This Looks Shopped

And the “Michael Jackson faked his own death to create the biggest comeback EVER” conspiracy theories start in 3…2…1…

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OK, I waited a few days to share this because posting about blown up photos of Michael Jackson’s crotch on this site so soon after his death just seemed wrong to me. When I was a kid I once purchased my 3rd copy of Thriller with allowance money taken out of my Michael Jackson purse, while I was wearing a Michael Jackson t-shirt. You know?

So, anyway, someone with eagle eyes over at HolyMoly! noticed that the photos AEG released of Michael Jackson’s final rehearsal looked a bit, well, cut & pasted together. I think their theory holds water too. You can read the whole rundown on their site, but the cliff notes version is that whoever pasted Jackson into this image forgot to silo his crotch out to show the lettering behind him.

Need supporters for your political rally? Shop them!

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Above: Shopped image of a pro Ahmadinejad rally which was printed in Iranian newspaper Kayhan (which - shocker - is controlled by the Iranian government). [source]

Just under a year ago Iran made the news with their cloned rockets, and now they are making news again with their cloned Ahmadinejad supporters (above). [Note to Iranian government: If you want to use Photoshop in order to distribute propaganda, you might want to hire some folks who know how to use something besides the clone tool.]

Related articles…

Someone in Iran (Probably the Government) Isn’t Good at Photoshop [Gawker]

Ahmadinejad sucks at Photoshop [Boing Boing]

Iran’s pro-Ahmadinejad media: Using fake crowd photos? [Christian Science Monitor]

Smile and Say ‘No Photoshop’

There’s a great article by Eric Wilson in yesterday’s New York Times about the levels of photo retouching that goes on in today’s fashion magazines…

WHAT’S NEW? Images of Reese Witherspoon show how a celebrity’s appearance can change radically from cover to cover.

Smile and Say ‘No Photoshop’
By ERIC WILSON
Published on NYTimes.com: May 27, 2009

MOST readers of fashion magazines are aware that all photographs, at least to some degree, lie.

More often than not, images have been altered — historically with painstaking tricks of lighting and exposure and, more recently, with retouching software that can make celebrities and models look thinner, taller, unblemished, with brighter eyes and whiter teeth. Seemingly perfect. Advances in digital photography have made it so easy to manipulate photographs that cover models often resemble weirdly synthesized creatures or, as the photographer Peter Lindbergh described them this week, “objects from Mars.”

[read the rest of the article]

ATTN: Denver, CO area readers…

There will be a class held at Colorado Free University/Lowry Campus on Saturday, May 23rd (and in case you can’t make that date, again on July 17th) all about debunking Spirit Photography and detecting hoax imagery. The class is being taught by J. Allan Danelek - a paranormal researcher, author and graphic artist. Wish I lived in that area so I could attend! [more information]

A “Picture Perfect” slideshow…

AOL News has a slideshow of 14 recent magazine covers along with commentary about the Shopping that was done to them (some by the Shopped subjects themselves) called Picture Perfect. An excerpt from the commentary on Jenny McCarthy’s Shape cover…

Jenny McCarthy admitted to the Daily Express that her hot Shape cover shot was not real. “It’s eating healthy and also a crap load of airbrushing … I keep myself in very good shape … but it is definitely a little touched up,” she told Daily Express. “I have freckles … and stretch marks that you do not see here, and they add a little shadowing to make these muscle things happen that don’t exist on my body.” Thanks for the honesty Jenny.

After you view that slideshow it leads into another 15 photo slide show called Altered Existence which is more about the use of Photoshopped imagery in promotional advertising. There are some great examples and commentary in both slideshows, so please be sure to check them out.

[view the Picture Perfect slideshow]

Thanks to Kath for the submit!