Is the Associated Press distributing a doctored photo that news organizations are now running in their Copenhagen coverage?
Founding Bloggers’ very own, Allan Sluis, is calling attention to an image that just might be the latest example of what has come to be know as “Fauxtography” – or – passing doctored images off as good faith representations of reality.
Below is a detailed examination of the image, beginning with the shot as it was displayed Monday, December 7th, on Foxnews.com (Fox link via SPQA.org):
And here is the image as seen without the cropping Fox News applied. It is from the Baltimore Sun, dated July 2009:
Oh those poor geese flying right through those rust colored smoke plumes! They might start dropping out of the sky at any moment!
But what if the truth is not as apocalyptic as the AP image appears to depict?
A number of things about this image look unusual to Allan, who is a professional photo retoucher and graphic illustrator with nearly 20 years experience pushing pixels.
Below is the image with arrows highlighting specific features which upon close examination look very suspect, calling into question the honesty of the presentation of this picture.
Allan’s observations:
There is ample reason to believe that this photograph supplied to news organizations by the Associated Press has been substantially color-enhanced, perhaps to convey a false impression of pollution coming from a smoke stack from a purported coal-fueled power plant in Kansas. Here is a detailed description of the evidence that the original photo was either a black-and-white image, or a color image which was converted to black-and-white, and then colorized for dramatic effect. (See Update Below)
A1: Note this area of smoke rising directly from the smokestack is mysteriously missing any orange tone.
A2: Notice the unusual falloff of orange color in the background clouds (yes, those are clouds) just to the right of the smoke rising directly from the smokestack.
A3: A close examination reveals an unnaturally saturated hard color edge on that particular smoke lump.
B: Another unnatural saturation intensity increase to the left of the arrow. Note how rapid the orange tint fades in intensity on the left and the right of the arrow point.
C1, C2 & C3: These three arrows surround an area of sloppy retouching where the color tint was painted in too intense and abrupt to be convincing. Note how this color area pops substantially and quite suspiciously. This is also direct evidence that the retoucher is likely deliberately trying to blur the distinction between the actual smoke rising from the smokestack and the BACKGROUND CLOUDS deceptively conveying the impression that the entire area is choked with nasty orange pollution. This deceptive color continues right across the top of the smokestack and to the right going right over the background clouds.
D: Another area marked by the arrow point where the background clouds were not completely color tinted by the retoucher and the background gray is visibly missing orange tone.
Next, Allan began to reconstruct what he felt the original image might have looked like before it was allegedly enhanced, and in doing so, made a surprising discovery:
The evidence that this photo was originally a grayscale or black-and-white image was arrived at with a simple Photoshop process. We encourage other Photoshop enthusiasts and experts to recreate our work. (Here is the largest version of the image we could find)
1) Add a “Hue/Sat” adjustment layer directly above the original jpeg.
2) Drop the saturation percentage for both the Yellows and Reds Edit category down to zero.
Note how the image is now a perfectly even balance of the Red Green and Blue. This is easily viewable in the Info palette as you move the cursor over the image.
This is only possible if the original image is black-and-white or grayscale.
In a normal full-color image, there WILL be variances in the tone of the blues and greens. The desaturating of the Yellows and Reds would not touch the cooler colors. The other colors are not there.
This leads me to believe that this is a black and white image that has been colorized!
It is not possible to know if the camera original photograph is a black-and-white, but the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the jpeg being distributed was colorized from a black-and-white image. (See update below)
Here is what the image likely looked like before it was colorized after the above test was implemented (See update below):
We also in Hue/Sat discovered that the tone of the smokestack itself has been darkened substantially. A simple “Lightness” move in the same adjustment layer to the Master category readily shows this.
