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Photoshopped? No!
Some people who saw this remarkable photo of what appears to be a wolf have claimed that it is fake or altered.
I contacted the person who sent me the photograph originally and she was kind enough to provide a full-sized version of the photo, which you can see here:
I’m no photo expert but I think this goes a long way to disproving the critics.
I know it may seem hard to believe that they did indeed have a close encounter with a wild animal that is notoriously shy, but these things do happen. The rarity of the event just makes it all the more incredible.
March 13th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
this photo is 100 percent complete B.S.
first of all, the date on the photo was not put there by the camera. it was added after the fact by an image editing program. why? because a date added by the camera would’ve revealed jpg compression artifacts haloing the numbers at increased magnification and destroying the pixel-perfect edges of the numbers. but these numbers contain pristine edges, with no evidence of the jpg compression artifacts that can be seen throughout the rest of the image.
this doesn’t directly address the wolf, but it does call into question the veracity of the person who claims that this photograph is genuine. at the very least, it is not the “full-size original”.
secondly, the eyes of the wolf: easily accomplished with an airbrush set to “color dodge” and a medium or harder hardness level. the pixels around the edges of the eyes have the distinct glow of this type of technique. what you don’t see is more jpg compression artifacts around the eyes, which suggests that they were also photoshopped in.
of course, it’s also been mentioned that there’s no way that those glowing eyes were the result of a flash. a flash that makes retinas glow 20 feet away, but doesn’t leave a bloom of whitish-blue light over everything between the lens and the retinas of this “wolf”? B.S. look at any photograph you can find online of an animal whose eyes have been made to glow because of a flash, and you’ll see that sickly light of the flash washing out all shadows and color of every other object within the frame, as far back as the light of the flash extends.
this is an obvious LIE, and, along with the pixel-perfect date stamp and the eyes, calls into question the veracity of the poster and the the person claiming to have been the offspring of the photographer.
finally, the wolf itself appears to have a faint glowing halo around it, as though the person who inserted it used the eraser tool with a hardness level of zero to cut the wolf out of its original environment, leaving a translucent, feathered edge around the wolf that could only be masked by dropping the brightness and contrast of the layer containing the wolf (hence the enhancement of the eyes).
100 percent complete B.S.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Here is why its FAKE.
First of all its a dog, and its running the other way. Zoom in on his legs, the front legs are actually his back legs. They just pasted a face onto the running dogs butt.
Besides, there is no flash in this photo, which means the eyes would not glow. Open the file in Photoshop and make it really light and look at the legs, you’ll see what I mean…
Nice fake try though.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
“a date added by the camera would’ve revealed jpg compression artifacts haloing the numbers at increased magnification and destroying the pixel-perfect edges of the numbers. but these numbers contain pristine edges, with no evidence of the jpg compression artifacts that can be seen throughout the rest of the image”
The problem with this claim is that the high resolution photo posted IS jpeg compressed. The compression level is low, and as you can see, jpeg is perfectly capable of handling date stamps without noticeable fringing. You can also experiment with a DX4330 camera yourself if you like and you will see it is perfectly capable of date stamping in this way – you will notice that the font and shade of yellow are EXACTLY the font and shade of yellow that the DX4330 uses.
A very nice try Mercurialohearn, but your credentials as a debunker has been lost through this sloppy effort. Instead of the boy who called wolf too many times, we have the boy who called ‘photoshop’ too many times.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:36 am
How could sunlight, at current angle hit the upper inside of the left back leg (the lighted area just below the dog’s chest). Look at the shadows under the little girls arms. It should be pitch black under that black dog. The entire lighting on the dog is wrong it looks like the light is coming more from the side, and if that was the case due to foliage then he would have cast a more pronounced shadow, look at the humans shadows they are much darker and they don’t seem to be under that side lighting effect.
