I wanna know how you PS users recognise which and which pictures are being "photochopped" ? What software do u use ? Thanks.

 

huh? are you asking pshop users how they spot a fake?

 

oh this is an easy one... if brittney spears HAS panties on, its a fake... lol

 

yes sir

anyone ?

 

here's one i did to show why I thought this xB was a chop and not a real paint job. this pic was floating around when the rumor leaked that the the rs3 xB would be green.



It really comes down to looking at pixels sometimes. frequently, when something is cut out, and placed in another image, there will be a faint halo around the cut image. sometimes the shadows give it away as a fake. sometimes the background, for example in a chopped top xB, you can look at the windows and see if the image thru the windows matches up, or is distorted.

sometimes it's really really obvious, but sometimes you have to know what would be involved to create such an image in order to determine it's authenticity.

 

for me,

#1, is lighting and shadows. people who aren't paid to fake images don't usually do this well. I started having to fake the newest paint jobs and/or logos on nascar vehicles back in 96. My company didn't make every race, so we werent able to photograph the sometimes subtle paint changes or sponsorships changes and putting up last week's version of the car wasn't "good enough for fans" so I had to fake sometimes entire paint schemes. tedious to make shading perfect.

#2 pixelation on internet photos. Take time to learn about jpg compression. On most fakes, part of the image is compressed all to hell, and the fake part usually has much less compression blurring, as it's a part of a good photo grafted onto an already compressed image. I began making animated gifs back in 96, where the creation process was about like making down to the pixel perfect flip books. once you're looking at images at the pixel level, and it's pretty easy to see faking, especially if you're only doing 72dpi pictures.

#3 people's eyes and skin, unless they are a well known actor/model, nearly everyone who graces a magazine cover has the bluest, and sometimes violet, eyes, that just aren't natural. and if they're just using an unknown, no one has freckles, no one has scars, or even many times simple body creases or wrinkles.

#4 parts of backgrounds that are repeated over and over using the clone stamp. usually you can tell from lighting/shadow issues.

 

i dunno.. for me it's just recognizing little things.
if you know how to use different image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or any of Corel's programs, you know the capabilities and limitations of each.

there are people like me though, that are completely OCD when creating and editing (i.e. "photoshopping") images that i'll go thru the intricate details to make sure it looks real.

professionals get paid BIG BIG bucks to do that same exact thing.. a typical professional layout and editing process can cost a company thousands for just doing one image.

(though i don't do it as a career or job.. i do it anyway... but uhm.. hmm.. maybe i should get into that profession. )

it all comes down to how much effort, time and skill an individual has..

remember.. CLEAN, CLEAN SELECTIONS!

 

i do it professionally, and there is not big big bucks to be made, less you are a independant contractor that not only takes the photo, but does all the processing of that one image as well.

we have an outside company take some of our photographs, and they may make a thousand bucks on a 1 image, with 20 man hours and a lot of back and forth between the client.

 

if you wanna get good at chopping and altering images in pshop, learn the quick mask tool.

 

quick mask FTW!

but yeah.. the comment i made with the big big bucks does include all the processing as well... and sometimes goes far as into doing print.

also... not a necessity, but learning how to use a pen tablet will help alot as well.
i personally own a Wacom 9x12 intuos3 with two different pens (for what i can afford right now) that i use extensively in editing work.

using the tablet with quick mask will improve greatly on your selections
(as i said.. clean selections! )

 

sorry, but pen tabs are only usefull on large images in 300+ dpi, on anything below 6"x6" 300dpi, they're just tedious and they make for slow workers and employeers don't pay for that. on your own time, when you can spend 30+ minutes screwing around on an image, they might be funner to use for some people.

Out of the 40-50 professional pshop users I've worked side by side with, only 2 slow/lousy users pledged by them. The big problem with alot of grphx designers is they're sloooow, and while they produce great work, they're slower than they should be, but narcisstically think they're giving quality vs. quantity.

 

i deal with large images normally.
and i mostly do it for personal stuff... haven't really gotten into doing it professionally...

i tend to try to keep hobbies as hobbies.. because once it becomes a profession or career.. there's a large chance for me to not like it anymore... which i don't want happening.

i'll free-lance every so often though.

 

so what about ppl's face ? how do u spot it ? any common pointers ?

 

imperfections in the skin such as wrinkles, freckles, scars... can be so easily hidden and covered up
who knows if it was makeup or some digital editing that created that really... it's difficult.

the only real way to see that being fake.. is if the skin is tooooo perfect....

but even then... it could really be like that in real life, or makeup was applied.. which means it wasn't digitally edited.

pretty much you gotta know what they look like in real life or in person for you to really tell.

 

talking about slapping someone's face on someone else's body?

look at the neck, around the chin, and the shirt neckline. another big giveaway is the hair - it's difficult to select all of the hair sometimes, especially if some is windblown or sticking up. compare shadows.

kinda sounds like you have a specific image that you are trying to figure out. if it's acceptable for posting here, please do so.

 

Worried that the chick on match.com is really a dude?

 

I have been employed by the 3rd largest printer in the world now for 9 years and used PS the whole time. In the past year we have been sent to Atl to open our own shop, which we have been very sucessful with. We all use the Wacom Intuos tablets, we all also turn out huge amounts of projects. What it boils down to is the user, it's just like everything else some like them and some don't. Personally I don't see how I ever worked without one.

 

with very modern and technologically advanced extraction tools out there available, it's scary how detailed that they can be.
picking up strands of hair even to the most intricate of detail and removing whatever background that is behind it.

of course such software will yield prices over $200 easily and that's the only thing that it does.

at that point... it's all lighting that's really left.

 

successful, great work, never denied that, but simply not as fast as you could/should be. with a tablet on your desk or in your lap, you're not busting out keyboard shortcuts, or switching between programs as quick as if you didn't. But I realise you're at the same age as me, and being you're probably only working on Macs, you have been forced to get used to no true multitasking until OSX, so you have a lot more patience with computers and it probably doesn't seem like you're going slower.

 

I have never worked faster in the past than I do now with the pen and tablet. I have all my PS actions linked to the pen in the tablets preferences so that it takes no time whatsoever to do things such as shadowing, knocking out background, loading selections, etc and I still am fully able to utilize the quick/shortcut keys. If you configure your pen correctly and link them all together they work off one another seamlessly. I'm a customer service rep and a PS operator, and design pages with Quark and Indesign, my job is multi-tasking.