Below is how the image is displayed on the AP website where they are selling it to news organizations. Note the creation date. This dud has been out there for a while:
FILE – The Jan. 10, 2009 file photo shows a flock of geese flying past a smokestack at the Jeffery Energy Center coal power plant near Emmitt, Kan.. Sweeping legislation to curb the pollution linked to global warming and create a new energy-efficient economy is headed to an uncertain future in the Senate after squeaking through the House. The vote was a big win for President Barack Obama, who hailed House passage as a “historic action.” “It’s a bold and necessary step that holds the promise of creating new industries and millions of new jobs, decreasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil and strictly limiting the release of pollutants that threaten the health of families and communities and the planet itself,” Obama said in a statement on Friday, June 26, 2009. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)
Location Emmitt, KANSAS, United States Event US Climate Bill Creation Date Saturday, January 10, 2009 4:10 PM Submit Date Saturday, June 27, 2009 8:19 AM Special Instructions JAN. 10, 2009 FILE PHOTO Transmission Reference FRA104 Image ID 090110050409 Image Resolution‡ 3356 x 2465 – 786.68 KB Byline Title STF Credit ASSOCIATED PRESS Person Barack Obama Photographer Charlie Riedel Category International News Source AP
The AP image looks much more red than the images media outlets have published, leading us to wonder if even media outlets felt that the image was over the top in it’s “original” form, and dialed it back a bit.
Well AP….are we wrong???
UPDATE:
Allan Sluis has written to update us, based on feedback he received from readers at BigGovernment. He no longer believes that the manipulation began with a black-and-white image, rather that the manipulation began with the stripping out of all colors other than Yellow and Red. That would explain why the image was rendered greyscale after the Yellow and Red were removed in the test outlined above.
Below is what he wrote, and I have made visible changes in the post above to reflect this information.
We’ve been getting some superb and valuable feedback and a Big Government commenter, AnonymousToo, points out correctly that the doctoring of the color in this photo does not necessarily mean it started as a completely black-and-white image as I originally asserted.
My original assessment that the source for this image was a grayscale photograph was based on the total lack of any color remaining once I desaturated the Reds and Yellows only via Hue/Sat in Photoshop. AnonymousToo rightly points out that the AP retoucher/photographer who processed the image may have done precisely the same thing but with a removal of any of the cooler hues containing cyans or blues using the exact same process. By deliberately removing any colors other than reds and yellows to further saturate the oranges, this would indeed give the exact same effect as a grayscale original if the reds and yellows are desaturated (thus leaving no color data behind but grayscale values). I also agree with AnonymousToo that this would be a much quicker way to achieve a similar effect than colorizing a grayscale original.
This deliberate removal of the blues from the photograph may also explain why there are so many jarring instances of saturation zones in the orange with rapid falloffs in inconsistent intensity. While the probability of additional orange being painted in selective areas is still strong when viewing the labeled areas, desaturating of the blues will also accent and slightly lighten areas of the sky visible in the photo that without doubt originally had some blue present. Again, this is damning evidence of unethical color manipulation for a news photograph by AP.
Another mysterious and blatant area of the AP photo emerged after the initial post. I noticed that the body of the smokestack has no color information in the areas not lit by the orange highlight and are exact RGB grayscale. This is visible without any need to apply adjustment layers and is readily visible with the eyedropper and info palette in Photoshop.
This computer-balanced gray does not happen in real-world outdoor lighting conditions and is a result of color manipulation of the original image. RGB gray is how photo-editing software like Photoshop displays a pure grayscale range with identical numeric values for red, green and blue. This results in pixels with only values of light and dark and absolutely no color information.
Note also that this smokestack has plenty of orange (painted or enhanced) in the highlight but this color is completely absent from the rest of the smokestack. If an object’s specular highlight (such as the orange highlight on the smokestack) is tinted, the rest of the object will have darker and less intense, but present, values of this same color. This is not the case with this image. Note also there would be some ambient color tinting the gray of this smokestack from the sky color and the dingy shade of gray that the smokestack is painted. This also is direct evidence of the image manipulator desaturating everything but the orange tones.
The grayscale smokestack is the most powerful and blatant detail of this photograph revealing the extent of the manipulation in this AP International News photograph. As has been previously stated, as an editorial illustration, we would have no problem with this level of deceptive manipulation. By categorizing this as an International News photograph though, all the misleading elements are an ethical disgrace for intentional hyping of a political movement.
Thank you to AnonymousToo, and all of our readers/commenters, who have helped us better understand how this image was manipulated.
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