Ghosting affect around the back legs, is too long to be fur, most likely an attempt to blend in dog. The dog’s fur standing up on his shoulders is a little to tall even if he did have his head down (probably the tail of dog as Von stated).
It was a good idea to use a low flat lighted picture so they didn’t have worry to much about the details. But on closer examination, it doesn’t hold up. I don’t know about the date stamp theory but it sounds reasonable to me James, that alone makes this very inconvincible.
Definitely a fake.. I agree with Von, the legs are a mess and possibly backwards, impossible glowing eyes without a flash.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
As I pointed out in the original post you can argue all you want about the techniques used etc and it’s a fake for numerous reasons but chiefly that there are no black wolves on Vancouver Island, however it is a fun fake so hats off to whoever did it.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:43 am
The picture looks real, but there are certain things that don’t fit to the story and technical issues.
The picture was taken without a flash, thats easy to see.
If you brighten up the picture it really looks like its a dog running away with the head of a wolf photoshoped on its back.
See for yourself :
http://rapidshare.com/files/100021863/bright.jpeg.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/100021995/pixel-difference.jpeg.html
There you can see that the structure of the pixel encoding from the jpeg is not the same all over the image, which it should be, if its taken with the same camera ;-)
March 17th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Here is a brighter version of the “wolf”…
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/8804/nigrawolfyl3.png
To the mercurialohearn guy’s comment way up there about no jpeg artifacts around the date. HELLO, IT IS A JPEG FILE. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT PUT THE NUMBERS THERE, IF IT IS SAVED AS A JPEG, JPEG USES COMPRESSION; THERE WILL BE ARTIFACTS. Now, obviously, you could save with less compression, and the artifacts will be less noticeable, but maybe you should look a little closer, because it’s quite obvious there ARE artifacts…
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/1115/nigrawolf2ou9.png
Hmm, I seem to see lots of jpeg artifacts around those figures, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Color dodge on the eyes? Yeah okay. No. Why not just take a picture of a dog with the flash on?
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1414/nigrawolf3ge1.png
Look at those eyes. That’s not color dodge, dummy. That’s a camera flash. Notice the hue convergence error that most cheap digital cameras suffer from. That doesn’t happen with your “color dodge” theory. It would be far different if that were the case. Also notice the jpeg artifacts that are the same throughout the photo.
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/4247/nigrawolf4rd3.png
I don’t see this “halo” effect to which you refer. You’re obviously trying too hard to see a fake, and thus, are seeing things that aren’t really there to help substantiate some evidence to your stubborn belief. Notice the angle of the light on the leaves around the animal. Quite consistent with the lighting on the animal itself. Honestly, how you see a halo effect from a bad background removal is beyond me.
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1862/nigrawolf4aqx5.png
The feet don’t look backwards to me. It looks like a dog or wolf running toward the camera at a slight angle. The front paws are far too short from the first joint up to the toes for that to be a hind foot. Pay attention. Notice on 4a how the curve of the leg is consistent with that of a front leg, not a hind leg. I have placed a contour line next to the area in question. The bulge on the opposite side of the animal looks pretty obvious to me that it’s the bushy tail of a wolf as it trails behind the animal. WHY WOULD ANYONE PASTE THE HEAD ON A DOG’S BUTT? That’s f’kin absurd. Why not just take a picture of a dog walking toward the camera? O.O
http://www.bigrunwolfranch.org/images/jack/jack%20front%20walk.JPG
Notice the similarities? I’m not saying this photo is fake or isn’t fake. But I think some of you need to re-examine the “evidence” your “expert” opinions are coming up with in an attempt to disprove the photo’s validity. While it might not be a wolf, it could quite easily be a wandering dog that has gotten lose, or has lost its way back home. Nothing in the photo suggests it was painted in, but it’s possible the quality was intentionally degraded to help hide the possibility. None of the “evidence” you people have provided pans out though. Try harder.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:17 am
*loose ^^ crap. :P
Also, something else I noticed…
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/1140/nigrawolf5rs3.png
Not sure what it is, but it looks like the metal ring on a purse or something someone is holding (the girl with her back to the camera?) The glint on it would certainly point to evidence that a flash was indeed used.
