I Can't Believe My Eyes! Seriously.

Ah, yes, fraudulent digital manipulation strikes again. I'm referring to the tornado video that was being shown by news agencies that was promoted as a video of a tornado touching down in Nebraska. However, another storm chaser came forward and said that it was actually a digitally altered version of a video that he'd shot four years ago that someone else apparently doctored and submitted as their own and of a recent event. The video was allegedly flipped to appear going in the same direction and sped up, with some trees taken out and some power lines dropped in. After comparing the original to the video in question, it was pulled as being suspect.

Okay, this is a pet peeve of mine about the digital age. Back in the "old days" it was much easier to tell when a picture was doctored or faked altogether (though not always) and the movie special effects were easy to see as just that, sometimes hoaky, in-camera effects with oh, visible cables or other obvious visual tricks. As for photos, aside from some airbrushing, manipulation was a much harder thing to pull off. Now, however, photoshop and digital manipulation of video can be really hard to detect when it's used by talented people. Of course, let's stress the "talented" part. Of course, there are a lot of really bad examples of photoshop errors, like these errors courtesy of Photoshop Disasters...



Aside from these poorly doctored images, there are lots of images that we've seen that are so skillfully manipulated that we can't tell that they were manipulated and we're taking those photos all at face value as real. In other words, we're being duped. Of course I can't exactly include examples here because you can't tell that they're fakes, eh?

And then there are examples of completely fake video, like this gem. I'll admit that when I first saw this video I was sitting there with my mouth open and brows knitted, a la "wait just a blinkin' second here...".



Well, it seems pretty real, but the description of the video (here) openly claims it as a fake and gives other links like the one below. Here's a similar video made using the same software. If I'm not incorrect, the logo is from the software company. Pretty funny, yet I still feel kinda duped. You know that any schlub with the right software and too much free time is intentionally going to try to make us all look like idiots. Some may actually succeed.



Back when I was a kid, you could be much more certain that you could trust an image. Now, every photo that I see or video that I watch is automatically suspect and I don't trust it or can't look at a photo without thinking that it's been photoshopped and "improved" (a great pity for the talented photographer who actually captured an extraordinary image straight off). In this digital age, it's too bad that my children will never be able to trust a single image that they see. Pity, that.