[mouse over to see the original image]

Above is Paul the Octopus – a “psychic” octopus that the Germans rely on to pick the winners of World Cup matches. (Supposedly during the 2008 European Championship, Paul correctly predicted 80 percent of all German games.) Well, looks like someone is trying to artificially pump up (or hoax) Spain’s fan base. They took a photo of Paul from his “psychic pick” for the Germany-Serbia World Cup match and Shopped Spain’s flag (well, most of it – they left off the crest) over Serbia’s.

Related articles…

Desperate Spain fakes World Cup octopus prediction [NBC Sports]

Paul the Oracle Octopus Picks Spain Over Germany? It’s a Fraud [NowPublic]

UPDATE 7/6/2010: At the big event today Paul wound up picking Spain! See fakers? You didn’t have to even bother! Doesn’t it feel better when it’s for real?

Outside Magazine got called out the other day by their very own cover boy, Lance Armstrong. He tweeted…

Pictured above is the cover he tweeted about. Outside Shopped onto Armstrong’s plain t-shirt “38. BFD.” The “38″ stands for Armstrong’s age and – I imagine – the “BFD” stands for that infamous Joe Biden-ism “Big Fucking Deal”. To their credit, Outside printed a disclaimer on the cover: “Note: Not Armstrong’s real T-shirt” and offered up an explanation after Lance’s initial complaint, but that did not satisfy Armstrong. Rightfully so, if Outside wanted to use that visual story angle they should have told Armstrong about the concept ahead of time – not after the fact – because it is obviously a BFD to Lance.

Oh, how I love those ladies over at Jezebel! Kimora Lee Simmons has used an obviously shopped image for her latest perfume campaign, and I have been hoping that someone would find the original source image. Well, it appears it has been franken-shopped from a few models…

[click to enlarge]

Kimora’s ad is on the right, and Jezebel found the legs were that of model Daria Werbowy (from a 2005 Vogue cover on the left), and wrote a very good break down of how they think it was shopped.

April 28, 2010 UPDATE: As much as I love Jezebel, I love the eagle eye users of this site even more! Commenter Doron pointed out that although he thinks the Kimora ad was Shopped, that these legs are not the source. He says: “Yes, the pictures are similar, but out of all the modelling pictures ever published, it’s not surprising that you can find one that looks very much like any other picture. When layered one on top of the other and compared pixel-to-pixel, one of the legs doesn’t even look alike.” So I did just that…

[mouse over to see the other image above] If you don’t like the mouse over thing you can see the 2 images overlayed below…

Survey says: Doron is correct! I lined up the ankles of the forward facing foot. While there are similarities to the legs the important things (namely ankles, calves and kneecaps) are entirely different. So, it appears I go back to hoping someone out there finds the original source imagery for this gem. I still believe it is Shopped (cuz Lord knows that is NOT Kimora’s current body) so the original has to be out there somewhere.

Thanks Doron for keeping your eyes on the pixels and calling this out! Please check out Doron’s blog post on this as well.

The latest imagery for Candies featuring Britney Spears is out along with the unretouched originals. The Daily Mail says that it was Britney herself who demanded their release, but they are not giving credit to any named source for statements like: “Britney is proud of her body – imperfections and all.” OK, so, if she’s so damn proud why can’t you credit who said that? I’m with Jezebel – I’ll wait for some more info on these images before I stand up and applaud anyone.

Anyway, here are the images (below) – Brit looks damn good regardless, but you can see the extensive work on her legs, butt, thighs and waist. On the bottom image you can even see how they elongated her legs so they appear slimmer and so she looks taller.

[mouse over to see the original image]

[mouse over to see the original image]

Although the Rolling Stones album Rarities (1971-2003) was released back in 2005, the album cover seems to be all the internet Photoshop buzz these past few days. Seems someone on a message board pointed out (and posted the visual evidence) that bassist Bill Wyman had been, well, removed from the album cover…

Above: The original image; Below: The altered image with Wyman removed. Images were posted by user “surfingelectrode” on the Steve Hoffman music forums.

The original image on top was taken from the video for “Respectable” which was done back in 1978 when Wyman was still a member of the band (in the original image you can clearly see him in the background between Mick and Keith). However, the Photoshopper forgot to remove Wyman’s bass cord and part of his leg (which you can see between Mick’s guitar and mic stand on the Rarities cover). In addition to the missing band member, the image on the Rarities cover was also horizontally compressed quite a bit from the original. (Like you really need to make the Rolling Stones look skinner than they already are?)

Hey, I know Wyman left the band in 1992 and therefore wasn’t a member in 2005 when Rarities was released – and maybe there were some touchy legal issues that we don’t know about which required his removal from the cover – but visually erasing him from Rolling Stones history is exactly something that evil dictators like to do.

Related articles…

Rolling Stone Erased from Photographic History [Yahoo! Music]

Rolling Stones Photoshop Disaster [Glorious Noise]

Rolling Stones Removed Bill Wyman From Photo For “Rarities” Album [Feel Numb]