35 Comments

Oh Canada: The Politician’s Are Angels Here

Posted on 26 August by bryce

Politics in Canada tend to avoid religion, but overblown backlighting can make even the most heinous politician look heavenly.

Photoshop Disaster

Stephen Harper is looking to make the move from cult of personality to full-on deity. Which is probably a good move – the conservative Prime Minister has the personality of wet cardboard.

Actually, I’m not sure if that is Harper. Quick, who knows the name of the old white guy in politics? You know the one. He wears a suit.

Great catch Nadine. You can see the original on the Prime Ministers very own Photo of the Day website.

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  • Mythbuster

    (°·° ) ( °·°) (o.o ) ( o.o)
    searching for the disaster in this one … not finding any

  • kat

    second that. it just looks like there’s a light somewhere behind him acting as a rim light. you can see the effect on the hair of the people sitting behind as well.

  • Stella

    Thanks for the enlarged inset picture. Still not understanding the disaster.

  • Badgeguy

    Look at where the chair he is sitting on meets the floor. You will see the effects of the spotlight that is shining on him from behind. This is a another fail fail for PSD.

  • http://photosbyceline.com/ Celine Chamberlin

    You can clearly see there’s a bright light behind him. This isn’t a Photoshop disaster, it’s just what can actually happen when someone is backlighted this way.

    • http://www.facebook.com/pyro404 Lucas A. White

      So there is a bright light where people are sitting. Guess that means there is just a piece of white cloth under his arm? LOL

      • http://twitter.com/_Case Case

        No, there’s just a sort of poster or image projected on some kind of projection screen behind him and behind the people in the background (ie. the woman in the lime green dress) with a sort of blue to white gradient to it. You can clearly see above his arm that it’s fading from blue to white downwards. (LOL)

  • Cropper

    His silvery hair glows when hit with a backlight

    • Cropper

      I had a PSD disaster detection disaster.

  • angela

    Backlight.

  • Nic

    This page is an apostrophe disaster, twice over.

  • Nikki

    What?

  • Ben

    It seems to me that this site covers all forms of photographic disaster – in front of the lens, in the camera itself, and in post-production. So if a professional photograph of a bunch of diplomats is so badly composed it appears as though one’s growing a tree out of his head, it’s likely to get featured. I suppose in such a case you could call it a lack-of-Photoshop disaster (i.e. a GA didn’t edit out the composition error).

    As for this image, I’d hesitate to even call it a composition error – the halo is a standard by-product of back lighting the subject.

    • http://www.facebook.com/pyro404 Lucas A. White

      What about under his arm?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lightstriker-Stormyhahaha/1046633734 Lightstriker Stormyhahaha

    I dont get it. What’s the disaster? Classical portrait lighting is left, right, highlight, background optional. Did they alter the mural in the background?

  • Murgatroyd

    FAIL. This appears to be an actual photograph. If the “disaster” is that the backlight appears to give Mr. Harper a halo, I suggest you enter [Obama halo] into http://www.google.com/imghp and ponder the results.

    • http://www.facebook.com/pyro404 Lucas A. White

      And under his arm?

    • http://www.facebook.com/pyro404 Lucas A. White

      Yet if you look under his arm… Clearly not a back-light.

  • hege

    His hairdresser didn’t cut him (out) properly.

  • http://www.facebook.com/lucy.chastain.50 Lucy Chastain

    You guys are a bunch of Know-It-Alls. This photo definitely was photoshopped. The rim lighting around his hair isn’t natural– rim lighting doesn’t result in this thick, uniform line that sits outside the contours of the body as if someone took a crayon and drew an outline around it. Rim lighting sits inside the contours of the body. Furthermore, rim lighting always looks like “brushwork”, with varying amounts of thickness throughout.
    Examples of “real” rim lighting:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/drumzofthesouth/4065516937/
    http://euny-lim.deviantart.com/art/Rim-Light-161556802
    http://www.thephotoargus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/rl12.jpg
    What it looks like to me is that there probably was rim lighting in the original photo but the highlights were completely blown and caused his light-colored hair to blend in too much with the light background. So someone decided to “build up” the lost details by enhancing the rim lighting, but obviously overdid it. You can even see some of the blue section from the painting behind him “seeping through” the transparent layer of the built up fake rim lighting.
    How can someone not see it?

