Seeing this, in relation to the fauxtography thing, makes one wonder if any pictures we have ever seen were actually real.
Once we wondered if what we were shown was just a bunch of smoke and mirrors...now the first thing we think is, Photoshop?!?
Well, no, very few of them are real...at least within the last decade or so. The photos you see in any fashion or celebrity magazine are most certainly not. Nothing you see in magazines such as Playboy or Esquire is real.
Celebrities and others certainly have good "bones" to start with, but they are still heavily altered, especially to smooth out natural human lumpiness and improve skin tone. The human body just isn't that perfect. Jamie Lee Curtis did an excellent expose on this for young girls a few years ago. It's worth taking a look at, because it is one of the simplest examples I've ever found to show how things are manipulated.
Theoretically, there are completely different standards for photojournalists. However there are three things that muddy the water.
First, when you shoot digital, you must make some corrections, much in the same way you would in the darkroom. However, those limits can very easily be pushed without much effort or evidence.
Secondly, the lines between news and entertainment have been completely blurred. It's getting harder and harder to see the boundaries clearly. This allows a LOT of fudging to go on.
Finally, many companies use freelancers to save money. Freelancers do not generally have any kind of allegiance to the company that is hiring them and are not as thoroughly vetted. That often leaves news organizations open to hiring individuals who may not be what they appear and have hidden (and not so hidden) agendas.
Bottom line is this. The genie is out of the bottle. As consumers, we have to be very skeptical of " I saw it with own eyes." On the other hand, we can spring for Photoshop and look like a million bucks in the Christmas letter. So it's not all bad. The techniques used, are the same that have been used for many, many years. Stalin and Lenin used to cut and paste themselves into photos, and models and celebrities have been airbrushed for years. It's just that the tools we use today are cheap, ubiquitous and hard to detect. And that means we can't believe everything we see.