39 Comments

Kusmitea: Tea Anyone?

Posted on 26 May by Vernon
ice tea



There is nothing more sinister than ice that sinks to the bottom of the glass…

Thanks goes to cc_tweet on Twitter. The original can be found here.  If you can’t see the PSD, please check out our marked up version. 

The real error, of course, is putting ice in tea, which is something only a person who doesn’t understand tea (viz. Germans, Americans) would do. By Rob

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  • http://twitter.com/farlakes God

    kewl…dry-ice[-tea] resisting thing…

  • Guest

    Come on! Haven’t you ever seen ice with a hole through? They actually sink!

    • Nickele

      Really, are you sure of that one? Any picture to share?

  • http://twitter.com/nicolesy Nicole S. Young

    I wouldn’t really consider this a “Photoshop” disaster, more like a food-styling error. Fake ice doesn’t float, it should have been filled to the top to look more realistic.

    • Clark

      Maybe it’s a Photoshop disaster because they didn’t move the ice to the top…

  • David H

    I wonder why they chose to go with what appears to be fake ice instead of grabbing a few blocks of the real thing and taking a picture before they melted.

    • http://twitter.com/nicolesy Nicole S. Young

      Fake ice is used often in food photography. Mostly because it doesn’t melt, and it looks better (since real ice tends to look “foggy”).

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001927505493 Albino Deer

        But it doesn’t actually “look better” if it doesn’t fulfill the purpose of looking edible. That’s the point of using fake stuff in food photography, right? So it *doesn’t* look scary and plastic?

        • Ty

          You’ve obviously never looked at the photos of kebabs in a greek takeaway.

          • Synthprax
          • Bargonzo

            No, honestly not. Because kebab is Turkish. Gyros is Greek.

          • Ty

            So? Chinese takeaways sell chips and curries.

            It’s the greeks who open all the greasy takeaways over here.

    • RM

      There are a number of food products which typically get replaced with something “fake” because the real thing doesn’t photograph well or doesn’t hold up long. It’s easy to say “take the picture before it melts” but under the studio lights, stuff will begin to melt pretty quickly and you don’t always get it right on the very first shot – sometimes you take some shots, realize you need to change something, take more shots, etc. Ice is one of these items. Milk is another – it tends to photograph with a bluish hue and look a little too watery so guess what can be used for milk? Slightly diluted glue. Yum.

      • Jshook

        Mashed potatoes are used for vanilla ice cream!

      • Jayson Royce

        Ice melts under studio lights, you say?  Perhaps you should try taking a picture without studio lights!  Problem solved.

        I honestly don’t know what’s worse – the people doing the bad PhotoChop jobs or the photographers and their excuses for why they can’t just take a picture of something that’s really there.  Because seriously, with all that expensive light, complex equipment and technical training, if you can’t take a decent picture of a stationery object in one or two shots, people paying you to take pictures is like hiring a head chef who can’t make a sandwich.    

        • ZPedro

          It’s much more common than you think. Ever saw the pictures that come with the food recipes in magazines? You will never get it to look as well as in the picture. That’s because the “result” is so much made up (made more shiny, held in a nice shape for those that are malleable, etc.) for the photo that’s it’s not actually edible any more: I have heard of shoe polish being applied for that nice shiny look.

          Honestly, just like there are a number of reasons why it may be necessary to move a person or remove a blemish with Photoshop for the intended use (as long as a disaster is avoided…), there are a number of reasons why this is done: people actually expect food to look shiny, they expect it to have studio lighting; otherwise it “looks wrong”.

          Now The Real WTF… err, wrong site; The Real PSD is not that they used a liquid other than water and/or fake ice, TRPSD is that they chose in such a way that the result is completely unlike ice+water, and they failed to realize it.

          • Bargonzo

              TRPSD. I like that, although it sounds like a veneral disease…

        • kanusterkind

          you are really not very clever, eh?

