It reminds me of the people who make reasonable-sounding cases that 9/11 was an inside job. They make it sound questionable until your realize that there are hundreds of other explanations, they have no proof, and they want attention.
How the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year was faked with Photoshop
OMG, it was faked! This is an outrage!
... but, from the ExtremeTech article:
When is an image fake, and when is it merely enhanced?
The bigger discussion, of course, is whether Gaza Burial is actually fake — or just enhanced to bring out important details. This is a question that has plagued photography since its inception. Should a photo, especially a press photo, be purely objective? Most people think the answer is an obvious “yes,” but it’s not quite that simple. What if a photo is perfect, except that it’s taken at an odd angle — can you digitally rotate it? What about cropping? What if there’s dust on the lens/sensor/film — can you digitally remove it?
Perhaps most importantly, though, cameras simply don’t capture the same gamut of color or dynamic range as human eyes — a photo never looks the same as the original image perceived by your brain. Is it okay for a photographer to modify a picture so that it looks exactly how he remembers the scene?
So, it wasn't faked, but rather cleaned up? All those people were in those positions at that time? The event was real?
The article uses the word "fake" to discredit the photographer, while at the same time admitting that that determination is really a subjective one having to do with how much enhancement is acceptable, and that the subject of the photo - which photojournalism is really about - is completely real.
It's a well known fact that crowds of greiving Gazans will all simultaneously freeze in their funerals so that photographers can get three good separate exposures for HDR!!! ~
Why can't a RAW image be faked?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
They draw some lines showing where the sun is. They then claim this means the illumination of the faces is wrong. Without any proof, and without allowing for the possibility that they are illuminated in some other way.
Why am I reminded of the moon landing conspiracy theorists?
As to Error Level Analysis, it can indeed show composites up. But there is nothing strong enough in the ELA they show to indicate compositing.
It's pretty obvious just looming at the photo that it's been enhanced. I don't see the problem with increasing contrast, even selectively, to make a better photo. It still shows exactly what was there, and nothing else.
A composite would be different, and that would indeed be a scandal. But there's no evidence of a composite here.
You really have no idea how badly you're being played. Please go to youtube and search for Pallywood. Also check out this article. The people of Gaza and the West Bank are being used as tools in an ongoing propaganda campaign aimed at turning public opinion worldwide against Israel. They fire rockets at Israel from locations that put their own innocent civilians in harms' way. The goal is to entice Israel into returning fire, and in doing so killing the innocent women and children nearby. Why is it that the palestinian refugees living in squalor across the border in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria are completely ignored? Israel actually provides humanitarian aid to the West Bank and Gaza, providing food and basic necessities. In fact, Israel regularly brings refugees from these two regions into Israel for medical treatment. This does not happen in the other refugee camps controlled by Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Where is the outcry when Syria drops bombs from a jet indiscriminately on the palestinian refugee camp inside it's border? Israel has agreed to numerous peace deals brokered by various world leaders. It is always the Palestinian leadership that fails to agree. And so they continue to launch rockets at Israel, and they continue to wage a war of propaganda.
WTF, seriously kids died in that Israeli attack, their grieving parents are carrying their dead bodies!
And you think its CGI'd??? Seriously?
When you hear the news about a shooting, do you think it's a Halo mission video!?
the picture looks like it was repainted - it's practically ready for print, and not just for printing on a news story but as in ready to print to be glued on a wall as a mural - in that way it's nice.
the other pictures from the scene do not look like that, and thus look more real, and less like they're from a movie poster commemorating the tragedy.
anyhow.. the telltale is that the guy "forgot" the raw.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In my mind, the question is, did he use more than one negative to create the image, or cloning or additions? I agree, the simplest way to put the discussion to bed is for him to produce the original raw file. He claims he used one negative and no cloning. He is either telling the truth or he is lying. The practice he *claims* to have done is valid and accepted by all photojornalist and more importantly the awards rules. FWIW, As an amateur photographer myself, I would not consider what he *claims* to have done to be wrong.
The photojornalist's claim:
"In the post-process toning and balancing of the uneven light in the alleyway, I developed the raw file with different density to use the natural light instead of dodging and burning. In effect to recreate what the eye sees and get a larger dynamic range."
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/photographer-says-his-2013-world-press-photo-of-the-year-is-not-a-fake/story-e6frfro0-1226642304141#ixzz2THb8ihps
If I were him I would post the original, and the post-production images side by side. It would be very easy for him to do.
TODO create witty sig.
There's a joke that goes something like this:
"If you have a choice between saving a man's life or taking a Pulitzer prize winning photograph of him plunging to his death, what shutter speed and aperture settings should you use?"
If I were him I would post the original, and the post-production images side by side. It would be very easy for him to do.
You mean like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gunthert/8485283411/sizes/o/in/photostream/
I don't think that's true. The photographer stated clearly in his description of the photo to the contest that it was created with an HDR like treatment of the RAW file. The AP photojournalism standards clearly allow dodging and burning:
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/goffs/135%20photojournalism/Associated%20Press%20ethics%20code.pdf.
Compositing two images to add or remove elements isn't allowed, nor is manipulating a photo in such a way that it misleads or changes the factual content, but there's no real suggestion that he did either of those things. He just tweaked the lighting a little.