There are two diaries on the rec list right now -- 9a Eastern time on 5 August 2009 -- which feature photographs of people holding signs at rallies. Some of these signs look to be photoshopped. This brings up obvious questions:
-- can we tell which are real and which are fake?
-- are any fake?
-- do we have a responsibility to "sign-check"?
I don't know -- photoshop forensics are above my seed allotment. I would suggest that
-- photographs be understood to be easily manipulated (we tend to use them as stand-ins for reality -- when Sinead O'Connor tore a photo of the Catholic Pope, it was felt by many as a nearly physical assault),
-- we more stringently vet photos posted.
Thanks. Some samples below the fold.
Here is a photo of a man holding a sign. It is from one of today's recommended diaries (from the body of the diary):
Note the machine-made letterforms on the careless sign.
Note the shadow the slightly curved and in placed bent cardboard sign casts on itself.
Note the shadows the letters seem to cast on the cardboard.
Note the angle between the letterform baseline and the bottom of the cast shadows.
Note the dead-straight baseline of the letterforms, even towards the left where the sign curves.
But note too the absolutely even transition from the color of the letter shadows to the color of the sign shadow, and that the angle of the letterform shadows seems to match the angle of the other cast shadows in the photograph.
In the other recommended diary, there are many signs -- they almost all appear real (not electronically manipulated as photographs) to me. But this one caught my eye:
I don't have much to say about it. Is it "real"?
Have you seen other examples of possibly photoshopped photographs in the news recently?