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ariel-Alejandro-Castro-Olguin/100000767641055 Ariel Alejandro Castro Olguin

          IF you dont do it with study lights. YOU CAN’T CONTROL the color, intencity, bouncing, and most important Effect.

          you think you can photograph a glass with white/black border in just outdoor light?… prove it.

          Taking several pictures, sometimes differs from that, exposure for once, depth of field for other. I dont know if you knew only the human eye can focus on light and darknes simultaniously…. Camaras ares stupid and can only do it on light or in darkness. not at the same time.

        • Rolls_royce

          >if you can’t take a decent picture of a stationery object in one or two
          shots, people paying you to take pictures is like hiring a head chef who
          can’t make a sandwich

          Maybe people paying me want more than one image to pick from?

  • http://profiles.google.com/tychabrahe Lauren Eve Pomerantz

    Actually, ice cubes made with heavy water sink.  I think I will not be having any tea today.

  • Ty

    Aside from the fact that they’re probably plastic due to the previously mentioned reasons, it is still possible for ice to sink as long as the liquid it is in is less dense. Add enough tea to increase the density and the ice will sink.

    Either way, this has nothing to do with photoshop and can’t be considered a PS disaster by any definition.

    • Ed

      Uh…no.  Increasing the density of the liquid will add to the buoyancy of the ice (i.e., the ice will be relatively even less dense with the denser fluid.)

    • Jo_Momma

      Suck it, honey.

    • http://www.facebook.com/nomasan Damon Blackheart

      Ty > if you add enough tea to increase the liquid density the ice will float even more, not sink.

      I agree that it may not be a photoshop post-process disaster, it’s still a very baaad design decision along with the one lemon up one lemon down thing, which btw looks like an orange. It’s very laughable and with an extra stretch it falls well within the site scope.

  • http://twitter.com/FoodPhotoNYC Richard Haber

    I guess it was done to distract from how ugly the whole tea thing looks, sinking ice or otherwise. One floating lemon looking like a dead fish in an aquarium and some algae crammed into the bottom of the chamber on the right. The light field lighting on the glass is nice.

  • Synthprax

    OK. I’ll be the first to say it; it’s not a PSD. It’s just dumb-ass. Let’s see how many explanations I can come up with:
    1) water ice in something like alcohol; doesn’t explain the one lemon up and one lemon down;
    2) glass “ice” in almost anything (water, alcohol, gasoline…)
    3) speaking of gasoline, I wonder if water ice floats or sinks in it? Hmmm… (thinking about going to the gas station to buy some gas.)

  • Icy
  • Paco

    BTW the original is not available now.

  • Rob

    The real error, of course, is putting ice in tea, which is something only a person who doesn’t understand tea (viz. Germans, Americans) would do.

    • http://twitter.com/Alasska11 Eliza Roche

      iced tea rocks… feel sorry for you if u havent tasted yet =)

    • http://twitter.com/Alasska11 Eliza Roche

      iced tea rocks… feel sorry for you if u havent tasted yet =)

    • some loser

      Oh, burn. You dare insult American understanding of tea? It really requires a lot of thought to understand the art of opening a box, getting something out, and then placing that item in hot water.

  • pro

    wasting of time dude !

  • http://gagglegnash.myopenid.com/ Gagglegnash

    Photographic ad-setup abuse of theatrical acrylic ice cubes….
    http://www.amazon.com/Acrylic-Cubes-Square-Shape-2-Pound/dp/B0014RB3FY

    You don’t have to disasterize the photoshoppery when you can successfully disasterize the original photograph.

  • http://www.clippingpathindia.com/ Clipping Path

    Actually, Ice cubes made with heavy Water Sink.

  • http://www.facebook.com/gabi.garcez Gabriela Garcez

    This blog is so good.

  • James

    No more available on the website

  • http://hugeoutletstores.com/le-creuset-outlet/ Claire M.

    I love this tea too ;)