Participant

Question

I suspect that this image was manipulated/Photoshopped. Can you tell me your opinion?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
November 19, 2018
4 replies
1448 views

Hello, I'm not professional grapic designer or photographer but I use Photoshop on weekly basis thanks to web design/online social media marketing etc. Due to that I'm probably attentive than the other people and maybe due to that I observed some discrepancies in this image.

Look on the girl and her left thigh. It can be coincidence but the edge of her britches (these white short trousers) seems little bit weird. It looks like not really good using of magic wand tool. However it can be just because of low quality and high compression of photography.

But there is definitely one more thing, which led me to start this discussion and dig up. What about her right leg. Is it jist optical illusion or it's unnaturally long. When you think about where her knee is, her left thigh would be unbelievably long.

I want to know your opinion and I would be really grateful if you can write few words about what do you think about this photo.
Thank you guys 🙂

This topic has been closed for replies.

D Fosse

Community Expert

My gut feeling is that the photo is real. Don't judge by what you can see of the feet - light gets refracted in water. And you know how people tend to make exaggerated postures when they know they're being photographed.

But of course it isn't necessarily taken anywhere near the Crimean peninsula, or this year, or...

As for the blocked word it makes perfect sense after I had time to think about it. My spam folder is full of phrases like "dating" and so on - an obvious red flag.

EDIT but wait! Why did "dating" go through? That should sound all kinds of spam-alarm bells - is it because I put it in quotation marks? Don't have time to find out now.

gener7

Community Expert

Looking at Tineye Image search, it matches with a website called blesk.cz. Are you simply curious or is someone trying to pass this off as their image?

Sometimes there are logical reasons images look the way they do.

P

prczekAuthor

Participant

Well, I should probably explain context of this photo little bit more. This photo (together with another three photos) was in the past days one of the most important photos in the Czech Republic. It has political context, which is very, very complex to explaind. But in short: that man on this photo is the son of our prime minister. The son claimed that he was kidnaped (but more like tided away) to Crimea and treated bad by our PM's people because he was one of the suspects in grant fraud of his father (Czech PM).

After these claims were released, these photos (including this one with his son and his mysterious girlfriend) were released in Czech press. PM even shared these photos on his official Facebook page, as a proof, that his son was not kidnaped to Crimea and he was doing well here with his girlfriend. However now there are speculation about manipulating with the photos and PM even deleted these photos from his Facebook. These photos are not crucial in this case, there is much more about it, but I was curious if it is not another way how he is trying to manipulate with the people.

Here you can read more about the case of Czech PM: Czech PM's future hangs in balance after son's kidnap claims | World news | The Guardian

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Wow, what a story. Had you said that in advance, I would have replied, "of course it's manipulated". Corrupt politicians, everywhere, will use any means to conceal their shady business.

As it is, though, it just proves that photographs prove nothing these days.

I did find other instances, and the right click translate did an amazingly good job of rendering them into English — much better than our forum translate feature — but I hadn't been able to get the story przek gave us. There was obviously a back story though.

I'm now thinking I was wrong with my third person theory — I was putting weight on the black and white stripes (cyan highlight) which I took to be someone's bum, and did not originally twig that the foot and leg (yellow highlight) facing in the right direction for the girlfriend. I seem to remember seeing lads wearing shorts with different coloured legs, so I need to get with the program before jumping to conclusions.

Could her leg reach that far? I'd say yes it could. Allowing for a wee bit of perspective, the left leg red arrow looks about right. The shadows look OK (green highlight).

The bottom line is that if this is a big deal, the image would most definitely have been checked forensically, and it is my understanding that you can't hide from such an examination.

So I just had a wee hunt for forensic Image analysis software, and found this online tool

https://29a.ch/photo-forensics/

I used one of the original images (as far as we can tell), which does all sorts of weird shift [1] but I don't have a clue as to what it means. The only thing remotely fishy (that I had half a clue about) was that there is bugger all [2] EXIF, Geo Tagging, Metadata information embedded, which might just mean it was 'saved for web'.

[1 & 2] Jive threw up a keyword violation for me earlier today in this Lounge thread, and feel like testing it to see what it takes to stop me posting again.

jane-e

Community Expert

prczek wrote
But there is definitely one more thing, which led me to start this discussion and dig up. What about her right leg. Is it jist optical illusion or it's unnaturally long.

I first thought the Target model in the swimsuit had unusually long arms until Tanya Marie Keller appeared in person on the Ellen Degeneres show and admited that yes, her arms really did come way past her knees:

The Long Arm of the Model - Dailymotion Video

But yes, I agree that it’s a bit of an awkward stance. I would have trouble getting my left leg that far forward while keeping the trunk of my body that far back. I just tried it and failed.