Tony, come on man, why photoshop balloons into the sky? Also, there are tests for image cloning, and the image passes, the ‘cloned’ balloons appear similar, but the underlying data is not duplicated, so they are either not cloned, or else its been done in an extraordinarily sophisticated way. As for timing, the balloons are still rising, the confetti is blowing into the intersection, the film is totally consistent with the still, if the film stops a second or two before the photo was taken.

But, really, is adding a couple of balloons the argument you want to have with the church here? Doesn’t it strike you as rather silly to be holding out on the possibility that someone duplicated a handful of balloons? Doesn’t it sound a bit desperate?

I know we all want to be right, and it sucks to give a minor PR win (I’m sure the church would harp about the mistake if it was admitted). But aren’t we just looking petty squabbling over the balloons? Or saying “we know its been shopped, we just have no idea where, except the balloons”.

I’m not shilling for them here, and I’m definitely not disrespecting you (its clear you’ve done more to combat this evil than I’ll ever do – I 100% appreciate your devotion to the cause). I’m just saying: isn’t it better to take the moral high ground at this point, concede on the substantive shopping of the crowd and point out forcefully that their own photos only show 500 people in attendance?

Actually, the video provides proof that photoshopping was used in the image. Look at the frame you’ve provided here. What’s missing? Balloons in the sky. As the image from WWP which we provided above shows, images of balloons were duplicated and added to the sky portion of the frame. So what we have, in the end, is a misleading photo that was produced through the use of a wide angle lens and photoshopping.

I think it is pretty safe to say it wasn’t photoshopped now.

Which is annoying, because, regardless of the shopping, the press images show no more than 500. So the shopping was a sideshow, while everyone jumped on that, nobody was emphasizing that their own photos contradicted their account.

Oh definitely. And I think it is rather funny. Because, it really takes some careful looking to see that the shots aren’t obviously shopped. Which is a pretty impressive level of incompetence: to make genuine shots look really obviously fake. The distortion alone makes it look totally fake, regardless of any extra people. That was my wife’s first reaction “its obviously fake, those people aren’t even the right *shape*.”

Whether they were edited or not, though, the official shots were taken in such a way as to give the wrong impression. My first (and second, and third) reaction was to think the original shot showed a huge crowd going all down Oak around the building. Which I can’t imagine was an accident. So, whatever the specifics, I don’t think it gets them off the hook.

What is sad is that this came up at all. If the CoS didn’t have well documented cases in the past, no one would have even considered any of this. Instead, it was almost the first response as soon as the “official” press material was released. The CoS– their own worst PTS.

Luckily, we don’t keep a TV. 🙂 So I’m spared that at least. Which isn’t to say that I don’t have a regular schedule of plunking my niece down with relief in front of the computer to watch a movie while I’m working.

Sure. I do think this is a panoramic effect, but I make no guesses as to whether it was just a wide angle lens or images stitched together. My understanding is that panoramic shots can be done both ways, though I don’t know how to distinguish between them based on the images.

Have they subjected you to hours of Disney Lecture’s cunningly disguised as cartoons?? What about the Barney or Dora Tech? I get bombarded by Annoying Orange Tech…..I hate that thing