    • Cropper

      You are right.

    • Bev

      Thank you, Lucy, for your detailed explanation!

    • http://twitter.com/_Case Case

      It’s interesting to note that it’s quite obvious that when they pasted him in so badly, they actually realised that with just a bit more effort everyone would just assume it’s not a botched Photoshop job and there’s simply a strong backlighting, so instead of just fixing the bad cut and paste, they actually went ahead with adding the appropriate illumination to the corresponding sides of the heads of the people in the background like there really WAS some strong light shining from behind him (and them) and even went to all the trouble to actually add a light patch on the floor behind him, just like there would be if there was a light shining, and a very distinct shadow the chair is casting toward us.

      It’s actually quite amazing the lenghts some people go to just to hide their own Photoshop incompetency and to fool a buch of know-it-alls on the internet, isn’t it? All that work just to sell one bad cut and paste job…

      • http://www.facebook.com/iammichaeldavis Michael Davis

        If they were talented enough to cover their tracks so well, wouldn’t they be talented enough to do a passable cut and paste?

        • http://twitter.com/_Case Case

          (And here I thought the sarcasm in my comment was pretty obvious…)

    • http://clientsfromhell.net/ Bryce Bladon – CFH Editor

      Wow Lucy, props on the excellent explanation.

  • PSDwatcher

    Website needs a name change, or actual Photoshop disasters. A dictionary or Wikipedia would be a good resource for actually learning the definition of the word disaster. Sadly, a lot of these recent disasters do not pass the Duck test.

  • http://www.facebook.com/nadine.lumley Nadine Lumley

    I like how no one is looking at Harper why his back to group lololo

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=501644963 Janet Cox Tuhey

    Since I know nothing about photoshopping I guess I can be more objective. He’s been added in and the “halo” is fake as hell. He looks brighter and more in focus than he surrounding people as though the light shining on him is coming from a different source than the rest. He is out of proportion to the rest of the picture, unless he is a really large man who has his own supr-sized chair. Also the composition is just wrong,,,,,,,no one is looking at him. And why does he have his back to most of the group? If his halo effect is coming from the poster, why does the woman by his right hand not also have a halo, she ‘s closer to the poster’s bright light? If you blow it up you will see little squiggly lines around him which none of the other people have. The man has been photoshopped in, period.

    • Cropper

      I was so busy looking at his glowing hair that I failed to notice the bad cut out job under his arm.

      • http://www.facebook.com/bryce.bladon Bryce Bladon

        Excellent catch, Cropper.

    • http://www.facebook.com/iammichaeldavis Michael Davis

      Whether or not this photo has been altered, which I’m not convinced of, none of your points make the case for or against. It is entirely possible he does have light from a different source, maybe a skylight? If you admit you know nothing about Photoshopping you might also know nothing about basic photography: a background being out of focus is a critical part of photography that comes from manipulating your depth of field. No one is looking at him, true, but they all seem to be looking at the same thing he’s looking at: the speaker to the main subject’s left (our right). He has his back to the group because it’s a staged photo. The woman “by” his right hand is actually nowhere near his hand and could easily not be in the same light.

      I don’t understand how you can say “I know nothing about Photoshopping” and so definitively proclaim “the man has been Photoshopped, period”. I don’t believe he is, but I don’t see his right leg’s reflection in the floor, which is the only thing that gives me pause. I do see his chair legs reflected in the floor, which actually makes me think it’s a real photo, if for no other reason than why would the Photoshopper reflect the chair and not his foot?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HRZCGB3T2ZHBJZUVRGGSJAE3GQ Nadine

    Many of the naysayers here are probably paid online commenters hired by our Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself. That’s how we roll in Canada.

    Conservatives have been particularly scrupulous about
    pushing their views into the comments section of websites,

    … and many of their online assaults appear orchestrated.

    http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/steveharper/article/925731–harper-s-liberal-fixation

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000823189694 Bear Cat

    When cutting a person (or an animal) out of one picture to add to another… hair and fur is a bugger to crop around and very time consuming.
    Photoshop disaster is when you forget to fix that white “halo” you left when you cropped the picture to stick him in the room.

  • http://www.facebook.com/faithinmind Rick Stafford

    maybe he truly has been deified (I LoL at that though and am looking to the horns and pitch fork)