This looks to be a cheap point-and-shoot camera, judging by the image quality, and the evidence present in the optics of the photo. Flash is probably on by default, and there may not even be an option for turning it off.
It wasn’t really as dark out as it appears to have been from this photo. It’s adjusted the white balance and brightness to account for a flash, and it’s pretty obvious that the day the picture was taken, the sky was rather overcast, judging by the uniform coloration, and the softness of the shadows. This widely diffused light would easily mute out a cheap camera’s automatic flash, given enough distance to do so. Judging by the shot, and the amount of stuff in it, I think it’s fairly safe to assume, the photographer was probably far enough away from the subjects for this to occur.
Like I said, I don’t think it’s all that unbelievable. It’s kind of freaky, and it’s odd how they were so involved in their activities, that they didn’t notice the animal, but that does not mean it wasn’t there. That said, it also doesn’t mean it was a wolf. It could still very well have been a dog that was frightened by the flash.
People, please stop being coerced by herd mentality. “HE SAYS IT’S FAKE, SO DUH, IT OBVIOUSLY IS JEEZ I MEAN COME ON!” Why not analyzing things on a bit more of an involved level, eh?
March 17th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Yes, it is herd mentality that makes us think it’s fake. It couldn’t possibly be sound reasoning and logic. Your arguments are much more intelligent. ‘It wasn’t really as dark out as it appears to have been from this photo. It’s adjusted the white balance and brightness to account for a flash’. You don’t appear to understand how a camera works. It uses a light meter to judge the shutter speed and it would not underexpose it with the flash. This is especially evident since the flash hardly shows up at all meaning there would have been more natural light than artificial light so it should still be nice and bright.
‘It’s kind of freaky, and it’s odd how they were so involved in their activities, that they didn’t notice the animal, but that does not mean it wasn’t there.’ No it doesn’t. But the fact that its a species of wolf that doesn’t exist in that area does.
‘This looks to be a cheap point-and-shoot camera, judging by the image quality, and the evidence present in the optics of the photo’. Optics of the photo? Don’t make up jargon.
Conclusion; don’t assume you’re an expert because you fiddle with phototshop at home. Take it from someone who does this for a living, this is photoshopped.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:49 am
Interesting. It appears to me, that the wolf is in full gallop forward. I disagree that his legs are going backwards. I live in a country that has no wolves so I don’t know much about them. But I turned the brightness up to 100+ and zoomed in on the wolf and it appears that his front right leg is off the ground and bent back and all his feet are close together. He does seem to have very hairy legs. Is this common with wolves? But to me it looks like he is running towards the camera. There does seem to be some light on his right side, which is a bit consistent with where the light is in the rest of the photo. I can’t imagine what light has lit his eyes up as I don’t imagine flash has been used here, unless someone had their finger over it!
I do a lot of fake photoshopping for web stuff, but I’m not good enough to claim it is fake for that reason. I think it is fake because it looks like he is running towards the group of people. I imagine that would be very unusual behavior for a lone wolf. And they would certainly have known he was there 2 seconds later!
June 18th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Von is definitely right. It is either that or the wolf is running at them for some reason in which case I would imagine they would know about it.
January 12th, 2010 at 9:54 am
If you look at the shadows of the people, you might notice that their shadows are angled towards the lower left corner of the picture, therefore there must have been enough natural light behind them that, even if the flash went off, they would have shadows in that direction. One would thus conclude that the “wolf” would have a similar shadow, right? but when you look at it, it has little to no shadow, when there is a stump right next to it with a very clear shadow. Regardless of whether or not the wolf is a dog, or a head pasted on a butt, doesn’t matter. the fact that it casts no shadow in an area where it should proves that this is a shop.